• TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I’m making this comment from a magical device that sends bottled lightning though rocks inscribed with very exact runes in order to display information from people all over the world.

      • I only have a vague understanding. The technique used to manufacture integrated circuits is called photolithography. Basically, these circuits need such tiny features etched into them that we can’t do it through traditional means. Instead, we draw a picture of the circuit we want, hundreds of times larger, shine a light through it, and use lenses to shrink the pattern down to size. This big pattern is called a “mask”.

        So what’s the deal with the demonic sigils above? As we make our circuits smaller, the physics gets stranger. For instance, there’s this effect called quantum tunneling where electrons just teleport to a part of the circuit we would not expect based on classical physics. Due to these kinds of effects, we have to do crazy things to the masks if we want the circuit to behave correctly.

        Disclaimer: I am not an electrical engineer and I have no idea what I’m talking about.

  • Scratch@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Then software engineers harness that evil in mazes of their own.

    At least that’s what the code I’ve read looks like.

  • Im_old@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    you should really read “the laundry files” by Charles Stross. It’s a whole series of stories on this topic basically

    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Seconded. This is an excerpt from a comment I made the other day about it:

      If you like making fun of quiverfull ministries, programming, Eldritch horrors, British humor (humour?), spy thrillers, agitated engineers, vampires that don’t exist, bloodthirsty elves, and a thinly veiled story about anthropomorphic climate change then this is the series for you.

      Entities from other realities are listening and waiting for our computers to summon them.

  • RGB@lemmy.today
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    4 months ago

    Don’t share this with the Republican conspiracy theorists or they are legitimately gonna start spreading that on their Q boards.

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Eh what now?

      I have to restart explorer.exe a few times a year but not more than that.