Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com
Speaker 1: and sitting next to me as usual as the shiny
Speaker 1: happy senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, and uh, I
Speaker 1: think you said you had something to start out today's
Speaker 1: podcast with. Oh yes, I have two things. The first
Speaker 1: is that I have to let our listeners know we
Speaker 1: have a guest producer for this podcast. Yes, Mr Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: who you can tell he's a guest producer because before
Speaker 1: he hit record he said take one. Matt is unaware
Speaker 1: of the fact that Chris and I always get it
Speaker 1: in the first take. So Matt, if you would just
Speaker 1: not even bother next time, Okay. But the second thing
Speaker 1: that we have to start off this podcast is listener.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been sabotaged here listen all of y'all.
Speaker 1: So this listener mayo comes from Ivan, and Ivan says, Hello,
Speaker 1: Jonathan and Chris. I'm a longtime listener and a first
Speaker 1: time writer, and I think it would be fun to
Speaker 1: do a podcast on quantum computers. You could answer questions
Speaker 1: such as, how do quantum computers handle algorithms differently than
Speaker 1: classical computers? Would I be able to put together my
Speaker 1: own quantum computer when our quantum computers expected in the
Speaker 1: consumer market. I'm guessing about a decade by Ivan. You
Speaker 1: know what, Ivan, Uh, your definition of fun and my
Speaker 1: definition of fun may not be the same thing, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna tackle it anyway, and we're actually gonna broaden
Speaker 1: it out. We're not just gonna hit quantum computers. We're
Speaker 1: going to hit computers of the future. Well, this, uh,
Speaker 1: this podcast is full of holograms and and funky colors
Speaker 1: and BP noises. Many both ends died to bring us
Speaker 1: this podcast? How many? Both of them? Yes? Both? All right?
Speaker 1: So I guess, um, I guess first we can talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about sort of the state of computers today.
Speaker 1: For Chris is just Chris is gone. Chris is gone.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna keep going with Chris to get
Speaker 1: it back under control. So classical computers, Uh, we're rapidly
Speaker 1: approaching the time when most well, I guess most is
Speaker 1: probably too too big a word. But some engineers believe
Speaker 1: we are reaching a critical point in classical computers where
Speaker 1: we won't be able to get much faster than what
Speaker 1: we have right now based upon, uh, the traditional method
Speaker 1: of building microprocessors. I'm guessing you're mentioning in your head
Speaker 1: at least, yes, I was gonna get to that. So
Speaker 1: Core's law, this is this all goes back to Moore's law.
Speaker 1: And if you've listened to our podcast on Moore's law,
Speaker 1: you know what we're talking about. If you haven't, right,
Speaker 1: if you haven't, I suggest going back and listening to it,
Speaker 1: because it was a pretty good one, as I recall.
Speaker 1: And uh, but in general, Moore's law it was this
Speaker 1: this sort of observation that Gordon Moore made back in
Speaker 1: the sixties. Yeah, he's the co founder of Intel. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it was nineteen sixties seven when he made
Speaker 1: this observation originally, and he observed that over the course
Speaker 1: of about well, the time varies depending on when you're
Speaker 1: looking at Moore's law, but we'll say eighteen months. But
Speaker 1: over the course of about eighteen months, you would see
Speaker 1: the number of transistors uh double on a square inch
Speaker 1: of silicon chip. You would be able to pack more
Speaker 1: transistors onto that chip. And there were a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons for that, but some of it was technological
Speaker 1: development where you start finding new ways of making smaller transistors.
