MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by VonTum | 2025-12-23 01:19:33+00:00
Well really, the language _is_ the difficulty of much of hardware design, both Verilog and VHDL are languages that were designed for simulation of hardware, and not synthesis of hardware. Both languages have of similar-but-not-quite ways of writing things, like blocking/nonblocking assigns causing incorrect behavior that's incredibly difficult to spot on the waveform, not being exhaustive in assigns in always blocks causing latches, maybe-synthesizeable for loops, etc. Most of this comes from their paradigm of an event loop, handling all events and the events that those events trigger, etc, until all are done, and advancing time until the next event. They simulate how the internal state of a chip changes every clock cycle, but not to actually do the designing of said chip itself.

I'm tooting my own horn with this, as I'm building my own language for doing the actual designing. It's called SUS.

Simple things look pretty much like C:

module add :
int#(FROM:-8, TO: 8) a,
int#(FROM: 2, TO: 20) b ->
int c {
c = a+b
}

It automatically compensates for pipelining registers you add, and allows you to use this pipelining information in the type system.

It's a very young language, but me, a few of my colleagues, and some researchers in another university are already using it. Check it out => https://github.com/pc2/sus-compiler
by beasthacker | 2025-12-23 01:20:01+00:00
Hypothetical for you:

Learn more if you tried to figure it out yourself for 3 hours then used the LLM for the last hour to unblock/check your work? Or learn more by utilizing LLM for help the whole four hours?

My own experience is what I learn from an LLM sticks better if I take the former approach.
by malmeloo | 2025-12-23 01:20:39+00:00
One big issue with FPGAs is how annoying it is to learn how to use them. I did a course on embedded systems a few years ago and nobody could truly get to enjoy it because we spent most of our time downloading and installing huge toolchains, waiting for synthesis and PnR to complete and debugging weird IDE issues. We need to open up the space to allow people to develop better solutions than what these companies are forcing down our throats.

There already exist fantastic open source tools such as Yosys, Nextpnr, iverilog, OpenFPGALoader, ... that together implement most features that a typical hardware dev would want to use. But chip support is unfortunately limited, so fewer people are using these tools.

We decided to build a VSCode extension that wraps these open source tools (https://edacation.github.io for the interested) to combat this problem. Students are already using it during the course and are generally very positive about the experience. It's by no means a full IDE, but if you're just getting started with HDL it's great to get familiar with it. Instead of a mess of a toolchain that nobody truly knows how to use, you now get a few buttons to visualize and (soon) program onto an FPGA.

There's also Lushay Code for the slightly more advanced users. But we need more of these initiatives to really get the ball rolling and make an impact, so I'd highly recommend people to check out and contribute to projects like this.
by tom_ | 2025-12-23 01:22:44+00:00
No, you don't sacrifice refresh rate! The refresh rate is the same. 50 Hz interlaced and 50 Hz non-interlaced are both ~50 Hz, approx 270 visible scanlines, and the display is refreshed at ~50 Hz in both cases. The difference is that in the 50 Hz interlaced case, alternate frames are offset by 0.5 scanlines, the producing device arranging the timing to make this work on the basis that it's producing even rows on one frame and odd rows on the other. And the offset means the odd rows are displayed slightly lower than the even ones.

This is a valid assumption for 25 Hz double-height TV or film content. It's generally noisy and grainy, typically with no features that occupy less than 1/~270 of the picture vertically for long enough to be noticeable. Combined with persistence of vision, the whole thing just about hangs together.

This sucks for 50 Hz computer output. (For example, Acorn Electron or BBC Micro.) It's perfect every time, and largely the same every time, and so the interlace just introduces a repeated 25 Hz 0.5 scanline jitter. Best turned off, if the hardware can do that. (Even if it didn't annoy you, you'll not be more annoyed if it's eliminated.)

This also sucks for 25 Hz double-height computer output. (For example, Amiga 640x512 row mode.) It's perfect every time, and largely the same every time, and so if there are any features that occupy less than 1/~270 of the picture vertically, those fucking things will stick around repeatedly, and produce an annoying 25 Hz flicker, and it'll be extra annoying because the computer output is perfect and sharp. (And if there are no such features - then this is the 50 Hz case, and you're better off without the interlace.)

