Things to read, or listen to, that aren’t politically motivated.

[Mr. Dazzle]

How does the on and off become Doom though?

[ZRX61]

Couple of books:

Equations Of Motion by William F Milliken (don't panic, it's not a math book)

Memoirs Of A Hack Mechanic by Rob Siegel. The first 30 pages will have you convinced he lives in your head.

[Count Steer]

If you wanna really invest some time in a rabbit hole, watch Ben Eater's series on building an entire computer on breadboards. He starts from the most basic 'this is a computer clock' and builds every single component from scratch.

It's something daft like 45 hours total but I found it super satisfying I've asked so many IT experts how a computer actually works and realised none of them actually have a clue. Their understanding starts with 'well it has an OS' which is about 5 layers above the "how does it actually work?" level I wanted to know.

A computer is a very large number of very small on/off switches, associated power supply and cooling, from a hardware perspective they're not as complicated as a Strowger Telephone Exchange, though God knows how big a Strowger exchange would have to be to achieve the same computing power as a low end smart phone.

I'd never heard of the Strowger Exchange until it cropped up as the theme in a crossword recently. It was quite complicated.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I think I'd probably argue a micro chip is more complicated than a Strowger Exchange though. You don't need a £5bn factory and a room 100 times cleaner than an operating theatre to make the latter.

I bet there are YouTube videos on both though

[Count Steer]

The Strowger story is worth a read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch

[Mr. Dazzle]

It's worth falling down the rabbit hole and reading about how telephone exchanges, oscilloscopes, the post office, WW2 and airborne radar all coalesced into modern electronics

[Cousin Jack]

Strowger exchanges are quite fascinating (and complicated)

The basic switches (uniselector or 2- motion switch) are just the start, they can be configured as selectors (looking for a free outlet to the next stage) or finders (looking for a calling line). They vary in mechanical design too, with ( in the Uk) pre-2000 type (several
manufacturers, all slightly different), 2000 type ( standardised design) and 4000 type (also standard, but with screw adjustments rather than bending adjustment in the 2000 type and a very different release mechanism using a separate magnet to clear it down. Then there is the system design (UAX 5, 7, 12, 13 & 14 and SAX too for small and medium exchanges) Non-Dirrctor for most larger towns, and Director for big cities. Not to mention Satellite working, with Satellite Repeaters, Descriminating Satellite Repeaters, and Group Selector Satellites.

I can bore for England on Strowger stuff!

[Ian]

Oh god no I've stumbled into a time warp back to being a TTA

[Cousin Jack]

Oh god no I've stumbled into a time warp back to being a TTA

TTA or YiT? I was the last of the Y2YC.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I can bore for England on Strowger stuff!

Maybe you should write a book for fingerpuk.

[Ian]

Oh god no I've stumbled into a time warp back to being a TTA

TTA or YiT? I was the last of the Y2YC.

TTA, started in 79 then T2A in a repeater station until 1991

[Cousin Jack]

Oh god no I've stumbled into a time warp back to being a TTA

TTA or YiT? I was the last of the Y2YC.

TTA, started in 79 then T2A in a repeater station until 1991

Ah, a youngsters then.

I joined as a YiT in 1963, T2A in 1965, TOinT 1966 and passed the Limited Competition to AEE in 1968. Took Voluntary Redundancy in 1995 as a Level 3.

[demographic]

Use Libby app and read some of the New Scientist collection. Some top stuff to read, learn from and be amazed at. It's probably been mentioned, but in case not: Veritasium on YouTube.

Freakanomics MD is also a good podcast.

[Mussels]

How does the on and off become Doom though?

Knowing how simple computers are at the lowest level also makes you realise how incredibly simple all maths is, people make it far more complicated than it needs to be. Work from there up to realise how utterly unintelligent AI is.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Trouble is, when you follow that to the conclusion you realise our brains work the same way