#Moore's Law

[kokoasci]

finally starting my comic/manga thing,, this is taking 4000 years off my lifespan i have no idea how to do clean lineart

[nickhembery]

Weird tech thoughts

Two things are about to happen, or rather are happening very slowly and their impacts haven't been quite noticed yet.

The first is the end Moore's Law. This, if you're unfamiliar and don't want to bother opening a new tab and googling, is a theory from the 1950's that computing power will double every couple of years. Not just by making new computers, but the ability of those individual computers will go up with every generation. And this has idea has held true. Today, computer chips are so complex they are made by special machines in clean rooms in a process that involves bouncing light off mirrors to make wafer-thin chips. Oh, and the machines that make the chips are so priopriatry they're only made by one company based in Norway.

The reason that Moore's Law is ending is that we've hit the physical limit of how small computer chips can be. Any smaller than they are now and they become unreliable because there's not enough matter making up the chips to prevent electrons going missing and turning a 0 into a 1 or vice versa. So, the power available in our devices is going to plataeu without making the devices bigger.

The second thing that's going to happen/happening very slowly is a piece of legislation in the EU. This new law that has been passed but isn't yet in effect states that devices have to have replacable batteries. So smart phones can't have their batteries glued in place anymore.

These two events, when they colide, are going to cause a bit of a stir in the smartphone market. Needing to replace a phone due to battery degredation isn't going to be a thing anymore as you can just swap out the battery for a fresh one. And there won't be any point buying the latest model because it won't be any more powerful than your current one.

The lifecycles of phones are going to extend dramatically, meaning fewer sales and a much smaller production market.

It's likely that a few phone brands will die out as they don't see this shift coming and spend too much money building phones that just don't sell.

The brands that do stick around will probably pivot to concentrating on batteries, the same way that printer companies are really ink companies.

There will be a positive environmental impact, as there will be less production and waste, and the batteries mostly recycled.

Overall, this will be a good thing. I hope. Or maybe I haven't realised yet how some horrible capitalist is going to ruin it for everybody.

[szepkerekkocka]

In the late 80s, Lotus was trying very hard to figure out what to do next with their flagship spreadsheet and graphics product, Lotus 1-2-3. There were two obvious ideas: first, they could add more features. Word processing, say. This product was called Symphony. Another idea which seemed obvious was to make a 3-D spreadsheet. That became 1-2-3 version 3.0.

Both ideas ran head-first into a serious problem: the old DOS 640K memory limitation. IBM was starting to ship a few computers with 80286 chips, which could address more memory, but Lotus didn’t think there was a big enough market for software that needed a $10,000 computer to run. So they squeezed and squeezed. They spent 18 months cramming 1-2-3 for DOS into 640K, and eventually, after a lot of wasted time, had to give up the 3D feature to get it to fit. In the case of Symphony, they just chopped features left and right.

Neither strategy was right. By the time 123 3.0 was shipping, everybody had 80386s with 2M or 4M of RAM. And Symphony had an inadequate spreadsheet, an inadequate word processor, and some other inadequate bits.

via Joel on Software

Experience taught the software industry that it is usually more lucrative to skip optimization and rely on Moore's Law instead. Also less lucrative meant a sunk product line in the case of IBM Lotus 1-2-3 (the previous market leader). "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."

we should globally ban the introduction of more powerful computer hardware for 10-20 years, not as an AI safety thing (though we could frame it as that), but to force programmers to optimize their shit better

[clwhowrites]

Why the Future Doesn’t Look Like the Future

Elon Stink, when talking about his low polygon car, said his son asked him “why doesn’t the future look like the future?” This is a lie of course, a kid would not ask that question, a kid doesn’t think of the present as the future, that is what us olds do, and his children hate him. It is a good question though, it is 2024, this is the future to the past, so why doesn’t the present look like the future that people in the thought the future would look like? The answer isn’t that complicated, people keep getting the future wrong.

Future Cities: Homes & Living into the 21st Century, published Dec 31, 1978. At least it got the smart watch right.