I decided to stick to the 50 Hz case, as I know the scanline counts - but my recollection is that going past 50 Hz still sucks. I had a PC years ago that would do 85 Hz interlaced. Still terrible.
by dangus | 2025-12-23 01:23:23+00:00
Yikes. If I was an investor that statement would be a red flag on your decision making capability.

fetchai.app, $65 renews at $23/year

obtainer.net, .dev, .app, .tech, all available at standard prices

retrieveragent.io, .tech, .app, .dev, all at standard prices

This is like 10 minutes of effort on my end.
by maxglute | 2025-12-23 01:23:30+00:00
Or surely PRC should get all the praise for diffusing geopolitical traps UK like to leave whenever they lose a colony. Patton threw a curve ball right before handover to last minute liberalize HK a little to hold onto influence, something they didn't do under UK rule. Of course it was geopolitical trap to make PRC look bad if they ever decide take away from HK what UK never provided, but PRC managed to do it anyway and most of world, i.e. global south got example that it is possible to excise legacy colonial tumors from declining empires who choose not to pass gracefully.
by Cadwhisker | 2025-12-23 01:24:09+00:00
I've managed to make nice 'make' flows for Vivado, ISE, Quartus and DC. Libero took a bit more poking, but it's also possible.

The GUI interfaces are what newcomers tend to aim for straight away, but they're not good for any long-term "repeatable" build flows and they're no use for CI. I think this is where a lot of the frustration comes from.
by khimaros | 2025-12-23 01:24:19+00:00
preferring open source and provider agnostic tools, i really want to like OpenCode. i used it exclusively for months, but sadly it has major usability issues which switching to Claude Code solved:

- accidental approvals when trying to queue a prompt because of the unexpected popovers
- severe performance issues when pending approval (using 100% of all cores)
- tool call failures

having used Crush, OpenCode, aider, mistral-vibe, Gemini CLI (and the Qwen fork), and Claude Code, the clear winner is CC. Gemini/Qwen come in second but they do lose input when you decline a requested permission on a tool call.

that said, CC also has its issues, like the flickering problem that happens in some terminals while scrolling executed command output.
by tverbeure | 2025-12-23 01:24:39+00:00
The strong point of FPGAs is their versatility. If you wanted an FPGA that would be easy to put on a board, you’d have to drop support for multiple voltage rails and thus multiple IO standards, which is exactly what you don’t want to lose.

Building bitstreams is IMO not complicated. (I just copy a Makefile from a previous project and go from there.)

Loading them is a matter of plugging in a JTAG cable and typing “make program”.

I don’t know what you mean with the “manage SW projects for”?
by timr | 2025-12-23 01:25:06+00:00
I was also in science during Clinton, and what I’m saying was true then. The increase in funding went hand in hand with a massive increase in people seeking funding. So maybe there was some golden era of happy times when nobody had to chase grants, but it hasn’t been in my lifetime.

But again, I explicitly said that my point was independent of recent changes in funding. I am no longer in science, but it seems to be true that funding has declined. That doesn’t mean that chasing grants is something unprecedented for scientists to be doing.
by avmich | 2025-12-23 01:25:34+00:00
The problem of SQL is that is is ubiquitous.

The advice to learn SQL is because it's everywhere. Now it has inertia, and a better way of doing things has an uphill battle. In 1980-s somebody compared working with SQL to drinking data through a straw, comparing to swimming in data with APL. We had a recent article comparing modern SSD delays and RAM sizes to those which defined architectures of SQL systems of recent decades - we can perhaps reengineer our databases better for modern opportunities. But all these approaches have to deal with SQL as an entrenched technology. Probably a task for a company of a Google class.
by danaris | 2025-12-23 01:26:09+00:00
No: they're based on a specific set of lies he was sold back in the 1980s. There's a particular guy (I'm afraid I don't recall his name) who has been banging the tariff drum and claiming that they're some kind of economic panacea, and he apparently caught Trump at a very pliant time.

(I've tried to find who it was again, but it's hard to search for simply "who convinced Trump that tariffs are a good idea?")
by Veserv | 2025-12-23 01:27:48+00:00
The problem is actually that nobody uses the generic solution to these classes of problems and then everybody complains that the special-case for one set of parameters works poorly for a different set of parameters.

Nagle’s algorithm is just a special case solution of the generic problem of choosing when and how long to batch. We want to batch because batching usually allows for more efficient batched algorithms, locality, less overhead etc. You do not want to batch because that increases latency, both when collecting enough data to batch and because you need to process the whole batch.

One class of solution is “Work or Time”. You batch up to a certain amount of work or up to a certain amount of time, whichever comes first. You choose your amount of time as your desired worst case latency. You choose your amount of work as your efficient batch size (it should be less than max throughput * latency, otherwise you will always hit your timer first).