Speaker 1: Part of it was economic because you could find cheaper
Speaker 1: ways to mass produce transistors on a on a smaller
Speaker 1: scale and UM as a result, every eighteen months or so,
Speaker 1: you would see microprocessors get twice as strong as they
Speaker 1: used to be because you've got twice the number of
Speaker 1: components on them. And UH. For years, people have been
Speaker 1: predicting the end of Moore's law, saying that that has
Speaker 1: to come to an end because how could we possibly
Speaker 1: get smaller than what we're looking at now, because right
Speaker 1: now we have transistors microprocessors out there with transistors that
Speaker 1: around the nanoscale they're just you know, a few dozen
Speaker 1: nanometers wide, and that's incredibly tiny, so tiny you can't
Speaker 1: see it with a light microscope. UM. But eventually we're
Speaker 1: going to hit a point where the traditional methods of
Speaker 1: making these microprocessors aren't going to work because we just
Speaker 1: can't make something that's small that works with electrons. So
Speaker 1: at the end of the traditional cycle, which some say
Speaker 1: is probably within a decade. Um, there are new ways
Speaker 1: of creating processors that will sort of get around that
Speaker 1: by making them three dimensional, basically stacking layers on top
Speaker 1: of one another, which is you know, cheating. Yeah, that's uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not really cheating, of course, I mean we're being
Speaker 1: a little facetious, but it's it would mean that we'd
Speaker 1: be sticking more with the class sical computer than branching
Speaker 1: out and trying something really really unusual and different. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are several different approaches that some engineers are
Speaker 1: looking at as alternatives to classical computers, things that, if
Speaker 1: they work out, could be far more powerful and far
Speaker 1: faster than anything we've used up to this point. And perhaps,
Speaker 1: I don't know, eventually power us to the stars where
Speaker 1: we can make a prime directive and not mess with
Speaker 1: other people. You know, we made it to the moon
Speaker 1: with less computing power than a common or sixty four,
Speaker 1: so you would think that, you know, with an Atari
Speaker 1: twenty we could at least make it to Mars. So um,
Speaker 1: moving on the uh. One of the first one we're
Speaker 1: going to tackle is the one that Ivan was asking
Speaker 1: us about, which was quantum computers. So now you're classical computer.
Speaker 1: It operates using operations on data, using a set of instructions,
Speaker 1: and everything gets broken down into bits by binary digits
Speaker 1: one or zero off exactly. So that's it. You've got
Speaker 1: tons and tons and tons of these bits put together
Speaker 1: to make these instructions. Um. You know, a computer might
Speaker 1: be running uh bits that are or or or figures
Speaker 1: that are sixty four bits long, which just doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a lot, But when you add up all the
Speaker 1: different combinations that those bits can have, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: And of course there that's not the upper limit at all.
Speaker 1: It's just an example. So quantum computers these are different
Speaker 1: because they don't use bits. They use quantum binary digits
Speaker 1: or cubits, which I thought they used to measure the
Speaker 1: arc but is it turns out there actually data. See
Speaker 1: I thought it was an awesome nineteen eighties arcade game
Speaker 1: where you jumped around on a pyramid. Oh, you're right,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I was going to say. So cubits, water, cubits, Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a special kind of bit really um quantum
Speaker 1: that we're gonna have to go into quantum theory. I
Speaker 1: really didn't want to have to go into quantum theory
Speaker 1: because that's more of a science topic than a computer topic.
Speaker 1: Also is likely to cause the staff to go get
Speaker 1: them up because my brain will explode. Yeah, I may
Speaker 1: have an aneurysm before I finish this this this next description.
Speaker 1: So quantum theory. Quantum theory is really looking at systems
Speaker 1: that are really, really, really small. We're talking on the
Speaker 1: sub atomic level um. You can also use it to
Speaker 1: describe some really really big systems too, but we won't
Speaker 1: get into that. So on this small, small level, things
Speaker 1: do not behave the way they do in our macro world.
Speaker 1: Um things that make sense to us because it's on
Speaker 1: a classical physics kind of a scheme. They don't that
Speaker 1: the rules don't apply on the quantum scheme. So to
Speaker 1: us it may seem like things are breaking the laws
Speaker 1: of physics. They're not. It's just they're following a different
Speaker 1: set of laws. One of these laws that will come
Speaker 1: into uh importance with the quantum peters is that you
Speaker 1: can have a quantum element inhabits several states at the
Speaker 1: same time. And I'm not talking like states like Idaho
Speaker 1: and Montana. I wasn't going to make that. I'm just
Speaker 1: I just was gonna head you off at the past
Speaker 1: just in case. So bits have two states zero and one,
Speaker 1: or on and off if you prefer. Now, a quantum
Speaker 1: bit can be both a zero and a one at
Speaker 1: the same time and all points in between. It can
Speaker 1: inhabit all of those states. Now, what does this mean
Speaker 1: from a computing standpoint, Well, that means that when you're
Speaker 1: making a calculation, instead of having to run one set
Speaker 1: of bits to do one calculation, and then a different
Speaker 1: set of bits to do a different calculation, you could
Speaker 1: set one set of cubits and do all possible calculations
Speaker 1: within that that you know realm of of bits that
Speaker 1: you're using, and it can handle a lot of calculations
Speaker 1: all at the same time instead of doing you know,
Speaker 1: one thing at a time so very quickly. For example,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the big possible uses of
Speaker 1: a quantum computer would be to decrypt information and find
Speaker 1: out what people are actually saying about you behind your back.
