Unintended consequences
Saturday, June 9, 2018 at 8:05PM As a person working very hard to bring a new better memory to market.. lower power, higher density at lower cost etc. just to name a few attributes, I delude myself into thinking that this memory will make the world a better place.
You can go directly alter bytes in this memory so there is not a lot of copying back and forth happening.. People will save power and if you take every pico joule saved and multiply it by a jillion copies, those things add up to Giga Watts in no time. Used to think that all those twitter retweets and facebook shares are melting icebergs that this memory is going to change.
Then again, Enrico Fermi or Einstein did not think Hiroshima when they did the work on nuclear fission. Hiroshima happened anyways.
Why bring all this up?
A little more than a month ago saw this mami (aunty) on the flight from India to US. She was looking for a charger desperately.. think "Eastwood as Blondie crawling on the desert floor looking for a drop of water" desperate! Finally she found one..
Turns out you can download old Tamil serial episodes on an iPad and binge watch them at airports. Not sure what service they use or if Netflix now has megaserials like Chitti and all 1890 episodes of Metti oli! (not kidding.. that serial actually had 1890 episodes and my wife and MIL probably watched every episode).
There was a time when Jr. would not eat her dinner unless she heard the title song of Metti oli. It was so pavlovian that I actually recorded that song on a VHS tape and took it to Australia with us when she was 20 months old. We had to play it there to be able to feed her! (these were pre-Youtube days.. now you can enjoy it by clicking this link... I am sure when Jr. watches this after almost 13-14 years, she will turn into the Winter Soldier)
To think that all my hard work bringing in a new memory for the people is going to enable replays of Delhi Kumar walking down the street to his house, while pausing a few times to try and remember what he forgot for a full 30 minute episode is heartbreaking to say the least.
Delhi Kumar alone is responsible for a few glaciers disappearing, leave alone those poor polar bears desperately trying to find that next floating piece of ice to survive.
By that token Radhika Sarathkumar has single handedly raised ocean levels by a centimeter over just a decade!
Apparently there is an age you cross, when these Tamil mega serials (Soap operas) start appealing to you, per mom, MIL, and dad. My FIL seems to have skipped this age.
Hoping that someone euthanises me if I succumb to watching Tamil serials.. at any age!