Smart Toaster Can’t Hold a Candle to the Apollo Computer | Hacker News Reader

Smart Toaster Can’t Hold a Candle to the Apollo Computer

theatlantic.com

30 pointsPetiver19 comments

Suggested title: "The remarkable capabilities of the Apollo computer"

The computer history is very interesting, but the title is clickbait. It acknowledges that the smart toaster is computationally far more capable, and unconvincingly tries to justify the title by arguing that the moon landing is more important than toast, which I doubt anyone's ever disputed.

Agree, but the issue is with the article, not the title (which is directly from the source). The article even leaves off with:

> The lesson, maybe, is simple: If your phone is so much more powerful than the computers that put humanity on the moon, then why are you just staring at Instagram all day?

It's a pretty miserly take overall.

Yes. Toaster is smart.

But toaster has no hands. No money to buy a candle. No access to Apollo computer.

And the author somehow thinks it’s the toaster’s fault that it fails.

The Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster predates both and seems worth mentioning here for it’s superior user experience and unique analog technology.

Technology Connections produced a fantastic teardown video of it a while back. https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y

Reminds me of the classic "EE versus CS" by Philip Greenspun:

https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference-explained

Of course, if this were written today there would have to be a section on displaying ads and otherwise monetizing the user's data.

Everyone likes to point out how your smartphone, etc are more powerful than the Apollo Computer. But, it's even more drastic than that.

The tiny processor that runs the bluetooth radio in your phone is more powerful than the Apollo Computer.

The Cortex m0 used in many USB-C PD compliant wall chargers is more powerful than the Apollo Computer.

The Apollo Guidance Computer has roughly the same power as a Game Boy, first manufactured in 1989.

The game boy cpu was very underpowered for its time - which was fine, since it was meant to get many hours off of AA batteries.

It's what you use it for that matters.

He could say the given the limitations on the hardware, that writing the software was something that required a level of technical prowess hardly found in your smartwatch. If we define brilliance as the ability to make every cycle count, every memory location count. Then, I'd agree, that indeed it was an art form. But given the same engineers, with the amount of processing power of a budget scientific calculator today, they would achieve the same results, with faster processing speed, more redundancy, an infinitely better user interface, more safety and in less time with less people.

>You could not actually guide a spaceship to the moon with a smart doorbell.

I wish some wealthy eccentric would fund this competition.

I'm reasonably sure that given access to the doorbells processor, you could, in fact, guide a spaceship to the moon.

I mean, the killer advantage that the Apollo computer had in getting to the moon was the giant rocket atop which it sat, but if you're talking functionally (as in, correct outputs for a given set of inputs), I've no doubt that pretty much any computing device could easily run the necessary software.

I'm more than a little curious what the retort to this is. Does anyone dispute this view?

You could limit it to something like:

All radios, processors and sensors must come from consumer IoT devices and be worth no more than a total of $x

I believe it could be theoretically done, but I doubt it would be economically viable. Consumer grade electronics is produced with much lower quality standards and designed for much lower physical endurance than aerospace or military electronics. So while they may come with plenty of compute power, they may not withstand harsh conditions in space and you possibly don't want to risk losing a multi-million dollar rocket due to a fault in a $2 doorbell controller.

From my perspective, that's the entire point of a goofy challenge! :)

(I should have clarified earlier, I think it should be a completely fun challenge for the maker community)

Its pretty amazing that these systems were using a form of virtual machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

My ranking:

1. Apollo computer

2. Smart toaster

3. Contrarian writer producing nothing but complaints about people building better lives.

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