Technology

[Farside]

By my bed stands a 1966 Hacker Sovereign radio, tuned to Radio Caroline, back when it was made it cost £42, today's equivalent price would be £800, despite the MW signal that old radio sounds superb & to my ears there is no discernible difference to the DAB radio downstairs.

A few years ago I picked up a couple of Hackers just for their quality of sound and construction, after being totally fed up with the sharp squawkiness that emanates from most portables. I've not been disappointed by the Hackers, still going strong many decades after manufacture.

 

[MattF]

It's already here mate

Drive through a town and see how many people are staring at there phones

I was thinking the same. They're already taking over, just not by force.

 

[Screwdriver]

I am truly amazed what I predict will be available in 30 years, compared to what was available 30 years ago: even at a linear rate will be inconceivable. let alone at the expected exponential rate.

Won't be 30 years. I would suggest only a very few years from now we will have a paradigm shift in computer power with the rise of quantum computing. We have taken relative baby steps so far with a mere 50-60 qbits. Once we get up to a few hundred, the world changes. Not necessarily for the better. I am already beginning to worry about forgetting the ridiculous number of passwords I need to somehow remember. Once "we" start to see 100-200qbit computers becoming commonplace, you won't need to worry about forgetting your password. Everyone will know them anyway.

Cryptography relies largely on either knowing the answer to a really difficult problem (like which two massive prime numbers were multiplied to get your number blah blah) OR calculating which massive prime factors your number was made from. At the moment, a classic computer could sit there working it out and it would take the lifetime of the universe to find the answer. Once quantum computers become sufficiently powerful, they will work it out in the blink of an eye.

Something like that anyway. A massive step change but the "trick" is in how the question is framed. They don't work like classical computers since <because of reasons> the answer is already "known" and you just have to filter it out by asking the right sort of question. I think there will be a similar problem for blockchain (and therefore bitcoin) cryptography once quantum computers reach a certain capacity. Nothing will be safe, cryptography in its current form simply won't work.

I like reading comparisons with the old systems like the Apollo 11 guidance system had less computing power than a modern USB C charger and a smart phone's capability would have cost over £1 million in the 70s. I was looking at a phone the other day with a deca core processor, 10 cores just to play Angry Birds at the same time as you Whatsapp your mates stupid videos

Yes a great "story" but not really true. The Apollo computers did not have the absolute numbers you may be thinking defines a "computer" like how much ram, how much disk space etc. but what those crazy boffins did is still TO THIS DAY an extraordinary feat of engineering and computer power. The true power of the Apollo computer system was in the REAL TIME input/output controllers which had the extraordinary ability to parallel process a vast number of input parameters to control an equally vast number of outputs.

Something perhaps equally impressive was the ability of the astronauts to be able to actually drive the thing. Theres a video out there somewhere which shows how the commands were input. Not with a keyboard but with a key pad - and 40 feet out from the moon it developed a fault - not really a fault per se but definitely a knickers in a twist moment for Neal.

 

[mrsbruce]

As a non geek, may I add to this thread.

I have just bought a new Ipad air, as my old one (nicknamed the “brick”), which I used as a youtube vid/audiobook ‘centre’ is stuck on ios 9.3 or something, and a swathe of apps have just stopped working on it.

My other Ipad air 3 won’t update past 12.something, so is now downgraded to the role the old Ipad played. I was not aware how slow the gen 3 had become, until I used the new one.

I have 2 laptops, which I always considered as reasonably powerful, until I inherited my ‘cast off’ desktop, only to find that they are steam driven in comparison. Oh, and an Acer tablet I use to play Prime films on the tv in my leather workshop.

I now have a cupboard containing 2 old Ipads, a couple of Life-books, a laptop, and a monitor. All useless to me and the world in general, yet, I still hold on to them.

Why?

Just to add, others have been junked. A geek friend of mine has kindly passed on to me many of these now out of date tech appliances, it’s not that I obsessively buy these things.

Point is, it’s seldom that these items die, it’s the systems just can’t handle ‘stuff’ any more.