Emulation as a whole is a magical dark art to me, but I am always particularly impressed by the exhaustive (but very readable!) detail in these Dolphin status reports. If other software projects had a fraction of the attention to detail and commitment as Dolphin, we'd be living in a better world.
It's amazing what people can do when they're doing something because it is fun and interesting, and not because they need the money.
This work is even more critical given the recent news on copyright restrictions on game preservation.