July 5, 2026
Shocking drama, stored for later
Cursed circuits #5: capacitance multiplier
A weird money-saving circuit drops, and the comments instantly get gloriously unhinged
TLDR: lcamtuf shared a quirky circuit trick that makes a setup behave like it has a bigger capacitor, turning a small electronics lesson into a fun debate. The comments stole the show with one-upmanship, sleep-deprived theorizing, and a perfectly timed "[delayed]" punchline.
A fresh post from lcamtuf’s thing turned a niche electronics lesson into a tiny comment-section spectacle. The article itself is about a “capacitance multiplier,” basically a sneaky way to make a circuit act like it has a much bigger energy-storage part than it really does. The joke baked into the headline — save money on one part by buying extra parts instead — already set the tone, and readers absolutely ran with it. What could have been a dry explainer about a humble chip became a crowd-pleasing mix of admiration, late-night theorizing, and classic engineer one-upmanship.
The strongest vibe in the replies is a blend of “this is cursed and brilliant” with “oh, you think that’s weird? hold my calculator.” One commenter immediately escalated the nerd flex with a drive-by mention of “negative Miller capacitance,” which reads like the sequel nobody asked for but everyone in the room somehow fears. Another reader delivered the most relatable comment of the thread: a half-serious, half-sleep-deprived attempt to reason out what the circuit does, ending in, basically, “maybe it acts like an inductor because that would be a logically silly thing for it to do, but I’m not doing the math at 1am on my phone.” That line is the people’s champion.
And then there’s the shortest, funniest contribution: “[delayed]” — a tiny joke that landed because the whole discussion is about parts that mess with timing and behavior. In other words, lcamtuf posted a clever circuit, and the community responded by turning the comments into a live improv show for exhausted smart people.
Key Points
- •The article is the fifth installment in lcamtuf’s “Cursed circuits” series and focuses on a capacitance multiplier.
- •The author presents the post as part of a broader electronics curriculum with recurring emphasis on operational amplifiers.
- •Readers new to op-amps are directed to two earlier 2023 articles and to the author’s early-access book, The Secret Life of Circuits.
- •The article explains an ideal op-amp as amplifying the voltage difference between its two inputs by a very large open-loop gain and outputting the result relative to the supply midpoint.
- •The voltage follower is introduced as the key op-amp configuration for the discussion, with feedback causing the output to track the input very closely.