Why is nobody talking about the fact that the ultimate limiting factor of 7/5/3nm nodes is the type of litography being used (i.e. only EUV-equipped foundries can go beyond 7nm) and that the only serious manufacturer of cutting edge EUV tools is ASML (which has only managed to develop powerful EUV light sources with tremendous r&d expenses and years of delays) ? Once you have an EUV system like NXE3400B (just one of these EUV tools is $200M and up... plus high running expenses), the rest is "easy". And by easy I mean "possible" or "up to the foundry". I feel like the R&D expenses and the history of EUV development show a bleak picture of the future of semiconductor miniaturization. BTW: As far as I know, commercial 3nm EUV tools do not exist yet. If you're looking forward to 3nm products, you should expect to wait another 5 years. 5nm to 3nm is going to take a lot longer than 7nm to 5nm.
I'd like to see that "accident". The impact of full blown nuclear reactor meltdowns (Chernobyl, Fukushima) on human lives are tiny, even when the secondary effects of radioactive pollution are considered. The impact on the biosphere in general may even be a net positive.
Lets face it, the one and only problem if nuclear energy is that people are scared of it. And even if nothing is melting down, there's the ever present boogie man of nuclear waste... never mind the fact that you could swim in a pool of spent fuel rods and you'd get (less than) background radiation dose and never mind the fact that all of the nuclear waste humanity has ever produced would fit into a footbal stadium and never mind the fact that we can recycle a lot of the spent fuel these days.
Pretty much every job? I'd say about 10%. With all the web and web-adjacent jobs around, maybe even less. Most stdlibs are already written in a sensible way, so calling "sort" usually means calling quicksort. Most people just do not care, they have tickets and bosses to worry about.
Some people like that sort of thing. Mostly the "academic" types. The memorizers. There are people who got through their higher education by using memory instead of wit. I know some of those people, I went to school with some of them, they were always studying and ramming as much "data" into their brains as possible... while I was getting through with minimum of effort by just coding a lot and trying to think about things in my own way.
The memorizers in this industry often get jobs higher up the tree and therefore they are highly represented in the hiring practices.
Anyways, I completely agree with you. In my opinion it is essential to KNOW that you DON'T KNOW (i.e. you don't remember how exactly an RB tree works, you just know there is such a thing). Everything else is just a quick Google session away.