eOpicle

There are two immutable laws of CES. First: if it exists, someone will try to make it smarter, thinner, more modular, and somehow worse for human dignity. Second: every January, the tech industry gathers in Las Vegas to announce that this is the year we finally figured out what a computer should look like—only to immediately contradict itself with a product that feels like a dare. CES 2026 did not disappoint. Enter the HP EliteBoard G1a , a keyboard that is also a computer, which is also an AI-ready enterprise workstation, which is also a philosophical question disguised as office equipment. It’s a keyboard. It’s a PC. It’s both. And if you’re squinting at your screen wondering whether this is a joke, HP insists it is not. This thing ships in spring. Somewhere between the metaverse kiosks and the autonomous lawnmowers that can probably unionize before you can, HP quietly dropped the most unintentionally revealing product of the show: a slab of keys that contains an entire modern ...

In 1958, while the rest of the computing world was busy teaching machines to think in ones and zeros like obedient little digital soldiers, a group of Soviet engineers looked at binary logic and said, essentially: “What if… no?” Thus was born Setun , the world’s first ternary computer—a machine that did not merely tweak binary logic but openly defied it. While Western computing marched forward chanting bit, bit, bit , Setun calmly introduced a third option and dared everyone to deal with it. And for a brief, fascinating moment in Cold War history, it worked. This is the story of the computer that chose three when everyone else settled for two, the machine that was mathematically elegant, technically sound, politically inconvenient, and ultimately too clever for the system that created it. Binary: The Tyranny of Either/Or Modern computing mythology treats binary as inevitable. Sacred. Unquestionable. Ones and zeros are portrayed as the only possible foundation for computation, as ...

Let’s be honest: somewhere in your home—maybe in that drawer you pretend you’ll organize “this weekend,” maybe in a shoebox behind the winter coats you forgot you own—there is a dusty herd of old phones and laptops you’ve ghosted harder than that one coworker who wanted to “circle back.” They sit there silently, collecting dead skin cells and judgement, waiting for the day you finally admit you’re never going to “use it as a backup.” In Australia, this digital purgatory isn’t just a meme—it’s a national sport. The average Australian generates 22 kilograms of e-waste every year. That’s nearly the weight of a toddler, or half a suitcase, or one aggressively enthusiastic kelpie. Multiply that by millions of people and congratulations: we’ve all built a collective Mount Doom of forgotten gadgets. And it’s not just Australia. Globally we crank out 62 million tonnes of e-waste a year. By 2030? Try 82 million tonnes , because nothing says “advanced civilization” like turning the planet in...

Silicon Dreams, Hype Machines, and the World’s First “Regular” Quantum Computer Tech journalists love a headline with “world’s first” and “quantum” in the same breath. Last week’s offering did not disappoint: “Scientists unveil world’s first quantum computer built with regular silicon chips.” Cue the confetti cannons of LinkedIn humble-brags and breathless Medium think-pieces. But before we anoint the brave new age of CMOS-fueled quantum supremacy, let’s pick apart what this announcement actually means, what’s clever about it, and where the hype fog rolls in thicker than a London morning. Act I: Quantum Motion’s Shiny New Toy The pitch: A London startup named Quantum Motion claims it has built the first full-stack quantum computer made with the same vanilla silicon CMOS process used for everyday electronics—smartphones, laptops, the chip in your toaster that burns the bagel just right. Translation for non-chip nerds: Instead of needing exotic superconducting circuits, tr...

Ah yes, quantum computing—because we’ve clearly conquered all the other pesky problems on this planet, like poverty, hunger, and the fact that half the internet is just ads for things we already bought. Enter the Wall Street Journal, with their August 2025 piece “Here’s How Quantum Computing Could Change the World.” Spoiler: it’s the same old tech-bro fairy tale, only this time with qubits instead of blockchain. Let’s unpack this delightful techno-mess, shall we? Quantum: The New “Just Add Water” Solution Remember when GPUs were the unsung heroes of gaming nerds, and suddenly everyone decided they were the magic beans that would grow an AI beanstalk to the sky? IBM CEO Arvind Krishna wants you to believe quantum computing is basically 2012 GPUs on steroids. But here’s the kicker: in 2012, GPUs were already useful . Quantum? Well, it’s still kind of like promising teleportation while we’re still tripping over our hoverboards. Krishna drops the classic line: “In 2012, nobody was cou...

Let’s talk about the great American ritual known as “spring cleaning,” where you throw out exactly nothing useful and then convince yourself you’ve “decluttered” because you finally unplugged that printer from 2009. Yes, the same one that ran out of cyan ink in 2013 and was never the same again. But now, in the digital age, we’re cleaning out something even more dangerous than your closet full of expired granola bars: your old computer. Ah yes, your old laptop. The one you last used to Google “how to write a cover letter” during the Great Resignation and occasionally dusted off to pay a parking ticket or binge an embarrassing number of hours of “Love Is Blind.” It’s time to get rid of it. Sell it. Recycle it. Sacrifice it to the Tech Gods. But before you do, maybe—just maybe —think about deleting your data first. Except, and here’s the kicker—it turns out “delete” doesn’t actually mean delete. Welcome to the Digital Dumpster Fire According to Sean Captain’s June 17, 2025, Wall Stre...

How the Quarton Coupler Might Finally Make Quantum Computing Not Suck at Math If you’ve been waiting for quantum computers to start doing something other than suck down government funding and spit out Schrödinger-grade gibberish, hold onto your entangled particles. MIT’s quantum squad just pulled off a stunt that might actually matter. We’re talking faster-than-your-mom’s-WiFi quantum readout. We’re talking photon-atom coupling so absurdly strong, it makes Tinder matches look emotionally unavailable. We’re talking about the long-awaited beginning of a fault-tolerant quantum computer — the unicorn of theoretical physics and tech buzzword bingo. MIT engineers, apparently bored with running the world’s smartest college, have decided to poke the quantum bear again. This time, they claim to have pulled off the strongest nonlinear light-matter coupling ever . Translation? They got a qubit to stop acting like a drunken raccoon for long enough to be measured — and fast. Let’s break it do...