That was a lie, everything is complicated. The problem starts with futurology. Futurology (not to be confused with artistic futurism) is the attempt to predict future of social and technological developments using past and current trends. Futurologists have a bad track record though, there is much that has been predicted that has yet to come and many technologies we have that few predicted. The problem is, these “futurologists” ignore the facts that those trends can unpredictably change, people find new ways of living and using technology that few predict, and some things are good enough the way they are.

If you were living in 1969 watching the Moon landings with no knowledge of what the real future would be like, the idea that we would have moon bases and civilian space flight by the year 2000 would seem to be a safe bet, but in this real future such things are still far away. Between 1903 and 1969 we went from barely getting off the ground to landing on the moon, in those sixty six years aerospace tech advanced by leaps and bounds. By the early 1980s the trend changed, aerospace advancements slowed. Getting off the ground is one thing, getting into space is something much harder and more expensive. Physical, practical, and economic limitations slowed the advancement of aerospace technology, it is just so hard to get into space that there is no way to make regularly going to the moon or actual civilian space flight economical or practical, and for the foreseeable future it will remain that way. Trends change, rapid development can slow, slow development can accelerate, and medium development can do either. In hindsight these changes make sense but until a change happens it can be, for the most part, unforeseeable.

The world is a chaotic place, I don’t mean disorderly, I mean chaos theory chaos. A single man can change the course of history, such as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that kicked off World War 1, which led to World War 2, the Cold War, etc, a seemingly stable empire can spontaneously collapse such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a nation that seems primed for revolution could not have one because the right trigger just didn’t happen. A small seemingly insignificant change can balloon causing massive often unpredictable changes, a single person can change the world even if the choice they made was too small to be documented.

Those are large scale examples, this also applies to smaller scales. How often are people on the brink of doing something for something else, often small, to come along and pull them back or push them over? Depending on what they were on the brink of doing that little something, that the individual might not even remember, could drastically change their lives for good or bad. And as said above one person can change the world. What if Hitler got into art school? What if Lennon had stepped off a corner a second sooner, got ran over and died? What if Lee Harvey Oswald, Gavrilo Princip, John Wilkes Booth, or James Earl Ray had chosen not to murder the people they did? What if the 20 July plot, Guy Fawkes, Khioniya Guseva or John Hinckley Jr. had succeeded? How would history have been different? Would history be different? We don’t know but just contemplating the possibilities tells us how easily things could have been very different. A little action may stop or push an individual into do something that could have massive results.

Top: Space Station V from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Bottom: the International Space Station. ISS souse: NASA.

Hard science fiction is science fiction that is meant to be plausible and the technology explained with real or plausible physics. For example 2001 A Space Odyssey, the space craft and space stations are all physically plausible. It is 2024 and we don’t have the space tech seen in 2001 A Space Odyssey but we have the personal computers, the internet, and smartphones which the film did not predict, nor did it predict the social changed we have had. Gattaca is another example, in 1997 this wouldn’t have been an implausible future but genetics turned out to be far more complicated than the film predicted and it failed to predict smartphones, the ubiquity of the internet, high definition screens and the social changed that have happened. It is here that you realize something, these futurologists are doing the same things as those who make hard science fiction. The makers of hard science fiction set in the future extrapolate social and technological trends into the future to create the future worlds of their settings and usually end up wrong. That is fine though, it is science fiction, fiction can get away with being inaccurate. The self proclaimed “futurologists” can’t (but still do). Futurology is science fiction, futurologists are just science fiction writers and enthusiasts who lack self awareness.

Top: the Deckard Sedan from Blade Runner (1982) (taken by zombieite), bottom: the Cyber Truck.

This goes beyond futurologists and hard science fiction. If you look at Musk’s cyber car lying about itself being a truck you’ll notice is look a lot like a car from Blade Runner. This isn’t a coincidence, Musk said “it is a car Blade Runner would drive” (and if you’ve seen Blade Runner or any movie at all, then you are looking for the nearest hard object to slam your head into to stop the pain). This isn’t limited to Mr. Stink, Mark Zuckerberg compared his meterverse to Ready Player One. Both Elmo Stink and Mark Big Rock Candy Mountain (Zuckerberg means “sugar mountain”, it is not easy to make fun of his name) not only both used horrible dystopias as inspiration (because they didn’t actually watch the movies), they both used movies that are soft science fiction. These movies are not meant to be plausible depictions of the future. B.O. and and the Teeth Ruiner are not the only people who look at soft science fiction and think that it is actually futuristic. So many lack the basic understanding of people and physics that they can’t tell hard and soft science fiction apart. Soft science fiction has more in common with fantasy than it does hard science fiction, in soft science fiction technology plays the same role as magic does in fantasy. Star Trek has replicators, transporters, and warp drive, these are basically magic but magic explained by technologically. Star Wars has light sabers hyperspace travel, blasters, and robot slaves and these are explained with technology. There is no scientific basis for how these work (except Data and Droids) but people still look at those and see them as the future.

