This says quite a lot about Elon Musk, I feel.

I'd counter his argument by saying its only been 40 years since pong, too short a time to be extrapolating too far into the future. I believe we are approaching a very real physical limit to transistor size, so I don't think its necessarily a given that in another 40 years we will have moved on the same distance. Basically for all we know this could be a momentary blip for a century or so.

but yeah, if you agree that we will continue to create increasingly sophisticated and powerful computers, and that humans continue to be for a little while, then ok, I think it is feasible that we could create a virtual world, which would make me quite terrified that our reality might suddenly BSOD.

Your video, Assembling Transistor Radios 1955, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Bastion has a wonderful soundtrack and getting it alongside with the game complements it so well. Music like that is so rare these days. I'm also looking forward to Transistor. The gameplay looks very interesting and I sure hope that it'll come out for PC at the same time as other platforms (PS3/4). Hopefully they won't showcase it too much. Last thing I need are games that're shown around a lot that end up generating too much hype.

I'm not about to go chasing religion's tail again, but the claim being made in this video is pretty freaking strong. It sounds remarkably similar to claims made by classical physicists...they didn't have any measurements that didn't fit within their framework, so obviously it was complete. Now, you have physical evidence of the accuracy of quantum mechanics in the computer you're currently using. Transistors could not work under classical physics.

In the next century or two, I'm pretty sure we'll have developed technology that requires fundamental changes in our knowledge of physics, and those technologies will provide physical evidence of the superiority of that new knowledge. Physics students of that time will laugh at claims like this, just as we do at those who made them centuries ago.

>> ^doogle:

Get the latest copy of Entertainment Weekly off the shelves, for only $29.99 with a 3 year subscription.
I'm going to buy one unlocked off eBay.
Disclaimer: This magazine under Airport XRay scanners may look like a bomb.


...I like to tape a transistor radio to my chest with the wire for the earpiece coming out from under my collar to my ear....TSA loves to ask me what the fuck, I tell em it's the top of the sixth, cubs ahead by two...

I agree with her though that the problem is diagnostics. I'm just more hopeful about other treatment paradigms in the presence of greater specificity of diagnosis. I might be wrong, I just think that too much is made out of our biochemical breakdowns of the nervous system. It's like caring what doping was put in the transistors in your computer. Yes, you'll find that particular doping agent all over the damn thing, but if the computer is broken, you might want to talk to a programmer not a chemist. It's the software, the particular pattern of ones and zeros (or in the brain analog, the wiring and action potentials) that are usually faulty. Not widespread deficiencies in the functioning of doping compounds.

Japan has totally "transistor radioed" jazz and funk. Anything with cool brass and drum beat, they took the music we take for granted and they're doing it better.

There is no telling what kind of yield they will get on these. The transistors require about 5% more area, and the previous transistor design has been perfected for many many many years.

The huge advantage is less leakage current, maybe less capacitance for switching.

It's interesting that this technique was sort of used for memory where they used the 3D well shape to get more capacitance in the same area.

Actually, the fire control rooms had more than 20 people all operating in a room the size of a small McDonald's dining area. I looked for pictures, but in the USS North Carolina, they have silhouettes of the operators huddles around the computers and it's mind-boggling how they got it all done. Ah, here it is: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_KuYLyRjiSR8/SfXkK4QJYEI/AAAAAAAAFbQ/egYSw3kQhfo/DSC_2338.JPG

>> ^spawnflagger:

Really fascinating videos, I watched all 7 parts. I wonder how much the whole computer weighed?
Seems like it would be a reliable device, as long as it's well greased, and the 3+ operators are well trained.
Of course nowadays a single chip smaller than a fingernail could achieve equal results with 0 operators, but an electronic computer in 1953 would have been much larger and much less reliable (transistor tubes tend to burn out) and required more energy than equivalent to feeding a few humans.

Really fascinating videos, I watched all 7 parts. I wonder how much the whole computer weighed?
Seems like it would be a reliable device, as long as it's well greased, and the 3+ operators are well trained.

Of course nowadays a single chip smaller than a fingernail could achieve equal results with 0 operators, but an electronic computer in 1953 would have been much larger and much less reliable (transistor tubes tend to burn out) and required more energy than equivalent to feeding a few humans.

I think that is grossly inaccurate. GPU manufacturing is currently at 40nm (32 is around the corner), a large chip like the geforce 480 and 580 run 3 billion transistors.

The chips in the video only have 29m (ultrasparc III I think), and I imagine they were using a much much larger fab process. Also the video seems old.

So nothing we have is fitting 3 billion transistors into a grain of anything yet.

1 billion tiny transistors in a grain of sand...

Good point, a hand-held radio is likely a good assumption but not possible.

Bell Laboratories demonstrated the first transistor on December 23, 1947.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio

Regency TR-1 — the first transistor radio (circa 1954)
http://people.msoe.edu/~reyer/regency/

This clip was filmed in 1928! (according to the post.)
So the next thing to ask would be, "Is the footage authentic?"



>> ^Edgeman2112:

Could it be a handheld radio and she be hard of hearing?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'sixtysymbols, quantum physics, scotch tape, nanocomputing' to 'nobel, chemistry, graphene, carbon, hexagon, nanocomputing, physics, transistor, quantum' - edited by BoneRemake