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I'm more interested how he managed to master the knowledge of chip manufacturing plus a ton of electronics repairs (see his microscope and other equipment) at s
by hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
I'm more interested how he managed to master the knowledge of chip manufacturing plus a ton of electronics repairs (see his microscope and other equipment) at such an early age. Very admirable.
Look at what he did:
> Photolithography machines are expensive—up to $150 million—and so Zeloof made his own by bolting a modified conference room projector bought on Amazon onto a microscope. It projects his designs at tiny scale onto silicon wafers that Zeloof coats in material sensitive to ultraviolet light.
> One of Zeloof’s best finds was a broken electron microscope that cost $250,000 in the early ’90s; he bought it for $1,000 and repaired it. He uses it to inspect his chips for flaws, as well as the nanostructures on butterfly wings.
Damn this guy is good.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoAgreed! Such a cool project. Regarding the custom photolithography machine, I recall seeing some pictures of chip workers from the 70s that essentially did the same thing. A group of women (I'm pretty sure it was all women) were responsible for manually drawing out (actually more like cutting out) the chip designs on these big sheets, which were then projected down to create the photoresist masks.
- michaelt 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out#History
- ezconnect 5y agoHe has support from his family.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoFor sure, but I bet not all kids with support from their family do cool things. Or put it in the other way, you have to prove yourself worthy before getting any fund (even from parents).
- JohnBooty 5y agoYeah, absolutely. I think the best way to understand this kid is that he is definitely at the intersection of privilege and talent. That is not to take anything away from his achievements. This kid's kicking ass.
- quickthrower2 5y agoThe other factor is access to youtube to find likeminded people and have things explained and see what is possible. When I was young I loved computers but even install Linux or learn machine code seemed like this impenetrable world that was “for adults”. I think the modern internet is great for people sharing knowhow. That said this man is a genius!
- 0xedd 5y agoDisagree. Didn't have YouTube, Google, etc and still cracked video game protections when i was 10.
- quickthrower2 5y agoWhat were your resources to learn this?
- bradlys 5y ago"Unzip rar file, copy, paste." Probably just used warez from torrents like everyone else did when they were that age.
- JohnBooty 5y agoNobody is saying that Youtube/Google/etc are necessary. Clearly people managed to do cool and clever things before those resources were available. It's beyond obvious, though, that having good resources is helpful and opens this kind of thing up to a larger number of participants.
- 5y ago
- resueman 5y agoSo basically a member of the middle class in a developed country. How remarkable.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoI don't know many middle class families who would buy 10s of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for their kid.
- resueman 5y agoWell that goalpost sure made a leap. Spread it out over six years and imagine the kid is pulling in real cash with a youtube channel showcasing his projects.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoThe 1000 dollars bill is for a single piece of equipment, a full lab is considerably more. The median household income is 70k in the U.S, in western Europe it's closer to 30k. The income distribution on youtube follows a power law. I don't think that puts it within reach of your average middle class family, even over 5 years.
- resueman 5y agoHow about the distibution of income for youtube accounts with millions of views? which is what the article says he has. He also has a patreon account linked on there.
- emteycz 5y agoMany. Middle class is a lot of people. Usually it goes into sports, though.
- bpodgursky 5y agoThere are a lot of middle class families who spend 10s of thousands of dollars on sports camps, dance lessons, ski instructors, piano tutors... if their kid was really excited by electronics instead I can see a lot of families helping with that hobby. Like yes that is a sizeable sum of money worthy of consideration but it's not at all prohibitive or unusual for a middle class family.
- zomglings 5y agoThat was necessary but not sufficient for him to have built what he has. He deserves credit for what he has done.
- steve_taylor 5y agoThanks for not politicizing this kid’s achievements.
- bsder 5y agoHis efforts are really cool. However, that garage space alone is expensive. It's larger than many small hackerspaces. I know of very few children who have access to that much lab/storage space all to themselves.
- missedthecue 5y agoSo did I and I'm not that smart
- savant_penguin 5y agoomg he could make it a business to buy these microscopes, fix and resell for 100k each
- derac 5y agoAssuming there are a lot of cheap broken electron microscopes floating around.
- erosenbe0 5y agoThink of all the kids who might start working on automotive stuff at 8 years old, building race car parts or engines or go karts. Then imagine the best of the best of thousands of them with parental? resources to build out a great kit and tinker with a lot stuff. This guy is the semiconductor equivalent.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoI'm very interested in his childhood education. I want my kid to start early on something he is interested in too but I don't really know how to do that. I know the general rules (expose him to a lot of stuffs, watch him do things, etc.) but don't know how to implement them properly. I myself wasted a lot of time in my childhood so I guess that's why I don't know how to do it properly.
- hwers 5y agoYou probably can't go wrong with giving your child resources that's too expensive for other children to be exposed to for some free future competitive advantage (which translates to adult success), as a general first heuristic.
- bruceb 5y agoAKA how Bill Gates because Bill Gates. One of the very few kids to have access to a computer at the time.
- adolph 5y agoAnd Allen: Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen first met as teenagers in the late 1960s at Lakeside School in Seattle, when Gates was in eighth grade and Allen was in tenth grade. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/02/microsoft-co-founders-bill-gates-and-paul-allen-met-in-high-school.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/02/microsoft-co-founders-bill-g... See also Levy: "Inside Bill's Brain Calls BS on Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers Theory": Inside Bill's Brain lays the Gladwell Theorem to waste. By delving into Gates' very early life, Guggenheim reveals that, basically, Bill Gates arrived on Earth as a Martian. From the instant baby Gates joined his well-off clan, he understood there was a giant impedance mismatch between his cosmic intellect and that of the world. There's an amazing moment when he recounts the time his parents had him take a test to get into an exclusive private school for the sixth grade. He asked himself, did he want to go, figuring that if not, he would purposely blow the test. https://www.wired.com/story/inside-bills-brain-outliers/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-bills-brain-outliers/
- dqpb 5y agoWhere does one find broken electron microscopes from the 90s?
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoeBay: https://www.ebay.com/b/Scanning-Electron-Microscopes/185223/bn_7109877718 https://www.ebay.com/b/Scanning-Electron-Microscopes/185223/...
- Cosmin_C 5y agoThis guy is basically Tony Stark with a box of scraps. I'm speechless.