You try loading it into your media player of choice and see what it sounds like.

If it sounds like static, it's random bits. If it sounds like music, it's an MP3.

If it sounds like godawful screeching noises, it's also an MP3 (of popular music).

While I appreciate your attempts to gain converts to the Zero Population cause, it's not going to help either. The rich will just start declaring that childless people are henceforth the property of the state and forcibly impregnate them.

Even the men.

Think of this as a proof-of-concept work, which can rapidly (relative to the initial rate of progress from the 22k transistor range) be pushed to something closer to present-day processor strength. So figure sometime around 2020-2025 for them to have caught up to present-day transistor counts, with a system that'd have higher performance than anything we can get right now (without overclocking).

Granted, that 10-12 years figure is a gigantic ass pull on my part, but it shouldn't be too much slower than that. They'll catch up eventually, and to low-power chips faster than everything else.

Ease, yes. Efficiency, especially the amount of the wafer that's wasted due to it being circular initially, not so much.

A triangular layout probably would be ideal - you could (or at least, should be able to) adapt existing equipment (instead of two cuts at right angles, you make three cuts at 60-degree angles - hexagonal layouts would require either piecing together triangles produced this way, casting much smaller ingots such that it's one chip per wafer, or stamping out the hexagons), and you reduce waste somewhat (depending on the size of the chip and the size of the initial wafer).

However, the problem with triangular layouts (and hexagonal, for that matter) is that it involves cutting along planes the original ingot (which is a single huge silicon crystal) won't naturally fracture in.

So... unfortunately, we're stuck with square chips (if we start building up 3D chips, we'll have the option of cubes and octahedra) because of nature.

..."represent the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity..."

Right in what you quoted, so... yeah, it doesn't say what you're claiming it says, unfortunately. Try a different section. I believe 3(C) has what you're actually looking for, which is the "avoiding reporting requirements without necessarily involving unlawful activity" bit.

Hell no. They're hoping for it. At that point, they can declare martial law, and everything else goes down the tubes for the people who aren't involved in the revolution.

The only things they're worried about are (1) making sure they're still getting paid and (2) being out of town if the Revolution shows up and they have to nuke it.

Hooray for a 360-day year. Next New Year's is on May 1st, actually (it'll be 3115, thanks to a year-number reset when it reached 10368).

Also, I guess "hooray for odd religions".

Cue the Reverse Polack jokes.

Granted, that's the worst part of learning Forth (or an HP calculator).

200 petawatts is easy enough to produce - it's 200 joules over one femtosecond. (Chances are the pulse is somewhat longer than one femtosecond, but there are two ways to produce large power numbers - large amounts of energy, or very short timeframes.)

Pokey the Penguin, is that you?