Speaker 1: Because cryptography, a lot of the cryptography we depend upon
Speaker 1: today um uses It uses factoring. And you take two
Speaker 1: really really big prime numbers, you multiply them together, you
Speaker 1: get another number. This becomes the basis of your cryptography
Speaker 1: and only by knowing the two prime numbers that were
Speaker 1: used to generate that big number, are you able to
Speaker 1: decrypt the information? Now, for a classical computer to find
Speaker 1: the two largest prime factors of a large number, I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking huge numbers here, it can take years,
Speaker 1: like millions of years in some cases for a classical
Speaker 1: computer to decrypt or to to find those two factors.
Speaker 1: A quantum computer, assuming that you have one that's powerful
Speaker 1: enough that can run cubits, could find it in a
Speaker 1: fraction of that time. So that would totally freak out.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that that's little, uh mind, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, which is when you get into quantum cryptography,
Speaker 1: which again is going beyond the realms of this podcast.
Speaker 1: I really really can't get into it because, honestly, people,
Speaker 1: I barely have a grasp on this concept. I've listened
Speaker 1: to so many professors and scientists talk about quantum computers
Speaker 1: quantum physics, and it seems like a common element is
Speaker 1: that they all will eventually admit to not really being
Speaker 1: able to grasp everything about quantum theory. This is pretty
Speaker 1: heavy stuff. Yeah, and like I said, a lot of
Speaker 1: it seems to contradict what we know. For example, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't normally say that an object can be multiple things
Speaker 1: all at the same time. Um, and there's another element
Speaker 1: to quantum computing that's kind of tricky. Why why don't
Speaker 1: we have quantum computers now? If we understand quantum computing,
Speaker 1: aren't there quantum computers out on the market now? There
Speaker 1: are quantum computers being worked on in labs um. There
Speaker 1: was one that was reportedly up to sixteen cubits a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. But why aren't we seeing them now? Well,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is because it's really hard to
Speaker 1: keep a quantum computer in working order. Um. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of different reasons for this. The elements tend
Speaker 1: to have a habit of interacting with things around their
Speaker 1: environment as opposed to each other. So then you get
Speaker 1: corrupt data because from what from what I understand, everything
Speaker 1: stays the way it is as long as nothing touches it.
Speaker 1: But since we're talking about very very tiny things and
Speaker 1: things into other things, you have to be able to
Speaker 1: isolate everything and not have it interact with anything other
Speaker 1: than what it's supposed to interact with. Otherwise your your
Speaker 1: results are not trustworthy. That seems problematic There's also the
Speaker 1: the the the old principle of if you observe it,
Speaker 1: you change the observed. You know this. This principle often
Speaker 1: mentioned as part of the whole shrot Injurer's cat problem.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with singers? A familiar with for those
Speaker 1: who are alive maybe until you open the box? Um
Speaker 1: so Schrodinger's cat. This is a classic quantum physics problem.
Speaker 1: Uh the The idea being that you have a cat
Speaker 1: shut in a box. There is a canister of poisonous
Speaker 1: gas that will release sometime between say, five minutes and
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes, and there's no way of predicting. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna it's gonna pop open randomly sometime between five
Speaker 1: and twenty five minutes. If you open up that box
Speaker 1: within twelve minutes and observe the cat, it will either
Speaker 1: be alive or dead. But before you open up the
Speaker 1: box and observe it, it is, according to this principle,
Speaker 1: both alive and dead at the same time. It only
Speaker 1: becomes one or the other for sure when you open
Speaker 1: it and observe it, you have changed it. The reason
Speaker 1: behind this is it gets really kind of complex. But
Speaker 1: if you were to try and observe quantum particles. Just
Speaker 1: by the act of observing them, by hitting them with
Speaker 1: a photon of light, you have changed the behavior of
Speaker 1: that quantum particle. Therefore, it is no longer doing what
Speaker 1: it used to do, and your measurement doesn't really matter anymore.
