Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics (2000) (opens in new tab)

Around 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.

(2000) Popular in:

2023 (37 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35763307

2021 (168 points, 112 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626532

2016 (94 points, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872658

Coincidentally I was just looking for this picture yesterday 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

Love 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://britneysp...

Just keeping any site functional and up for so long is impressive by itself.

I 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

Meanwhile 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.

The old Internet was so fricken cool before we allowed monopolies.

There must be Mia Khalifa's Guide to Rocket Science somewhere on the Internet.

I was crushed when I saw the site needed Flash.

Author briefly/currently worked in SEO as a result.

I 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.

From 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?

"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?

I'm mildly surprised there has been no mention of (Taylor) SwiftOnSecurity here yet :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SwiftOnSecurity

There 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.

The 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.

Not sure if this is a tribute to great women ( like Lamarr) that were entertainers and brilliant in science or a parody of them!

oh, 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_be...

Blast from the past.

I remember landing on this site when studying for my undergrad solid state physics exams.

Don't go to the chat rooms...

The OG Margo Robbie

I 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.

Before 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.)