More or Less Numbers of the year 2025
Dec 31, 2025
Tim Cross, a science writer at The Economist, dives into the impressive 208 billion transistors of NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU and explores limitations of Moore's Law. John Byrne Murdoch, a data reporter at the Financial Times, analyzes an 8% decline in social media usage, attributing it to shifting cultural trends. James O'Malley, writer and co-host of the Abundance Agenda podcast, critiques the escalating costs of the Sizewell C nuclear project. Lastly, Katie Milkman, a professor at Wharton, shares effective strategies for sticking to New Year's resolutions.
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Transistor Counts Reach New Heights
- Tim Cross highlights that NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU packs about 208 billion transistors, marking a peak in miniaturisation progress.
- Moore's Law guided sixty years of chip design but is slowing as physical limits and heat issues bite.
Moore's Law Is Slowing, Not Dead
- Moore himself expected limits and industry benefits from transistor doubling are diminishing due to atomic and thermal constraints.
- Engineers pursue alternatives like many-chip systems and photonic computing to keep performance rising.
Six-Woman Spaceflight Story
- Caroline Steele recounts Blue Origin's April 2025 flight that carried six women to the edge of space, including Katy Perry.
- She notes Valentina Tereshkova was the solo woman in 1963, so the Blue Origin crew is the largest all-female team, not the first.