Speaker 1: You're not measuring what it was what it had been doing.
Speaker 1: You're measuring what it's doing right now after you've hit
Speaker 1: it with light. Quantum computers have a similar problem. You
Speaker 1: try and observe them. They've become classic computers, and you've
Speaker 1: just threw into your quantum computer. Alright, So you have
Speaker 1: to find a way to measure the results in such
Speaker 1: a way that does not disturb the cubits themselves. And
Speaker 1: also all your results are coming out in sort of
Speaker 1: a probability as opposed to this is definitely the answer.
Speaker 1: You might get seven percent chance that this is your answer.
Speaker 1: There's a twenty percent chance that this is your answer.
Speaker 1: There's a twelve percent chance that this is your answer.
Speaker 1: So not necessarily something you want when you want to
Speaker 1: find out what the temperature is outside. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say it sounds a lot like the computer models that
Speaker 1: the meteorologists use, because they say, well, on this computer
Speaker 1: I'm getting this, and that computer I'm getting that. So
Speaker 1: an answer to your other questions, ivan Um, I found
Speaker 1: an article in Nature that suggested that, well it was
Speaker 1: by it was quoting Andrew Stein of the University of
Speaker 1: Oxford in the UK um and uh, quantum computers may
Speaker 1: not really hit the consumer market. They may be more
Speaker 1: niche products because of the way they do computation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like we're going to be going to quantum
Speaker 1: Facebook and quantum Twitter to do our quantum email. Um.
Speaker 1: They're they're really sort of high high end computing needs.
Speaker 1: Probably not until we're eating all our meals in pill form, right,
Speaker 1: But around is when he expects to to see that happen,
Speaker 1: So we we should see them more prominently, assuming that
Speaker 1: engineers can get beyond the problems of you know, the
Speaker 1: more quantum logic gates you add to a computer, the
Speaker 1: more difficult it is to control the the cubits, and
Speaker 1: therefore the more difficult it is to get reliable results.
Speaker 1: You have to get past that problem first before you
Speaker 1: can actually build a quantum computer of really of of
Speaker 1: any meaningful power. Well, at least, quantum computing isn't what
Speaker 1: I originally thought it was, which was you know, taking
Speaker 1: your laptop into Sedan. Um. Wow. Wow. Anyhow, so high
Speaker 1: speed stuff has an opening. UM. The the the other
Speaker 1: part of your question. Can I build one? Now? I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're maybe if you're at the Stanford Research Institute
Speaker 1: or something, if you're if you're on one of these
Speaker 1: these projects that, yeah, you might be. You're not going
Speaker 1: to pick up the parts at best by that, No,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be one of those things that you
Speaker 1: order out of Popular Mechanics or anything like that. All right,
Speaker 1: so we can move on to two different futuristic computers.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the DNA computers. DNA computers, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so the ox i ribo nucleic acid computers they run
Speaker 1: on good old fashioned DNA. UM. This is another one
Speaker 1: of the those computers that could potentially replace classical computers,
Speaker 1: at least in research institutes, just like just like quantum
Speaker 1: computers could. UM. Again, you're talking about computers that can
Speaker 1: perform calculations on a parallel kind of scheme where they're
Speaker 1: they're running multiple applications all at the same time, multiple
Speaker 1: um uh computations. I guess you could say, UM and
Speaker 1: it runs on DNA, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: it really has going for it is that DNA is
Speaker 1: kind of cheap because there's a lot of it around.
Speaker 1: Turns out, what do you know, spitting this cup all right,
Speaker 1: we've got enough computing power for the next five years. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different teams that are working on DNA computers and they're
Speaker 1: really looking at molecular biology as a way of, uh
Speaker 1: of of advancing computer science to levels that we can
Speaker 1: only kind of dream of right now. Um, again, this
Speaker 1: is stuff that is kind of in the research phase.
