Post #825470
2024-07-15 10:05 UTC
Replies (32)
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@techokami@woof.tech 2025-08-19 13:56
Looking back on this classic, and wow, not many people seem to realise that a good chunk of early computing was literally just doing things with magnets, namely memory technology. Everyone thinks of core memory here (tiny circular magnets woven into a matrix of wires) but there's also stuff like drum memory used in the Bendix G15, which is a gigantic wheel of the stuff cassette tape is made out of! Plus hard drives and diskettes using magnetic flux to store data... nowadays, high quality keyboard switches use the hall effect phenomenon for contactless, hyper-durable switches, which relies on, you guessed it, magnets! But this is a technology that has been around since the 70s at least. Oh and aside from using poisoned semiconductors to convert the sun's photons, if you want electricity, you need to be spinning magnets...
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@engravecavedave@mastodon.social 2024-07-15 10:53
@techokami I studied computational physics and this comic speaks to my soul ♥️
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@cryptoparty@bonn.social 2024-07-15 12:07
@techokami This is so true :)
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@sudo200@layer8.space 2024-07-15 18:42
@techokami Electricity is a never-ending rabbit hole, and I mean that literally... In other words: true.
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@PlasmaGryphon@meemu.org 2024-07-15 22:29
@techokami my bosses don't like it when I say "Look electricity goes in, and electricity/light/neutrons/data comes out, the rest is magic."
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@Patashu@dragon.style 2024-07-16 01:49
@techokami Correct
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@terry_fox@floofy.tech 2024-07-16 03:28
@techokami So master CompSci level is equal to beginner EE level? :V
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@xarvos@outerheaven.club 2024-07-16 05:23
@techokami tfw doing cs with electromagnetism
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@OpenComputeDesign@linuxrocks.online 2024-07-16 14:24
@techokami I used to think computers were all finite state machines, and all the chips were just full of physical bridges directly between the pins made of sticky metal particles that were drawn pin to pin by magnets at the factory to program it. Kinda like those magnetite toys, and that's why you weren't supposed to put magnets on computers.
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@tully@weirder.earth 2024-07-17 17:04
@techokami image description: 3 panel comic. "how do computers work?" panel 1, "computer scientist level: novice". a young creature stands in front of a whiteboard showing a child's drawing of a stick figure and a box. the creature excitedly says "it's magic!" panel 2, "computer scientist level: expert". an adult creature stands in front of a whiteboard showing the truth table and schematic diagram of a full adder. the creature excitedly explains how adders can be chained together to add arbitrarily-large binary values. panel 3, "computer science level: master". an apparently middle aged creature holding a coffee mug reading "everything's going great" stands in front of a whiteboard showing diagrams and formulae for electromagnetism. the creature tiredly says "it's magic". #Alt4U
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@cinebox@hackers.town 2024-07-17 18:02
@techokami see your first problem is your computer has solenoids in it.
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@walnut@mycrowd.ca 2024-07-17 18:45
@techokami Woah cool chest fur style in the last one. Poor guy looks so stressed though
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@count@berlin.social 2024-07-20 11:52
@techokami @jaseg it's like when you look at physics closely and - there is no magic to be found anywhere. and then you look at quantum physics, and it's exclusively magic.
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@wolf480pl@mstdn.io 2024-07-20 17:14
@techokami I wouldn't say it's magic, but... Every piece of metal is trying to be a capacitor, an inductor, a resistor, and an antenna all at the same time. The fact that we can make them behave like digital signals most of the time is a miracle of engineering.
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@Hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net 2024-07-20 17:33
@techokami bell curve meme.
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@pangu@23.social 2025-08-19 16:36
@techokami for me, display technology is among the most baffling achievements. Had you shown me an iPad or large OLED display in the 80s, i would have collapsed.
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@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net 2025-08-19 16:40
@techokami It's also magic from the software side. You're literally writing arcane spells with arbitrary effects (in the world of the computer at least).
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@hennichodernich@radiosocial.de 2025-08-19 17:03
@techokami Nice, computer scientists appropriating electrical engineering...
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@MiaWinter@tech.lgbt 2025-08-19 17:38
@techokami computers are complex systems with emergent properties that make them non-deterministic and I stand by that If it doesn't work the first time, throw the dice two more times before wasting your time trying to fix stuff
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@anchal@social.likeadragonmaid.dev 2025-08-19 20:15
@techokami I hated the bottom section at my university :catAttack:
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@0x4d6165@wanderingwires.net 2025-08-20 02:22
@techokami Quantum Electrodynamics is the closest thing we have to a concrete, complex magic system in the real world
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@pussreboots@sfba.social 2025-08-20 02:27
@techokami 💯
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@lerxst@az.social 2025-08-20 04:04
@techokami Perfection.
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@curtmack@floss.social 2025-08-20 04:28
@techokami fun fact: the well-known Super Mario World arbitrary code execution speedrun involves JSRing to $014A13. This address is not mapped by any part of the system, so behavior at this point is governed by bus capacitance and the pattern of data reads as the 65C816 processor fetches instruction bytes. By sheer coincidence, this results a coherent sequence of instructions that eventually executes the payload instructions, programmed into the X positions of a handful of koopa shells.
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@Mazurek64@mastodon.gamedev.place 2025-08-20 05:23
@techokami Reminds of that one time I had to pass a slightly more advanced electronics course and went to ask my EE buddy if he had some books I could borrow to study for the exam. "Do you have any easy books about transistors?" "There are no easy books about transistors." "Ok then, do you have any normal books about transistors?" "There are no normal books about transistors." "Do you have any fscked up books about transistors?" "Of course, here you go."
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@leonavis@mountains.social 2025-08-20 05:43
@techokami but the last pic is just electrotech
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@earthshine@masto.hackers.town 2025-08-20 06:17
@techokami accurate
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@nlupo@amikejo.xyz 2025-08-20 06:37
@techokami It seems when I started, the novice level never existed.
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@ishambard@cupoftea.social 2025-08-20 11:20
@techokami I have passed this onto a computer friend of mine for him to confirm. I am very much in that first panel, but my family and some of my work colleagues think I understand far more than that. I just play video games D:
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@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2025-08-20 15:54
@techokami Computers compute by passing controlled lightning (electricity) through a series of precisely crafted, extremely pure rocks (silicon transistors). Computers store information by trapping lightning in tiny bottles (floating gates) and recall it by measuring how much lightning is trapped in each bottle. Erasing stored information involves expending more energy than is actually present (quantum tunneling). So yeah, magic.
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@frang@meow.social 2025-12-27 15:40
@techokami _spiteful_ magic
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@muellermeier@bark.lgbt 2025-12-27 15:52
@techokami mathematics? more like mathemagics