Impress your friends with this vital geek trivia.
A single atom transistor #
Moore’s law – that the number of transistors placed on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years – has been steadily moving on since its inception in 1965. To continue on track, however, it’s been estimated that transistors will have to reach the single atom level by 2020.
Well, researchers at UNSW in Sydney have been doing their darndest to make that happen, and have now created an accurate method of placing individual phosphorus atoms between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates to form the necessary single-atom transistors.
Now, this isn’t the first single atom transistor created, but what sets it apart is the precision in the placing of the atom. This is very important for quantum computing, where many different single-atom transistors will have to be manufactured and linked together. Previously, researchers either had to search through many devices or tune multi-atom devices to isolate one that works.
Archive.org for books #
The founder of the Internet Archive (archive.org), Brewster Kahle, has a kooky idea to collect one copy of every book ever published – and has spent US$3 million to buy and operate a warehouse fit for the purpose.
The warehouse, in Richmond, California, is stuffed with shipping containers stacked 2x2 to hold the 10-million-book goal. It already holds 500,000 books, and with approximately 20,000 books donated to the “Physical Archive of the Internet Archive” project every week, it may just get there.
But why, with the trend toward digital, is this man looking the other way?
“You can never tell what is going to paint the portrait of a culture,” Kahle recently told the NY Times. “We must keep the past even as we’re inventing a new future. If the Library of Alexandria had made a copy of every book and sent it to India or China, we’d have the other works of Aristotle, the other plays of Euripides. One copy in one institution is not good enough.”
Additionally, the archive is focussing on saving films and music, too, so that later generations can enjoy Paul Jennings, Rolf Harrison, and Graeme Blundell in equal measure.
When cults collide: Lego Minecraft #
Ooooh man. If you’ve been too busy rearranging all your blocks – physical or digital – you may have missed this genius of a monetisation scheme. The original block-crafting sensation – Lego – has joined its magic to the latest block-crafting sensation – Minecraft.
What will happen when old meets new? Will a rift in the space-time continuum rip open, spilling creepers out into our world? Will previously addicted Minecrafters start building tiny furnaces in their homes? Or will Lego builders find the limited colour pallette and infinite scale too much to resist?
Who knows? One thing I do know, though, is that 480 thematically correct Minecraft pieces can be yours for £29.99.