People take science fiction, hard and soft, and base their idea of the future on it, but the futures imagined in science fiction, hard and soft, are not accurate depictions of the future. Asking “why doesn’t the future look like the future” is like watching Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones (high fantasy stories) then asking “why doesn’t the past looked like the past”. The past rarely looked like fantasy we create and the future will rarely look like the science fiction we create. Period peaces even get things wrong, even period peace that take place in 17 and 18 hundreds will have anachronisms. We can’t get real history right in our fiction how the hell could we ever get the future right? The future will never look like the future we envision because the future we envision will never be an accurate depiction of the future, the future we envision is fictional.

Did you like this? Hated but enjoyed getting angry at it? Than support my work at Ko-Fi or Subscribe Star and check out my other work and art at C.L. Who Writes

[thejaymo]

In short, the problem with the chip ban was drawing the line at 10 nm: that line was arbitrary given that the equipment needed to make 10 nm chips had already been shown to be capable of producing 7 nm chips; that SMIC managed to do just that isn’t a surprise, and, crucially, is not evidence that the chip ban was a failure.

[mrhorizons]

Wild how many transistors are just in things nowadays. The graphics card I recently ordered (after waffling for months), the AMD RX 6650 XT, has 11.1 billion transistors in it. Do you want to know how many transistors the first transistor radio, the Regency TR-1 released in 1954, had?

Four. Judging by its size, it's also about the same size as the graphics card.

That Moore's sure can Law.

[baconmancr]

Asimov, by contrast, was quite bullish on computers, but he thought that we'd naturally want to house them in humanoid robots. If you wanted to crunch some numbers, you'd ask your android to do it.

I love how much of a blindspot for the computer scifi authors had.

So in Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, humanity has developed instant interstellar travel, through what's effectively star gates. China has taken over Australia and "terraformed" it by building an inland sea, we've got weather control technology and stasis fields so that people with terminal diseases can be frozen in time until we figure out how to cure them. Most of the military is women, as changing population dynamics mean men are only like 1/5th of the population.

And at one point in this far off future, the protagonist decides to idly calculate how long it'd take to evacuate all of earth through the warp-gates, so he pulls out his slide-rule.

Instant travel to other planets? Of course. Restructuring an entire continent? Easy. Controlling the entire atmosphere? No problem. Slowing time itself to save people? Absolutely! The army is mostly women, because for some reason not as many men are being born? Yeah, why not!

But digital computers (WHICH ALREADY EXISTED AT THE TIME THIS NOVEL WAS WRITTEN) getting small and cheap enough that a high-schooler could own one and keep it in his backpack?

Well now you've wandered into the realms of fantasy. This is science fiction, we only talk about the possible futures, not silly fantasy stories with magic and dragons and such! No computer will ever be smaller than an a room, and even if you did manage to shrink one enough to be maybe the size of a washing machine, no high-schooler could afford one!

[bookanimeart]

the number of trans sisters on a microchip doubles about every two years

[biglisbonnews]

Gordon Moore, 1929-2023 Gordon Moore, the pioneering engineer, co-founder of Intel and eponymous author of the famous law observing that the number of components per integrated circuit doubles every two years, is dead at 94. Strictly speaking, Moore's observation referred to the doubling of transistors on a semiconductor. — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/03/26/gordon-moore-1929-2023.html

[arealtrashact]

If it wasn't for your Tumblr, I never would've watched The 10th (Tenth?) Kingdom. I thank you. 😃

You're welcome.