Speaker 1: It's it's fairly recent. Um. The the original idea of
Speaker 1: the DNA computer, I would say probably dates back to
Speaker 1: early nineties, So quantum computers actually we're theaterrized back in
Speaker 1: the early eighties. But uh, we're still in that very
Speaker 1: early stage where people are looking at ways where they
Speaker 1: can harness d N A and use that as a
Speaker 1: coding mechanism for um for computational problems. Do you have
Speaker 1: anything to add to that? Not to that topic, I
Speaker 1: was going to bring up some uh, some computers at
Speaker 1: the very near future, and I was thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: based on some of the other topics we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the podcast. I think quantum or quantum computing may not
Speaker 1: be what we see on our desktop in two years,
Speaker 1: But what we see on our desktop in two years
Speaker 1: is probably going to be very small, like portable, and
Speaker 1: may not even have a hard drive in it because
Speaker 1: everything is moving to the web. I mean memory and uh,
Speaker 1: memory and storage space are basically you know, very very
Speaker 1: very cheap at this point, and I think that's just
Speaker 1: going to encourage more companies to offer cloud computing for
Speaker 1: storage and software as a service. Um, you're likely to
Speaker 1: see netbooks and tablets and uh, you know even you know,
Speaker 1: cell phone convergence devices. Hey, I use your favorite word, um,
Speaker 1: you know so and in the very near future, people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including a person sitting across me,
Speaker 1: think that thinks that desktops are going away. I think
Speaker 1: they might become the realm of enterprise, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: method you'll still see him. I thinking in school labs
Speaker 1: and and uh and corporate offices, right, I don't think.
Speaker 1: And apparently our producer thinks he's going to have a
Speaker 1: desktop computer for a very long time because he's miming it. Um.
Speaker 1: Either that or he's itching in some spot. Well, he
Speaker 1: uses a Mac and that doesn't count. Everyone knows about
Speaker 1: my anti max bias. Your so the the yeah, we
Speaker 1: should have like the text stuff drinking game. You drink
Speaker 1: every time Jonathan says he has an anti mac bias.
Speaker 1: Drink every time the word convergence comes up. Um. Cloud
Speaker 1: computing would be another one, you guys would be tanked
Speaker 1: by now. And then there's something else magnetic ram oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: things that are going to improve the day to day
Speaker 1: performance and portability of computing. Well, that was another one
Speaker 1: of the one of the elements of DNA computers is
Speaker 1: that DNA, of course, is incredibly tiny, and you can
Speaker 1: pack um enough DNA into a cubic centimeter of space
Speaker 1: too to get I think it's something like something ridiculous
Speaker 1: like ten terra flops of of processing speed, which is
Speaker 1: pretty freaking fast. Um it's very powerful computer, especially when
Speaker 1: you consider that's one cubic centimeter. That's not necessarily all
Speaker 1: that you would have. UM. I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about one other kind of possible future computer, optical computers
Speaker 1: or photonic computers. Yeah. These are computers that instead of
Speaker 1: using electrons as uh, the method of conveying information. That's
Speaker 1: the way classical computers do convey information. If you weren't aware, Um,
Speaker 1: it's a hole through electrons. It's there. Aren't actually hamsters
Speaker 1: running around inside your computer, no matter how old it
Speaker 1: might be. I mean, unless you turn your computer into
Speaker 1: a hamster farm, which I guess you could do. No.
Speaker 1: Photonic computers use light instead of electrons, so little beams
Speaker 1: of light to turn on and off. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like bits. You've got two different states. You've
Speaker 1: got on and you've got off. And of course light
Speaker 1: travels pretty darn fast. In fact, it travels faster than
Speaker 1: just about anything else we can think of. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about a high speed computing system that could potentially
Speaker 1: leave classical computers behind. Again, you have to be able
Speaker 1: to build a an optical core, an optical CPU at
Speaker 1: the center of this computer. Um. I've read about a
Speaker 1: few different experiments that have tried to do this. Most
Speaker 1: of them involve um cooling the CPU to a temperature
Speaker 1: not that much warmer than absolute zero, which is kind
Speaker 1: of impractical for the home. It seems reasonably impractical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're probably fairly expensive. Yes, when you're when you're talking
Speaker 1: about maybe a degree or two above the temperature of
Speaker 1: deep space. That's not necessarily something most of us can
Speaker 1: achieve nor would want in our home. A honey, where
Speaker 1: do we put the liquid nitrogen? Right? Actually, you probably
Speaker 1: need liquid helium. I think nitrogen would only get you
Speaker 1: down to yeah, because liquid helium would be what they
Speaker 1: use over at the Large Hadron Collider. But yeah, optical computers.
