9 ms·
Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics (2000)
- amelius 10mo agoI don't see much connection here between miss BS and semiconductor physics. It's just a physics book that happens to have pictures of the popstar in it.
- conception 10mo agoIt’s a 25 year old joke. It was a simpler time.
- aeve890 10mo agoBut what's the joke though?
- artyom 10mo agoSimpler time, simpler jokes.
- twodave 10mo agoIt’s called absurdity. It’s funny because it’s obviously not true, and also funny because of the undertones that it’s a clever way to get horny teenagers to study physics who really just want to see the photos.
- makeitdouble 10mo agoIt would be absurd if pop stars by defintion could not explain semiconductor physics. Like how a snake wearing boots is absurd.
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoDr. Brian May comes to mind... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Scientific_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Scientific_career Maybe not so absurd. Also, Todd Rundgren used to be a registered Apple developer. We'd see him moseying around the WWDC, every year.
- twodave 10mo agoYou are being pedantic, but I’ll play along. Absurd has multiple meanings. It can mean nonsensical, but it can also mean utterly ridiculous or silly. Under those other meanings I believe the pop-star-physics-professor still qualifies.
- makeitdouble 10mo agoIt sounds pedantic, but "absurd" is fundamentally different from "rare". A lot of baggage comes from flagging something as absurd, instead of just unexpected or uncommon. Winning the lottery isn't absurd, having 3 pairs of some chromosome isn't either, and being a successful pop singer with an academic background isn't either, it's just rare.
- twodave 10mo agoIt IS pedantic, because we are talking not of pop stars in general, but Britney Spears specifically.
- netdevphoenix 10mo agoVery heteronormative even for 2000
- jchw 10mo agoIt's a non-sequitur.
- toast0 10mo agoEveryone knows Alanis Morissette is a master electrician. That's why she has one hand in her pocket, while the other is probing a circuit. Anyway, it's kind of Ironic [1] that the dude from Queen is an astrophysicist, and Britney Spears is writing Semiconductor Physics tutorials. Something something music and math. [1] Sorry
- sunrunner 10mo ago> master electrician It’s true, she’s high but she’s grounded (not sorry).
- rybosome 10mo agoOthers have pointed it out, but it’s the juxtaposition of the fact that she’s definitely not an expert in this subject with a lesson in the subject. There’s some subtle bits to the humor depending on how charitable you’re feeling. It might just be absurdist, as in “Blackbeard’s guide to astrobiology”, or it may be more mean spirited and playing on a belief that she is not intelligent. TL;DR - the joke formula is just: subject=… person_not_familiar_with_subject=… joke=“${person_not_familiar_with_subject}’s guide to {subject}“ And the amount of implied cruelty in the comparison is variable.
- amelius 10mo agoI guess we can now use an LLM to produce a new absurdist book every day.
- stinkbeetle 10mo ago"I don't get it."
- dymk 10mo agoSame as “the narwhal bacons at midnight” or 67.
- chasd00 10mo agoAt the time she was ground zero for all of pop culture and pretty much every single man’s crush. When that website came out it was funny because we were all looking at pictures of Britney anyway so may as well learn some physics at the same time. Btw, she really went downhill once she fell out of popularity. I think she has a life put back together finally but she got a raw deal. I’m rooting for her.
- coqadoodle 10mo agoRoutergod.com was one of the greats, good times.
- PlunderBunny 10mo agoAn attempt was made in the section "Band Structure and Effective Mass" of the chapter "Basic Semiconductor Physics" to tie the two disparate subjects together.
- bjourne 10mo agoI recently watched A Fish Called Wanda because some old folks said it is a great movie. It is not. It is shit.
- davidham 10mo agoI’m team old folks on this, youngun
- commandlinefan 10mo agoThere was a meme that was floating around about the Hawk-Tuah girl analyzing differential equations (IIRC) just last year. I fell for it, though. My son had to explain to me that it was fake.
- sheepscreek 10mo agoAutistic me wanted to half believe it. You don’t get any cookies for bursting my bubble :(
- rester324 10mo agoInteresting, I can see a clear connection between the two subjects on this image: https://britneyspears.ac/physics/basics/images/britneycbvb.jpg https://britneyspears.ac/physics/basics/images/britneycbvb.j... This can't be coincidence!
- Dilettante_ 10mo agoNon-sequitur humor was the style at the time.
- shermantanktop 10mo agoA joke is like a soap bubble. The act of explaining a joke pops it and reveals it to have no substance. The essence of humor is simply surprise. Once the surprise is gone, or if it never was surprising, it seems flat or silly. Some people enjoy humor with deeper meaning, and explaining that meaning might be illuminating. But that’s lipstick on a duck.
