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Comment by Filligree | Hacker News Reader

Nothing in there about how they'll do 1.5nm. That's understandable; it's a hard problem, and I imagine any solutions they've come up with will remain trade secrets for some time.

I've heard stories, though. Scanning-tunneling microscopes on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Massively parallel arrays of atomically precise probes, used to build CPUs atom by atom. Things you wouldn't believe.

I'm sure it's coming one day, but once you've gotten that far, how far away are you from outright nanofactories? Which are science fiction, and therefore can't happen.

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Brilliant.

But do androids dream of electric sheep?

Love the reference, but I'm sure all young phillistines that hang out in HN have missed it completely. :-( You have my upvote.

Time to die.

This is hardly an obscure reference... I think you underestimate the pop culture literacy of young programmers.

Shhh allow them their "programmers these days" elitism.

My 25 year old non-techie gf would have gotten that reference.

Blade runner is hardly an underground cult classic.

Blade Runner is different because of the attention it received due to the "Final Cut" version that came out in 2007. If it hadn't been for that, references to it would probably be a lot less recognizable with the younger crowd. Case in point: I recently made a "2001: A Space Odyssey" reference in front of a room full of 20-something programmers and not one person picked up on it. It wasn't even that obscure -- it was a picture of the monolith, one of the most recognizable images from the movie (and in science fiction in general). The people in the room generally just hadn't seen or even heard of (really all that is required to get the reference) the movie.

Good luck finding a copy of it with the original film noir-esq voiceover.

It's expensive, but not difficult to find. http://www.amazon.com/Runner-Five-Disc-Complete-Collectors-B... (The version without the voiceover is "the Director's Cut.")

Eh, what's that, you young whippersnapper? In my day we had to debug our difference engine with a flyswatter.

Is it a reference to blade runner ? I've guessed that from the following comments, but otherwise i wouldn't have known ( and i have seen the movie). I don't even know what part of the movie that comment makes reference to...

Edit : ok, found it. I remember that scene but nothing from the speech... Glad to know that was a cult moment.

Your username, which I assume is a re-spelling of xyzzy, is itself a cultural reference. I don't know how obscure.

I'm also 17.

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