Speaker 1: That could be another another future computer that will replace
Speaker 1: classical computers, at least in the research firm area. So again,
Speaker 1: not necessarily something that we're gonna see on our desktop
Speaker 1: at home we're in our Xbox games or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but it would be it would be I got you know,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, man, it takes almost point zero zero
Speaker 1: zero eight seconds for Firefox to load. I can't believe
Speaker 1: how slow it is. You know, we'd still complain of
Speaker 1: it would be instantaneous to us, but it would be
Speaker 1: just slightly less instantaneous than it should be. So uh well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's those were the three biggies that I
Speaker 1: wanted to hit. Were um, quantum, DNA, and optical. Uh
Speaker 1: did you have anything else? Add? Not really awesome? Then
Speaker 1: we can wrap this up and of course, We've already
Speaker 1: done our listener mail and I'm not going to torture
Speaker 1: you with a second one. So everyone, if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more, we have articles at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com about all this sort of stuff, including quantum computers,
Speaker 1: quantum cryptography, DNA computers. So if you really want to
Speaker 1: learn more about the future of computing, visit the website.
Speaker 1: We go into a lot more detail there and linked
Speaker 1: to other really good resources as you can, And if
Speaker 1: you really want to explore this and learn more, I
Speaker 1: highly recommended. The topics are so deep and and dense
Speaker 1: it's hard to really tackle them in the podcast format,
Speaker 1: especially since we don't have any real visual aids that
Speaker 1: we can throw in there either. So I do recommend
Speaker 1: visiting the website if you're interested. And as for us, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Actually didn't mention the address, Oh the email address, all right,
Speaker 1: I need to go back and do that. Then, yeah,
Speaker 1: what No, I can't work like this. I can't work
Speaker 1: like oh fine, We're just going and take one alright, alright, listen,
Speaker 1: everybody listen. That was just to fake out all the
Speaker 1: people who aren't really tech stuff fans. So all you
Speaker 1: real tech stuff fans who have stuck around, you didn't
Speaker 1: hit stop on your iPods. You're awesome. You're way better
Speaker 1: than those losers who already stopped the podcast. So if
Speaker 1: you want to tell us how awesome you are, you
Speaker 1: can do it by emailing us, and our email address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you what I just wanted to
Speaker 1: point out if you've got we sometimes we get technical problems.
Speaker 1: People write us in with with actual tech support questions
Speaker 1: rather than how do quantum computers work, which is a
Speaker 1: much easier question to answer than what the heck did
Speaker 1: I do to my hard drive? If you actually have
Speaker 1: a technical support problem, you should probably get in touch
Speaker 1: with somebody who can help you with that in a
Speaker 1: more expedient fashion than we can. Also, we may or
Speaker 1: may not know what's going on with your particular system,
Speaker 1: so I would advise you know, finding your brother or
Speaker 1: person who normally does your tech support and get them
Speaker 1: to help with those kinds of questions, and we'll handle
Speaker 1: the how stuff works type of questions. Now, I should
Speaker 1: point out that all you awesome people who stuck around,
Speaker 1: clearly you wouldn't have a problem to write down about
Speaker 1: in the first place. It's all those people earlier on
Speaker 1: who would be writing in. But of course they wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it anyway, because I didn't say that even them,
Speaker 1: did I. All right, well, then that was a super command.
Speaker 1: Take that, Fred Levin. Alright, then I'm gonna go and
Speaker 1: take a nap now, And for the rest of you guys,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and be sure to check out the new
Speaker 1: tech stuff blog now on the house Stuff Works homepage.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you