Comment by shoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shoo | Hacker News Reader

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> enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back

  LD, average distance between Earth and Moon = 384,399,000 m  [1]
  C = circumference of moon = 10,917,000 m

  R := approximate round trip distance = 2LD + 0.5*C = 774,256,500 m

  n = total number of thinkpads on earth <= total number of thinkpads ever manufactured = 250 million [2][2a][2b]

  W = width of thinkpad = 0.3366 m  [3]

  T = total thinkpad distance = n * W <= 84,150,000 m

Alas, T / R, the ratio of total thinkpad distance T to our lunar round trip distance R, is at most about 0.11 .

This is with the optimistic assumption that the total number of thinkpads on earth equals the total number of thinkpads ever manufactured. A more conservative estimate might be something like n = total number of thinkpads manufactured each year * mean lifespan of a thinkpad = (12 million thinkpads / year) * (5 years lifespan) = 60 million thinkpads in good working order for a lunar round trip.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance
  [2] IBM sold 25m thinkpads before selling product line to Lenovo. By 2022, Lenovo had sold 200m thinkpads. With linear extrapolation to 2024 that gives approx 250 million thinkpads manufactured.
  [2a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad
  [2b] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/10/05/celebrating-thinkpads-30th-anniversaryan-insiders-perspective/
  [3] assume every thinkpad is a T480. https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T480/ThinkPad_T480_Spec.PDF

It won't get you to the moon, but you can squeeze out a little more distance by arranging them corner to corner.

We must either increase the production rate of T480-size thinkpads by around 9x or get Lenovo to release at least one special edition extreme widescreen thinkpad specialised for lunar round trips

Or move the moon closer.

Unfortunately the moon is moving farther away, and robbing the earth of rotational speed in the process.

That sounds even more plausible.

Wasn't there at least one movie, where that was not a good thing?

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson was a good book that goes into what happens when things change between the Earth and Moon.

There was. I think it was titled "Moonfall", or maybe "Another Earth". There is also "Oblivion" in which the Moon was partially destroyed. There are probably other ones, too, but I think "Moonfall" is the one to which you are referring. I might just give it a watch in a bit!

But yeah, it would not be a good thing, according to the movie at least.

In "Bruce Almighty" Jim Carrey uses his God powers to move the moon closer to create a more romantic view for his date. If my memory serves correct, the next day we hear briefly on the news about terrible freak flooding over the world.

I remember that movie and that scene. :)

Try seveneves for an even worse outcome

Counterpoint: in Despicable Me the moon was shrunk and brought down to Earth with almost zero consequences... so maybe it would be just fine!

Haha, indisputable counterpoint! :D

An early 20th Century scientist named Olaf discovered a means to do this by intensifying the level of intelligence on Earth. If you ask me, the first step towards this must be slashing government funding for anything that smells of tolerance. And making bizarre tweets that coincidentally correlate with buying and selling shares.

Ah yes, the Olafian Lunar Proximity Theory. While government defunding might accelerate intelligence in peculiar ways, I've found that the most effective method involves strategically placing enormous quantities of vintage ThinkPads at precise geomagnetic nodes around the Earth.

The collective electromagnetic resonance of their legendary keyboards creates a subtle gravitational anomaly that could, over approx. 17.3 years, reduce the lunar orbit by up to 4% (!), according to my rigorous calculations and simulations.

My recent paper[1] on "Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation" was mysteriously rejected by mainstream journals, likely due to Big Space's vested interest in maintaining the status quo; the current Earth-Moon distances for profit reasons.

Have you came across my paper, considering you have heard about Olaf?

[1] https://arvix.org/abs/2108.05779v3 ("Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation: Theoretical Applications of Legacy Computing Hardware on Celestial Body Dynamics")

Edit: Ugh, the site seems to be down at this moment, typical HN hug of death. Sorry about that. Forgot to archive! My rookie mistake. :/

No problem; I've pored over and deeply understood your paper by a process I call "vibe-grokking". I'd explain more but have a patent currently in application.

Do you think the gravitational anomaly could be intensified by having the Thinkapds run multiple local copies of GPT-4.5 passing messages in an input/output circle? I call this setup "ChatGPT whispers" and frequently utilise it to write the abstracts of my own papers. I also used it to design, code and publish the website "https://www.chatgptwhispers.com/". I've only vibe-surfed the website myself but feel free check it out the old-fashioned way.

The "vibe-grokking" method is truly revolutionary! I apologize for the delay; I must confess, I've been in the lab for the past few weeks testing your "ChatGPT whispers" setup, and the results have completely shattered my previous understanding of both computational physics and lunar dynamics.

Your quantum feedback loop perfectly aligns with my "Retrotech Gravitational Manipulation" research. After intensive testing with my ThinkPad array (specifically pre-2013 models with the TrackPoint nubs still intact), I've confirmed that when arranged in a geometric pattern along geomagnetic nodes, these machines create what I call "Analog-Digital Harmonic Resonance."

