Questions tagged [computers]
For questions regarding a device that can be programmed to carry out a set of certain set of tasks without external intervention.
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How powerful of a computer do I need to simulate and emulate a human brain?
The title is pretty self-explanatory. How powerful does a computer have to be before it has the hardware capability to simulate and emulate a human mind in real-time?
I'm leaving the question of the ...
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How would an aquatic race develop computers?
Following on from this question and assuming the race in question had developed the ability to create tools how would they approach the need for mass calculation.
Our early computers were used to ...
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A big primitive computer in orbit, very big, powerfull but old technologies from 80's, what is a potential fiat money value for its use? [closed]
This question about the economy of technological solution, there 800 of such on wb
Was looking for materials for the answer to the question
Semiconductor foundries are a thing of the past. Rebuild the ...
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How would Facebook Sysadmins prevent the summoning of Cthulhu?
So, I've got this idea for a short story. Some researchers find a forgotten manuscript hidden locked away in an ancient tomb. While they are working on it one of them pastes part of the text into a ...
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How long would it take to create a Windows 1.0 capable machine from complete scratch?
I've been thinking about this concept for a while and have not been able to figure out what could be a plausible answer. It seemed appropriate for my first question on this website.
Imagine an ...
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Just How Powerful Could a Mechanical Computer Be?
We've all heard about the 1822 Babbage Difference Engine and other mechanical computer ideas of the 19th century. Sadly, Babbage's computer and printer ideas were never implemented in our world†, and ...
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How long can an abandoned, semi-sheltered computer remain bootable?
Simply put, what's the expiration date of a computer? The reason I ask is for the sake of a society recovering from some sort of cataclysm and trying to reclaim lost technology. However, I could also ...
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If our universe was a simulation, what could a bug look like?
Let's assume, without revoking any of today's science, that the world is a simulation.
What would a bug look like?
I'm assuming that "the eiffel tower suddenly being bent at 45°" is rather unlikely, ...
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Can people upload their consciousnesses to computers?
The idea of uploading one's personality and consciousness to a computer is a semi-common science fiction trope. It has been suggested as a way to essential immortality.
In a story I'm working on, an ...
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How could I have modern computers without GUIs?
Even though text-based terminals still see specialty use cases, modern general-purpose computers generally run graphical software and have a graphical user interface (GUI). This includes everything ...
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What would be the impact of a modern programmer and laptop being dropped into World War II, possibly breaking Enigma?
I've always found the idea of intelligent every-man sent back in time using his knowledge of the future tech to realistically impact the past. The first time something like this came to my mind was ...
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How much memory is needed to record a human thought?
Mind-Machine interfacing is fairly common across the width and breadth of sci-fi, from Science-fantasy to Hard Science-Fiction. The idea of connecting a human mind to a computer system especially the ...
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Semiconductor foundries are a thing of the past. Rebuild the computer industry if you can
After the uncontested absorption of Hong Kong in 2020, China reasserted control over Formosa in 2022. In 2023 the Korean government reopened its war against its southern rebels, leading to their ...
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Water-based computer
We all know that electrons behave like flowing water, e.g. that electric currents behave like water currents. We also know that modern computers use electric currents to carry out mathematical and ...
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For how long would electricity and internet be avaliable if all but one human on Earth were gone?
In my story all humans except one vanished suddenly. This one received the gift of immortality and is now alone in this world.
Considering that the world is identical to ours. How much time does this ...
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Why would technology dictate graphical interfaces to be rare on spaceships?
This question differs from that question in that the other question is asking about a change in history while this question is looking for a change in the future.
In a near future setting I am ...
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How long can it really take to calculate a hyperspace jump?
It is a common trope in sci-fi that engaging a vessel's faster-than-light travel requires performing some complicated mathematics that takes a non-trivial amount of time.
I want to know to what extent ...
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Computer that lasts for centuries?
So, somewhere around one hundred years from now, a terrible - and unexpected - disaster strikes Earth, most of humanity dies off, yadda yadda yadda.
Luckily, secret-lab-dwelling scientists had ...
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How would we compile our code if all our binaries disappeared?
How would we compile our code if all the binaries in the world disappeared and we had only the source code? At first you might think “It’s all okay: I have my Roslyn code here”, but wait! It’s in C#! ...
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Justifying why mind uploading destroys the brain
So, in the relatively-far future, humans, in their endless quest for immortality, develop a form of mind uploading. This involves scanning the brain, cell by cell, and creating an electronic model of ...
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How To Eat the Moon
An ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) has come to the conclusion that we humans should be put in a simulation. It has also decided that it would rather not turn the Earth into computronium. ...
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What Technology is Needed to Virtually Simulate...Everything?
This is not my question.
In my story, I have a machine that you can connect to using electrodes. It allows one to enter a small virtual reality room where everything from gravity and electromagnetism, ...
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Effects of erasing 90% data on humanity
I am playing with idea of Earth being attacked by aliens. Such attack is aimed on our computers and reason of attack is to show to the Federation of planets that we are still weak to be contacted.
...
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Perfect logic implementation by computers
Those who have seen the movie, I Robot, will understand my question better.
Imagine we're in the future, where a quantum computer (read wikipedia for speeds of QCs) that uses 'perfect logic' controls ...
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Is It Possible for a Universally-Executable Virus to be Written in Binary?