- stavros 10mo agoIf I share the OP's objections, which I think I do, the problem isn't with the joke attempt itself, it's with the execution. The joke isn't tied in to the content at all, it's literally just the title, and nothing else. If the author had tied song references into the text, for example, that would make it a much better execution.
- shermantanktop 10mo agoAgree, this is definitely Penguin of Doom level humor. But the mechanic is the same as most comedy - the tickle of surprise from two ideas coming together.
- philipwhiuk 10mo agoAuthor briefly/currently worked in SEO as a result.
- gnabgib 10mo ago(2000) Popular in: 2023 (37 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35763307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35763307 2021 (168 points, 112 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626532 2016 (94 points, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872658
- andy99 10mo agoCoincidentally I was just looking for this picture yesterday https://britneyspears.ac/wallpaper/bswp005_800x600.htm https://britneyspears.ac/wallpaper/bswp005_800x600.htm (the one absent Britney, but this did cross my mind) I remember this, presumably from slashdot 20,years ago
- opan 10mo agoThe picture on the front page reminds me of the Why's Poignant guide to Ruby, specifically it had a picture of a baby shouting some Ruby code.
- JSR_FDED 10mo agoI was crushed when I saw the site needed Flash.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoAnd also Java in the browser for the (presumed) awesome chat, provided the surely still amazing freejavachat.com
- AdmiralAsshat 10mo agoMeanwhile Dolph Lundgren has an actual MA in Chemical Engineering. It's a pity we can't get him to do something like this in earnest to teach engineering concepts.
- leeoniya 10mo agoand Mayim Bialik holds a neuroscience PhD
- master_crab 10mo agoAnd sadly a bit of a loon about vaccines and supplements.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- skopje 10mo agoMA is master of art according to google. MSc seems right.
- dmd 10mo agoMany (most, in the US; don't know about Sweden or Australia) institutions don't draw a distinction between the two and award MA regardless.
- skopje 10mo agodid not know!
- arethuza 10mo agoSome universities simply give you an MA a few years after getting a BA without you having to do anything additional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Oxford,_Cambridge,_and_Dublin) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Oxford,_Cambri...
- AlbertoGP 10mo agoAround the time this website was made, I was building an application for a big company in Spain that was to run as a Java applet and required the code to be signed. They did not yet have their own certificates so I had to make my own CA during testing and sign the code, and I wanted to make sure that they did not forget to switch to their certificates later, so instead of signing the code with my name which some bureaucrat might decide to not bother changing, the code was signed by Britney Spears. They noticed it, got the joke and made sure to switch certificates for the release. Everything went well thanks to Britney.
- leeoniya 10mo agooh, good. no longer will i have to settle for learning Quantum Physics from Kim Kardashian [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/6a5mf7/whats_less_believable_that_kim_kardashian_would/ https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/6a5mf7/whats_less_be...
- sunrunner 10mo agoThere’s also Zara Dar and Chang Hsu’s PornHub/OnlyFans pages for maths and STEM subjects, if we’re going down this rabbit hole…
- chris_wot 10mo agoThere used to be a series of network posts by the "Router God". They went missing, and someone resurrected a bunch of them. Sadly, the article "7 of 9 on OSPF" has left us for good.
- lamontcg 10mo agoThey seem to be in the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20100528044501/http://www.routergod.com/sevenofnine https://web.archive.org/web/20100528044501/http://www.router... https://web.archive.org/web/20100328035939/http://routergod.com/sevenofnine/ospf_part_2.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100328035939/http://routergod.... Along with Gunney Sgt Hartmann: https://web.archive.org/web/20100508022721/http://www.routergod.com/ccnabootcamp https://web.archive.org/web/20100508022721/http://www.router...
- modeless 10mo agoFrom the same era of the internet I recall a site called the "Large Hardon Collider" making fun of the very common subtle typo. IIRC it had a light blue background and crude (in more ways than one) pencil diagrams. I can't find it now and I wonder if anyone else remembers it?
- userbinator 10mo agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20170814124609/http://largehardoncollider.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170814124609/http://largehardo... (NSFW, obviously.)
- modeless 10mo agoHa, thanks, I should have remembered the URL
- exabrial 10mo agoThe old Internet was so fricken cool before we allowed monopolies.
- bigfishrunning 10mo agoNothing stops people from continuing to put up fun stuff like this; not everything has to be on X or Facebook
- neilv 10mo agoBefore anyone has a lighthearted Sunday night moment of humor sharing: you probably don't want to link to this site in your employer's Slack watercooler channel. Different people might deconstruct the humor of the site's gimmick different ways. Some innocuous, some not. But no need to do any literary analysis and critical thinking this time, because... Today most people will immediately realize that something like the "Booble" search form on that page is probably a bad idea for a welcoming modern work environment. (Related: for the same less-welcoming reason, it's maybe not a great idea on HN.)
