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The process of electing the new Pope is notoriously secretive, and the extent of measures taken to avoid outside influence is extreme. This ritual of secrecy goes back to 1274 when Pope Gregory X set the rules for how conclaves must be held, whose own election was the longest election in history spanning over 1,006 days. The local residents threatened to cut off food to the cardinals if they did not reach a decision.
In what might be the earliest form of cybersecurity, for 750 years, there have been strict rules on what cardinals can and cannot eat. Things like chicken, ravioli and pies are forbidden to prevent secret messages from being hidden in them. For this conclave, food will be prepared by nuns and the menu will consist of minestrone, spaghetti, lamb skewers and boiled vegetables.
Announcing whether a new Pope has been elected or not still uses the most rudimentary binary signaling — smoke signals. White smoke if the Pope has been chosen; black smoke if the two-thirds majority was not met.
During the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis, newer 21st-century security measures were allegedly deployed. NBC reports that there was a false floor installed in the Sistine Chapel equipped with electronics that jammed RF signals in the chapel. There are unverified photos of this false flooring on the internet too. Image Rumored false flooring in the Sistine chapel where the conclave is held.
There were some reports that the Sistine chapel was fitted with Faraday cages, although this is hard to believe. A Faraday cage is a metal shield that works by inducing currents on the metal exterior to cancel any electromagnetic fields inside the cage. But this only works if the entire Sistine chapel was somehow enclosed in a metal box, and putting in a false ceiling is a noticeable addition I would think. There are also conspiracy theories that the tiles in the chapel have somehow been replaced with RF blocking ones.
Short of covering the cardinals in conductive cloth or painting over the beautiful chapel with graphite-based black colored RF-blocking paint (which actually works quite well when Linus Tech Tips tested it), blocking RF signals completely is a hard engineering problem because of the number of different bands that radio devices communicate in (GPS, cellular, bluetooth, WiFi, etc.) The most obvious method, which the Vatican police have already adopted, is to completely scan and remove any possible communication devices and bugs planted in the chapel for snooping on the papal proceedings.
The secrecy behind the whole affair makes any claims of the use of technology difficult to actually verify. In a world where we pride ourselves in our ability to stay connected to each other, the conclave stands out as a curious exception where we try to undo all technological progress for a thousand years.
Meanwhile, I'll just wear my tin-foil hat and go watch this movie instead.
My claim that hardware and software paid about the same and that it's difficult to determine which pays more drew the greatest criticism. I have changed my position on this issue as a result of some strong reasons.
This is my updated stance.
Most of the time, but not always, software does pay more than hardware especially if you normalize for the actual and opportunity cost of learning.
Software is a better option because of the sheer number of job opportunities available, even if hardware engineering and software engineering jobs paid the same (except economic downturns, where everything is a toss-up).
With a wealth of accessible resources and educational possibilities, software engineering offers a comparatively simpler route to up-skilling.
Hardware engineering offers significant benefits. When scaled with sufficient effort, the steep learning curve works as its own skill-moat, making it difficult to breach. Electrical engineering and semiconductors are so diverse that it is possible to excel in many different things. This can serve as a basis for a long and fulfilling career.
In this post, we will look at actionable steps you can take to scale the learning curve in the chip design industry.
For free subscribers:
A survey of EDA tools (trial and open-source) for learning chip design
Ways to get access to industry-standard tools
Going open source: simulators, solvers, layout editors, and PDKs
TinyTapeout
Getting involved with open-source silicon
Step-by-step actionable guide to get started with chip design:
How to decide on a focus area and pick a project
How to find circuits to design for projects — from simple circuits to cutting edge designs
How to pick tools, plan and implement design projects
What kinds of documentation you should maintain
How to showcase your design skills to future employers
You can only learn chip design by doing. It does not matter how many YouTube videos of lectures you watch, or how many courses you download from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). Unless you try and build circuits from scratch, you will never develop the intuition and proficiency needed for chip-design.
Unfortunately, EDA tools are expensive and chip design companies pay millions of dollars every year to tool vendors like Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens, and Keysight. This causes a significant barrier to entry for new learners.
But fortunately, there are some ways around this. Ways to access industry-standard EDA tools