sheridan

I know people out there who have invested a lot in gold under the belief that in the event of like complete societal collapse or hyperinflation, they could use it for purchasing.

I have the hunch it's a scam, but I haven't learned enough monetary theory, business, or economics to understand why.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for online age verification. I'm very much against it in any form. I'm just curious from a technical standpoint if it's possible somehow to construct an accurate age verification system that doesn't compromise a user's privacy? i.e., it doesn't expose the person's identity to anyone nor leaves behind a paper trail that can be traced to that person?

Recently I studied the very fundamentals of how computers work at the level of 1s and 0s, wires, and logic gates from a book written for laypersons. I followed the book along and built a very, very primitive computer with a cpu and ram in a simulator by plotting different kinds of logic gates and connecting them with wires.

After this exercise I'm left wondering how are new chips designed nowadays considering that there are billions and billions of microscopic transistors in a modern chip? I'm assuming there are some levels of abstraction to simplify the process? I can't imagine all those billions of transistors and wires being plotted manually one by one by people. Is there like a programming language of some sort where a compiler converts syntax into circuitry layouts?

Also, I don't mean the physical manufacturing process. I think I have a good grasp of that. I'm purely talking about the design stage.