About four years ago, a retired professor emeritus from the University of Pittsburgh named Bernhardt Lieberman was doing research on the hacker subculture. He interviewed a number of people in Pittsburgh (myself included at the time), and in 2004 attended the HOPE conference to interview another group of attendees about their lives, practices, education, and interests (computers and hacking aside).
I kept in touch with Bernhardt up until I left Pittsburgh in 2005, at which time I didn't have a net.connection for a couple of months. Life being what it is, I didn't actually get around to contacting him …
And the hits just keep on coming.. researchers at UCLA have developed a memory circuit that can store 20KB of data in a physical space the size of a white blood cell. Compared to current random-access memory circuits of 2007, this new circuit has a data density of 100 gigabits per square centimeter, which is a new world record, if nothing else. That single memory cell can store the complete text of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America and still have some room left over. Unfortunately, this is just a lab toy, and isn't anywhere near …