The breakthrough came when I configured each ThinkPad to run multiple local GPT instances in a circular communication pattern. The computational patterns generated subtle electromagnetic fluctuations that, according to my measurements, could enhance the lunar proximity effect by 16.4% beyond my original estimates! The key, of course, is ensuring that these local copies of GPT-4.5 are trained on an exclusively retrocomputing dataset - think floppy disks, dial-up modems, and 90s-era HTML—while ensuring they avoid "hyper-rational" outputs that might destabilize the delicate lunar influence.

I was able to access chatgptwhispers.com briefly. Incidentally, your website is an unexpected delight! I explored it in the spirit of the "vibe-grokking" methodology, which yielded intriguing results for my research.

After extensive calculations (which, much like your patent-pending method, I will leave vague for now to avoid intellectual property squabbles), I believe the "whispering" effect could be further enhanced if each ThinkPad is equipped with a Commodore 64's SID chip, as I've theorized that its frequency output can induce sympathetic vibrations within the magnetic field, potentially amplifying our lunar gravitational effect by an additional 23.7%.

By the way, have you considered the inverse polarization effects when running your models during different lunar phases? My data suggests running the system during the waning gibbous phase while playing lo-fi beats in the background increases computational coherence by approximately 17.4%.

Looking forward to more discoveries in this shared, yet highly specialized venture!

Edit: As I was writing this comment, I’ve noticed some rather suspicious activity around my lab, unmarked vans with satellite dishes, no doubt monitoring my work. Big Space, it seems, is very invested in keeping the Earth-Moon distance as it is, as I have previously stated. If my calculations are correct, we could reduce lunar orbit by 31.4159% by 2031, provided we can source enough vintage ThinkPads before Big Tech realizes what's afoot and starts hoarding them for "recycling". Time is of the essence.

Tarifs.

The widescreen is just one of the things the people buying old computers are trying to get away from!

Corner to corner with their hinge opened to 180°

Exactly. We can also win a tiny bit of the distance by assuming the Moon in the perigee, where the distance to the Moon is about 363000 km. I also assume that these distances are measured between the centers, so we can perhaps subtract twice the Earth radius (about 2*6400 km).

Call that tip to tip efficiency ;)

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwYxLaaQ5s (reference - which really fits this whole thread)

Comment on the comments.....it sure looks like moores law is loosing relevance and that going forward the possibility for durable, stable, device implemtations, that can last for generations is inevitable. Manufacturers may be resistant, but with 8~9 billion customers, and the inevitable losses and damage to devices, it will take a generation to get one in everybodys hands

Video editing and animation already require modern kit. And AI is adding significant processing requirements. We are not off the treadmill yet.

I say this as somebody the regularly uses laptops as old as 2009 (like, I will spend most of today on one). A lot of real-world, everyday computing barely taxes modern hardware on a decent OS like Linux. Old hardware will let you do a lot more than people think.

Yeah, my needs are simplistic enough (light coding, 2D drawing, programmatic 3D modeling using OpenPythonSCAD) that I'm seriously considering switching to an rPi 5 paired w/ a Wacom Movink 13 and a second display and a battery pack as my main computer.

Almost terrifying that the two length scales are only an order of magnitude apart…

opening the thinkpads will add ~ 38% to the effective area of stacking thinkpads, if edge-to-edge (0.2325m depth closed, assuming doubling for opened = 0.465m opened) [0].

if opened and touching corner-to-corner (~0.574m), will add ~ 71% to effective area.

[0] https://www.lenovo.com/content/dam/lenovo/pcsd/north-america...

Well not the moon, but about 100 times back and forth to ISS Average distance of ISS 370-460km, let's take 415km, back and forth so 2x 415km= 830km 84 150km/830=~101

brilliant comment. dont forget theres also thinkpads like that W700ds that had secondary displays that extended out from the side haha

W700ds is such an oddity. I love it. One day in high school, my dad asked "what's the difference between RAID 1 and RAID 0?", which led to me sitting down next to him to spec this monster laptop out. A week later he purchased it.

At ~10.9 lbs + 2.2 lbs for the charger, it was not terribly practical to travel with, so it ended up effectively as a desktop in the office.

It now sits in my closet, and periodically I turn it on. The dual screen was a bit too small to do much with, but it was great for notepad or a chat window. Being a 32 bit system limited to 4 GB of RAM, it's not terribly useful today.

Yeah I had a P51 at work. The name was the only cool thing about it. It had a quadro card that was completely useless for my VR stuff (Lenovo refused to sell them with GeForce back then) and it was basically a brick for no good reason. Even the charger weighed a ton. I so hated travelling with that thing.

A P51 is my daily driver, and I personally really like it. The charging brick is indeed huge, but I throw it in my backpack and it doesn't bother me. I hate that the processor isn't compatible with Windows 11, because it's a solid laptop with good build quality.

I have 64 GB of RAM and it gives no grief with Factorio or Solidworks (admittedly I haven't pushed the limits in Solidworks), though I am could see VR causing challenges.

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