Your Sentinel, Laws

I am not writing about laws that can change at the whim of politicians, rather laws that exist in life and physics. The first and most interesting is Benford's Law. There is a series on Netflix called "Connected" that I am watching. Episode 3 is about Benford's Law its title is "Digits." The thing that fascinates me is the fact Benford's law has never changed and never will. It applies to us, all of us and not only us but to the entire universe! Benford figured out how the law worked and now it was adapted and it is being used to track us on social networks, to check our income taxes for fraud and it can even ferret out these Russian bots along with other bots on the internet. Benford figured it out 150 years ago! It astounds me! A lot of the things it can do are above my head, but I did get the social, income tax and internet bots part. If you have Netflix I encourage you to watch the series. It is amazing what is being done to show how everything is connected including us. It also has a show on facial recognition that is amazing and creepy at the same time. Here is a link to Benford on Wikipedia.

Moore's Law is about the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit chip doubles every 2 years and it has been true since the sixties. I looked in the back of a TV I have had for over 4 years now and I was amazed by the fact that this TV set that has a wonderful picture on it was working off one single integrated circuit plus a few transformers, resistors and capacitors that all fit on one circuit board about 6 by 8 inches. Back when I started working on TV sets 50 years ago, they didn't have transistors, they had vacuum tubes instead. They had small screens and were as wide as high and they were deep. They were heavy to lift with all the individual components inside them. They didn't even have circuit boards. So I can safely say that I am amazed at how far we have come with technology in 50 years.