Nagle’s algorithm is “Work” being one packet (~1.5 KB) with “Time” being the time until all data gets a ack (you might already see how this degree of dynamism in your timeout might pose a problem already) which results in the fallback timer of 500 ms when delayed ack is on. It should be obvious that is a terrible set of parameters for modern connections. The problem is that Nagle’s algorithm only deals with the “Work” component, but punts on the “Time” component allowing for nonsense like delayed ack helpfully “configuring” your effective “Time” component to a eternity resulting in “stuck” buffers which is what the timeout is supposed to avoid. I will decline to discuss the other aspect which is choosing when to buffer and how much of which Nagle’s algorithm is again a special case.

Delayed ack is, funnily enough, basically the exact same problem but done on the receive side. So both sides set timeouts based on the other side going first which is obviously a recipe for disaster. They both set fixed “Work”, but no fixed “Time” resulting in the situation where both drivers are too polite to go first.

What should be done is use the generic solutions that are parameterized by your system and channel properties which holistically solve these problems which would take too long to describe in depth here.
by silisili | 2025-12-23 01:28:09+00:00
At this point, this is an application level problem and not something the kernel should be silently doing for you IMO. An option for legacy systems or known problematic hosts fine, but off by default and probably not a per SOCKOPT.

Every modern language has buffers in their stdlib. Anyone writing character at a time to the wire lazily or unintentionally should fix their application.
by cogman10 | 2025-12-23 01:28:59+00:00
This really gets at the core problems with communism as I see it.

For starters I think the only way for communism to actually work would be with robust checks and balances in place to properly address corruption within the government. AFAIK, basically all communist governments have started as autocracies. That's a really bad combo for corruption. The ideal communist state would arise from democracy, but I don't think democracy will ever create a communist state.

Next, I don't really think state control of all markets is a good idea. A good state would be too slow to react market requirements. You really want your population to self sort and organize as much as possible. That's what makes sure everyone gets all the scarfs they want. That said, I think there are fundamental duties that capitalism does not properly handle. For example, building roads or running a fire department. Capitalism, IMO, works best when there is a truly competitive market in place. Food production would be a good example where capitalism works well (but still might need government support since it's vital to survive).

Now to the USSR specifically (but AFAIK a lot of communist states are like this) the other big problem that goes along with corruption is that there aren't really second chances. I have a coworker that grew up the USSR and he mentioned this with schooling. Fail a class, fall behind, or need extra help and boom. The better job is permanently locked out and you have to settle for a crappy job. A chinese roommate of mine describe a similar phenomena in China. As it turns out, all the wealthy chinese families still ended up in positions of power and relationship ultimately mattered a lot more than competence. I think this mostly comes from the state optimizing for the wrong things. They assume that people wouldn't want to work on farms or that farmers would always want to be farmers. One of the benefits of a capitalist society is that, while no trivial, changing professions is accessible to pretty much everyone.

The core problem with the USSR's version of communism is that it concentrated too much power on too few people (well, and the fact that stalin operated by both being drunk and keeping all the heads of state perpetually drunk). People can get weird ideas (like mao's feelings towards birds) and putting too much power in those individuals' hands is doomed to pain for the citizenry. Some problems are best solved by a little bit of market anarchy.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-12-23 01:29:39+00:00
Why do you think I am more generous towards the coal industry? We are talking about nuclear power. If you would like my opinion on coal, I will gladly give it to you. You never asked.

For starters: I think clean coal is absolute nonsense (I’ve cited the White House’s outrageous stance on this several times on HN) and people brush away the environmental, social, and general health impacts of coal to their own peril. We know the harmful impacts. We know the body count. We have alternatives and it’s time to move on.

I am absolutely 100% critical of the coal industry/power - far more than I am of nuclear. It doesn’t even compare.

So to answer your question:

> But why not same scrutiny for coal?

I’ll give you the same answer I give every person who gives me this tired refrain without ever even trying to suss out what I think about coal: I am. You are misinformed. And it has no impact on my desire to demand the highest safety standards for nuclear power.
by albert_roca | 2025-12-23 01:29:50+00:00
The numbers seem to follow a geometric logic:

Alpha / 3: The "3" represents the spatial dimensions.

+1 and squared: 1 is the undistorted space, and it is squared because space intervals are quadratic, like in the Pythagorean theorem.

Holography: In the context of the model, the 4^32 factor is the scaling factor between m_p and m_P (19 orders of magnitude).

Schwarzschild dynamics: The code reproduces the same accelerations as general relativity.