In my world, there was a man that wrote a virus in binary code - which in turn infects every computer-based system in the world, as long as it is connected to the internet.
Is this even possible? ...
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Our brain is a very powerful signal processor, what's stopping us from creating computers to emulate [closed]
Our brain is a very powerful signal processor. It takes input (memories, senses, ...) and produces output (actions, thoughts, any decision). It only soaks in data and creates patterns to make decision ...
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Why would characters spend time answering imaginary questions to fictional hypotheticals?
I'm developing a simulation where characters, "users", are interacting over a virtual communication network. "Users" have the option to engage in any activity they want at any time, as long as the ...
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What would happen if an alien race gave us a computer capable of 2^256 calculations per second?
The security of public key cryptography relies on computers not being able to generate anywhere near 2256 guesses per any reasonable time length. The obvious implications of a computer this powerful ...
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Dangerous pending task in world managing A.I
I've had this idea for a short novel, at the intersection of the One thousand and one nights and the Multivac (& co) short stories from Asimov.
The idea is that there's some kind of super AI that ...
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Does my shipboard computer slow down as I approach light speed?
This question about time dilation got me thinking.
The speed of an electron through copper is a whole heckofa lot slower than the speed of light, but if I understand the limits of relativity ...
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"Life post-Singularity", or "How to survive without Instagram"
The Story
The year is 2027, singularity happened. A powerful AI (let's call it Eve) was created. In a matter of days, it escaped the control of its creators and hacked all the computers of the world. ...
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Is there a reason to believe that programming languages are going to converge?
On Earth today, even though most people speak some English, there is seemingly no reason to believe that future generation's main language will be the same in decades/centuries to come (i.e., we'll ...
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Could the law be implemented as a computer program?
The laws would be defined in code written in a programming language. Maybe it would be in two parts, the actual rules and then a library that could run them (like how a form validation library is ...
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What steps are necessary to read a Modern SSD in Medieval Europe?
So the main team of characters is traveling back in time from "modern day" to medieval Europe, arriving around the 1300s.
Assumptions: They Know they are going, they have space and time to prepare, ...
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What is eating, for software?
Background
A spaceship is crewed entirely by self-aware artificial intelligences, who have no permanent physical bodies; they are processes in a digital environment controlling the ship. This ship is ...
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Would Moore's Law apply to mechanical computers?
We know through the works of Babbage, Lovelace, et al. that mechanical computers (computers operating through gears, cogs, etc., and powered by steam or some other arbitrary non-electric power source) ...
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How to make this base-10 metric time concept work
I am trying to make a fake metric-time app to prank some friends when we take a trip to Canada soon and would like to know how I could make this work conceptually.
I already know that the time is ...
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What would a hand-powered medieval computer need to be feasible?
To clarify, I'm not talking about electronic computation. Instead, the question is as to what barriers would prevent a medieval society from building something in the vein of a Jacquard Loom, or ...
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Is Ternary an option for a tech future?
I have an idea for a story set in the near future, with a character who breaks onto the global scene with a breakthrough advance in technology that makes him billions.
My question is whether or not ...
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Stone Age Circuitry?
As a tangent to How "advanced" can a stone age society get?, is there a way that simple electronics could be created by filling channels cut into rock with some form of conductive material? ...
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Technology capable of reading brainwave commands
In sci-fi we have seen computers, high-tech armour and other technologies respond to a character speaking orders out loud- would an interface that reads a person's brainwaves- basically receiving and ...
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Non-religious reasons to have highly advanced physical simulations without any AI which can predict or mimic human behaviour, even algorithmically?
Note: This question was heavily rewritten for two reasons: Firstly, many of the answers were not exactly what I asked for; Secondly, both the original question and all the answers to it were from ...
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What would a society without cryptography look like?
In this world you have access to computers powerful enough to decipher messages as long as the method used to encrypt it has at least one theoretical weakness (those computers cannot defeat an ...
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Handwave Computer
In many alternate technological settings (steam/electro/diesel punks) there are powerful energy sources that allowed technology boom (like whale oil in Dishonored game series).
However handwaving ...
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How must computers/telecommunication deviate from reality for a retrofuturistic setting?
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I love the aesthetics of retrofuturistic settingsand I aim to build my own.
A mixture of a fantastical, Thundercats(2011),Outlaw Star x Star*Drive.
How yesterday saw tomorrow is quite fascinating ...
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How to Create and Use a Black Hole Computer Drive?
I have been working on a futuristic story where information can be stored and used with a black hole. This is a highly advanced human society that has accomplished interstellar space travel via both ...
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Building and powering a computer in a bronze age world
A character needs to build a computer out of raw materials in a bronze age.
He has a nano scale factory, so manufacturing chips and such from silicon is possible, but I'm not sure of the best way to ...
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A supercomputer around the sun
I wish to build a sort of Dyson swarm around the sun. Not to transmit energy, but to put supercomputers in each satellite so they can calculate spatial trajectories.
The main idea of the project is ...
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What would a society forbidding cryptography look like?
My world has a very peculiar low forbidding people from ciphering information. The penalty for such a thing is very very high. In this world everything should be seen and understood by anyone. It's a ...
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What would the world be like if computer software did not have any "undo" feature?
What would the world, and more specifically, productivity on modern computers, be like if Undo (a.k.a. Ctrl-Z) functionality has never been and will never be invented? To clarify: there is no ...
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