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Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics (2000)

AlbertoGP

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.

varenc

Love the old internet feel to the site.

You can see its 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.

gnabgib

(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

andy99

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

AdmiralAsshat

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.

Guestmodinfo

From Wikipedia "...Lundgren received a degree in chemical engineering from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in the early 1980s and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney in 1982...."

andrehacker

Brian May (Queen) has a PhD degree in astrophysics :)

DrewADesign

Tom Scholz, the guitarist for Boston with a masters in MechE from MIT, built his own effects, and much of his own recording equipment.

kazinator

The guitars on Def Leppard's Hysteria [1987] were supposedly direct recorded using a Rockman.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

The story of getting their first album made is epic

leeoniya

and Mayim Bialik holds a neuroscience PhD

master_crab

And sadly a bit of a loon about vaccines and supplements.

null

[deleted]

skopje

MA is master of art according to google. MSc seems right.

dmd

Many (most, in the US; don't know about Sweden or Australia) institutions don't draw a distinction between the two and award MA regardless.

modeless

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?

kopirgan

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

JSR_FDED

I was crushed when I saw the site needed Flash.

embedding-shape

And also Java in the browser for the (presumed) awesome chat, provided the surely still amazing freejavachat.com

philipwhiuk

Author briefly/currently worked in SEO as a result.

opan

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.

leeoniya

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...

sunrunner

There’s also Zara Dar and Chang Hsu’s PornHub/OnlyFans pages for maths and STEM subjects, if we’re going down this rabbit hole…

exabrial

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