- kopirgan 10mo agoNot sure if this is a tribute to great women ( like Lamarr) that were entertainers and brilliant in science or a parody of them!
- varenc 10mo agoLove the old internet feel to the site. You can see it's been basically unchanged for 25 years! Here's the 2001 snapshot from the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20010202180000/https://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010202180000/https://britneysp... Just keeping any site functional and up for so long is impressive by itself.
- userbinator 10mo agoIt's only impressive if you've become accustomed to the unfortunate trend of forced obsolescence and the desire of many to justify useless recurring "maintenance" busywork. Basic HTML and CSS will always work.
- adastra22 10mo agoMaintaining a working server over that time is the challenge.
- prmoustache 10mo agoWhat makes you think the owner of this site maintain a server? A quick look at the ip show that it is owned by hostgator.com, a web hosting company. The key here is renting the domain indefinitely and moving to a new web hosting company if one goes bust.
- varenc 10mo agoI think the challenge is also caring enough to keep paying money to host a site for no clear purpose or gain. And moving hosting providers since guessing hostgator didn't exist back then. Based on the modified times on some assets on the site I'd guess it was last moved in Oct 2015. So glad they kept it up!
- userbinator 10mo agoHostGator has been around for a long time too - since 2002.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- caliweed 10mo ago"In the last section, we looked at the p-n junction. More efficient recombination of electron-hole pairs can be acheived by incorporation of a thin layer of semiconductor material, either p or n type semiconductor with a smaller energy gap than the cladding layers, to form a double heterostructure. (More on this in the future). As the active layer thickness in a double heterostructure becomes close to the De-Broglie wavelength (about 10nm for semiconductor laser devices) quantum effects become apparent." Are you playing with my heart?
- DeathArrow 10mo agoThere must be Mia Khalifa's Guide to Rocket Science somewhere on the Internet.
- markatkinson 10mo agoDon't go to the chat rooms...
- captn3m0 10mo agoI thought .ac was the Academic TLD, and was wondering how this domain was registered, but it is just a ccTLD (2 letter, so has to be). .ac just happens to be the academic second level TLD of choice for many countries. Apparently, you could have gotten a .edu before 2001 without being an accredited institution in the US.
- wink 10mo agoThere seems to be one odd case where I know zero details, but the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_University_of_Applied_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_University_of_Applied_S... - usually knows as "FH München" or "FHM" only rebranded to "HM" in 2007 (and then again somewhat in 2011) and yet they own hm.edu and they did own fhm.edu before that: https://web.archive.org/web/20070510152550/http://www.fhm.edu/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070510152550/http://www.fhm.ed...
- fnands 10mo agoBlast from the past. I remember landing on this site when studying for my undergrad solid state physics exams.
- eloeffler 10mo agoI'm mildly surprised there has been no mention of (Taylor) SwiftOnSecurity here yet :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SwiftOnSecurity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SwiftOnSecurity
- brabel 10mo agoDoesn’t that constitute impersonation, or is it allowed since it’s supposedly obvious to be parody?
- eloeffler 10mo agoI guess it's mainly un-sueable because the reference is very implicit (nothing but the last name) and using the name Swift by itself constitutes neither impersonation of someone specific nor a Trademark violation or anything like that. And Taylor Swift actually is invested in data security, so it's a compliment :) That's no reason against filing a lawsuit but much less for filing one.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo agoThe OG Margo Robbie
- junon 10mo agoI love the idea of this but the mention of Hedy Lamarr could be confused as parody too when she was in fact an incredibly intelligent engineer and physicist. Anyway it reminds me of the deep fake of Kim K and Nicki Minaj explaining subnetting: https://youtu.be/KcgyGYTnk4M?feature=shared https://youtu.be/KcgyGYTnk4M?feature=shared
- hnhg 10mo agoHas anyone made a ranked list of the most mentioned people or historical facts on HN. Hedy must be on there somewhere: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hedy+lamarr https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hedy+lamarr
- junon 10mo agoI learned about her from HN so that tracks! As she should be.
- Hoasi 10mo ago> I love the idea of this but the mention of Hedy Lamarr could be confused as parody too Exactly, that was a bit puzzling.
- ekropotin 10mo agoDexter Holland from the Offspring, the punk band I was obsessed about during my childhood, has PhD in molecular biology. I thought this thread is a good place to share this fact.