Now you too can live with the knowledge that we'll never get the planned sequel and, as a result, never see the abomination that these two managed to spawn.

I am haunted by the fact Simon Moore (writer) confirmed that their offspring would be 100% wolf.

[pycth]

If Lasko doesn’t invite Dear/Coworker to Friendsgiving..

[meraki-yao]

RWRB Movie Thoughts: Parents

Okay I'm back to writing long RWRB posts! With the sequel announcement, Nick calling Uma his mother-in-law, Uma calling Taylor and Nick her sons, and Mother's day just passing, here's a post dedicated to the cast of parents in RWRB:

So let's start with the family that's alright fully cast, the Claremont- Diaz family:

Aren't they gorgeous?

But I gotta say, the familial casting is spot-on: Taylor legitimately looks like he could be a genetic combination of Uma and Clifton. I suck at pointing out familial resemblance (and I'm saying this as a sketch student who spent the past two years drawing portraits, ha), but I feel like Taylor and Uma had similar eyes and maybe a similar nose? Either way they really look like they could be a family

And while Uma has also played Nick's mother in chambers, I feel like there's the resemblance is a lot less between those two?

Now onto the Fox Family:

We as a fandom, I feel like to a certain degree Casey included, all collectively decided that Jude Law is Arthur Fox, and if you look at it, Thomas Flynn (Philip) looks alarmingly similar to him

Also here's a photo of Jude Law with his two sons and his daughter, the vision is crystal clear

As for Catherine, there's much less of a consensus, but funnily enough, I feel like Julianne Moore, who played Nick's mother in Mary and George, and Ellie Bamber (Beatrice) look similar enough to be mother and daughter: similar lips and maybe eye shape?

That leaves Nick/Henry out, which, while symbolically fitting, genetically doesn't work 😂

Or maybe there's something there I'm not seeing? Idk, someone please do chip it

[mastersoftheair]

new stills for episode 5!

[inafieldofdaisies]

OC Inspiration | tags below the cut

Rules: Share your OCs and two characters from other media that influenced them the most.

Romy Brandt (Professionals)

Emily Thorne (Revenge)

Cassie Bedford (The InBetween)

Catherine Chandler (Beauty & the Beast)

Tagged by @voidika @thesingularityseries @shellibisshe @theelderhazelnut @rhettsabbott

@direwombat @impossible-rat-babies and @kyberinfinitygems

Tagging, @socially-awkward-skeleton @la-grosse-patate @strangefable @strafethesesinners @aceghosts

@derelictheretic @dumbassdep @josephslittledeputy @josephseedismyfather @captastra

@trench-rot @harmonyowl @cassietrn @purplehairsecretlair @cloudofbutterflies92

@simonxriley @justasmolbard @finding-comfort-in-rain @icecutioner @wrathfulrook

@g0dspeeed @carlosoliveiraa @simplegenius042 @raresvtm

@killyourrdarlingss @katsigian and anyone that would like to do the tag <3

[thedisdainfullysilentvisitor]

If I were to do a photomanip of iconic tv show women, I honestly can only think of like, four of them. And google showed me Mindy Lahiri being one and I do not agree with that (cause of her gloating about assaulting a cast member and threatening to fire a crew member for pointing it out to her.) Most of the rest of them I don't know anything about;

Brooke Davis,

Leslie Knope,

Hillary Banks,

Olivia Benson

Lucy Ricardo

Blair Waldorf (I did watch Gossip girl but I don't know that she's a positive female icon)

Really I consider a woman icon of a tv show being a powerful woman that lifts other women up and in their show, paves a way of goodness in example. So the ones I DO know are;

Dana Scully

Xena

Gabrielle (from Xena, although she wasn't listed)

Buffy

Olivia Pope (now, google reminded me of her)

I consider Elena Gilbert and Emma Swan to be as well.

And then Google said the tv personality of Mary Tyler Moore, Mary Richards. Does she fit that narrative?

[occvltswim]

The Holy Prophet ﷺ told the Moors :

❝ There will be new Moors that are going to come in with their eyes wide open, seeing and knowing, that are going to take you old Moors, seat you in the back, and carry out my law. ❞

— Oral Statements & Prophecies of Noble Drew Ali