• TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
      10·
      10 days 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.

      • Trailblazing Braille Taser@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        9 days ago

        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.worksEnglish
    17·
    11 days 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
    16·
    11 days 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
      4·
      10 days 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.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    8·
    11 days ago

    I once tried writing a bit with demons being like the “demons” sometimes used in philosophy where they’re more like mysterious, reality altering things that sort of hide between our understanding of the universe and the unknown as opposed to scary monster things. It didn’t really go anywhere. The person I was writing with vanished on me. I still think it’s an interesting concept though and it sort of fits this post

    Edit: I realize this is an odd concept, this is what I mean by “philosophical demon” lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_(thought_experiment)

    In thought experiments, philosophers and scientists occasionally imagine entities with special abilities as a way to pose thought experiment or highlight apparent paradoxes.

    The word “demon” here does not necessarily connotate a demon, a malevolent being. For instance, when William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) came up with the Maxwell’s demon, to highlight the implications of James Clerk Maxwell statistical interpretation of thermodynamics. He used the term in analogy to daemons in Greek mythology, supernatural beings as unseen forces of nature.

    • lud@lemm.ee
      2·
      10 days ago

      Eh what now?

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