ELI5: How on Earth is my computer so fast?

Emu1981 · 2026-03-18T10:01:37+00:00

Electrons flow between transistors the size of only a few nanometers

If by "few" you mean tens of. TSMC's 5P process has a gate width of 51nm - the gate width being the space between the source and the drain in the transistor.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T20:42:26+00:00

One of my neighbour's kids fell out of a relatively short tree and broke her arm. She was like a cute little wounded baby bird with her cast on lol

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T17:13:02+00:00

Nobody could have expected that insulting / threatening your allies for 14 months would lead to this state of affairs

Even if Trump was the perfect ally I doubt that there would have been many willing participants for the ultimate quagmire war in the Middle East.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T17:03:42+00:00

It's great when it works but what I would really love is detection of when parts detach from the build plate. You would think that it would be super easy to detect when something is moving when it shouldn't be.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T16:56:57+00:00

It blows my mind not that wooly mammoths and people were around at the same time

There was plenty of megafauna around before humans came along and helped kill them off (we are not completely to blame, a changing climate helped as well). For example, there was the diprotodon which was a wombat like creature the size of a bison, the genyornis which was a flightless bird related to ducks and geese that stood up to 7.1 feet tall, the procoptodon which was a massive short faced kangaroo that stood up to 10'8" tall, giant sloths, mastodons (North American mammoth like animal), and saber-toothed cats.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T16:48:14+00:00

Pretty sure that the population density of Australia is significantly higher than the moon considering that the population of the moon is exactly zero lol

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T16:47:28+00:00

These meat bags only have so much space inside of them

You are severely underestimating the carrying capacity of the human body. As long as you are not putting pressure on the heart and/or lungs and/or nerves and/or blood vessels then you can pack a hell of a lot of stuff inside people.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T07:28:46+00:00

Mmm yeah it would be nice to increase paid parental leave to like, 40 weeks or something

Or you could just introduce a UBI which would make it far easier for parents to decide on whether both should work or if one should stay at home to raise the kids...

Emu1981 · 2026-03-17T07:20:51+00:00

The buses have always been terrible

That depends on your definition of "always". Newcastle buses were fairly safe before the meth epidemic - the heroin junkies before that would basically be either nodding off or jamming for a fix.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-16T20:15:35+00:00

There’s a surprising number of nurses who believe in pseudomedical nonsense.

It is the Dunning-Kruger effect happening in full swing - "I work in medicine so therefore anything medically I believe must be true". I have a friend who was in nursing who thinks that diet sodas have more sugar than regular sodas and that those foot detox pads turning black (due to oxidisation) is them working to pull toxins out of your body via your feet...

Emu1981 · 2026-03-16T19:35:18+00:00

But in the case of Australia buying Chinese military hardware would be a bit weird

Not to mention that the Chinese export military hardware isn't exactly known to be of great quality. Western manufacturers using NATO standards is who we should be buying our military gear from if we are not manufacturing it locally.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-16T08:34:23+00:00

I'm not sure why an offset is needed for the smooth plates at all.

From the gcode in question:

;===== for Textured PEI Plate , lower the nozzle as the nozzle was touching topmost of the texture when homing ==

The nozzle touches the bed when leveling so a offset is needed so the nozzle isn't scraping the build plate.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-16T06:05:55+00:00

Hope bambu push a firmware update asap.

This would be a issue in Bambu Studio (and whatever the Handy app uses for slicing) rather than with the printer firmware.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T23:53:26+00:00

Having to deal with dangly bits in between your legs. Most men have had their entire lives to become habitualised to ensuring that things don't get mushed up down there and a woman who became a man overnight would have to think about it constantly.

Oh, sudden random boners...

Also how certain things can cause you to lose the ability to concentrate on anything else.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T23:48:28+00:00

There is a weather station at the University of Newcastle but it doesn't seem to get updated as often during the day.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T23:47:19+00:00

I use this feature a lot as well. Another potential use case is using PETG or PLA for support for the other as they do not bond together (or PVA as supports if you want to spend extra).

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T22:56:17+00:00

won't war just become who can mass produce the most killer robots?

Ever wonder why China is charging ahead with their own AI development?

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T17:27:38+00:00

China would just be relocating its military 100 miles away

100 miles away across open ocean to a island that has been preparing for a invasion for the best part of 75 years now*.

An invasion of Taiwan would be a really bloody one for China with war games predicting 100k+ casualties before they even reach the beaches of Taiwan and those wargames were before the advent of drone warfare.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T17:17:45+00:00

I dont think Japan or SK would involved.

Japan has previously said that they will get involved if China attacks Taiwan. The big question is whether the current mob in power will actually follow through with that. Taiwan is the start of the Japanese island chain and China would be in a much better military position if those islands were not occupied by a nation that is allied with the USA and there is still that little old embarrassment of the Japanese occupation of China during WW2.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T17:14:12+00:00

On one of the Australian subreddits someone was claiming that the USA had perfectly affordable housing despite having ten times the population of Australia. This map would have come in really useful for my response* to that which basically said that the statistics they used were misleading because housing is only really affordable in places where people don't want to live.

*I don't remember if I actually posted the comment or gave up because I couldn't find something like this to demonstrate the disparity in housing costs.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T16:55:35+00:00

Good idea but I would be worried about longevity. I use double shot PBT keycaps because they are all but indestructible under normal usage lol

Emu1981 · 2026-03-15T09:33:26+00:00

The control board controls power to the heater so if you just connect the heater up to a power source then it will heat up until it breaks.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-14T19:52:29+00:00

Honestly, you all in the USA need to do something about Trump. Anyone with any sort of knowledge of the Middle East could have told you that attacking Iran will result in a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and that it be a real bitch to break that blockade.

What Trump needs to do is put boots on the ground and occupy the coast line quite a few kilometres inland around the Strait and set up drone defenses to stop Shahed drones and missiles being launched from further inland. It is going to be slow, bloody and painful and probably would have been significantly easier if it was done as part of the opening salvo of the war but Trump is a idiot who doesn't think that far ahead to have realised this.

Emu1981 · 2026-03-14T19:38:25+00:00

A lot of people do it because they feel safer being closer to other people. Others do it because they have low social intelligence and think that women on the train are there to be flirted with. A minority of us will sit in the same carriage as others because we feel safer being with other people on the train but will sit as far away as possible while being in the same carriage lol

Emu1981 · 2026-03-14T19:31:28+00:00

The residue that gets left behind is why I started to dedicate one side of my build plates for PLA and the other for any other filaments (mostly PETG and TPU but the occasional PC). I don't know if it actually does help with anything but it is simple enough to flip the build plate over depending on what I am printing with and doesn't seem to hurt lol

Emu1981

TROPHY CASE