The goal is to find if a single geometric formulation can link QM and GR. Instead of a "salad", I see it as a possible approach to unification without free parameters, only using the same geometry at all scales.
by badlibrarian | 2025-12-23 01:32:30+00:00
Almost. A modem sometimes had a phone jack as well as a coupler, for those cases when the handset was hardwired into the phone and the phone was hardwired into the wall.

We tapped where we could and we were happy. Bonus points if the rotary phone had a lock on it and you dialed out by pulsing the hangup switch.
by hammock | 2025-12-23 01:33:11+00:00
> Bringing up a map of wind power deployments tells the story; what you will see is a hot vertical strip in the center of the US

Idk what you mean by that. I pulled up a map and saw dots all over the place. They are concentrated on the east coast because you can’t build fixed on west coast (has to be floating) but they are pretty much anywhere on the east coast.
by ncruces | 2025-12-23 01:33:31+00:00
If they're handling it as “website, don't care” (because they're training on everything online) they won't know.

If they're treating it specifically on “code forge” (because they're after coding use cases), there's lots of interesting information that you won't get by just cloning a repo.

It's not just the current state of the repo, or all commits (and their messages). It's the initial issue (and discussion) that lead to a pull request (and review comments) that eventually gets squashed into a single commit.

The way you code with an agent is a lot more similar to the: issue, comments, change, review, refinement sequence; that you get by slurping the website.
by refurb | 2025-12-23 01:34:18+00:00
Bunk? A Chinese government official admitted there were way more homes than people in China.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/even-chinas-14-bln-popul...

Housing prices have dropped 30% so far, and the market hasn’t hit bottom. It’s creating a huge drag on people’s savings and the economy as a whole. Not to mention inflating government debt as local governments can’t sell land anymore to developers to fund local spending.
by stubish | 2025-12-23 01:34:29+00:00
But the natural result is vendor lock in. To stop exports of keys, sites will need a whitelist and secure method to verify the hardware or software implementation has not been tampered with. If an implementation is banned, the obvious solution is to allow it to pretend to be a non-banned implementation. Or admin level processes smuggling keys out of approved implementations. I don't think anyone wants an arms race, thus the vague threats to remove features that users are demanding before they will consider buying into the ecosystem.
by wkat4242 | 2025-12-23 01:35:00+00:00
Huh no. I'd never work in the US. I won't even visit there as long as the current regime is in place (and the mandatory social media declaration, which I believe is more bipartisan).

I even moved to a lower wage country in Europe even to a pay cut, money isn't everything. Quality of life is. I won't live in a country that is anti-LGBT and with such a culture glorifying toxic masculinity. And at the same time giving a huge middle finger to the world by having the most polluting country in the world per capita quit climate change reduction efforts.

I don't think you understand how badly Trump has destroyed the reputation and goodwill of the US to the rest of the world in just one year. Everyone I know is actively trying to disconnect from US products and services (though admittedly I am in more activist circles)

And salaries here are a lot higher than that. Even here in a lower-wage country. Also, I don't need a car where I live which scraps a whole category of expenses, healthcare is free and I have protections in case I get fired.
by randerson | 2025-12-23 01:35:12+00:00
If you do hit gravel/oil, tracks at least have runoff areas or soft barriers, and no oncoming traffic or cliffs to worry about.

Every track day I've attended required the cars to have been inspected for leaks and loose components. And they were quick to clean up any debris or oil.

Not that tracking cars is the safest hobby, but if someone is gonna drive like that regardless its far safer at a track than on public roads.
by amluto | 2025-12-23 01:35:21+00:00
The US average residential electricity price is 18.07 c/kWh [0]. Natural gas is $15.39/thousand cubic ft [1]. 1k cubic feet of gas is about 300kWh (this varies because natural gas is not always the same and because the higher heating value and lower heating value are different. So the US average is about 5c/kWh of natural gas.

In decent weather, one should not use resistive electric heat — one should use a heat pump. In decent weather, a COP of 4 is about par for the course, making electric heat a bit cheaper. So I don’t believe your assertion that “gas is so much cheaper per joule”.

Obviously this varies by what you do with your heat and the conditions. Gas stoves are wildly inefficient, but induction can exceed a COP of 100%. In very very cold weather, heat pump COP drops, so gas will win. Gas tankless water heaters are reasonably priced and can reach well over 90% efficiency, whereas heat pump water heaters need a tank, which is somewhat lossy.

But gas has a major downside (aside from CO2 and other emissions): you need to pipe the stuff to the endpoint, and a lot of communities, especially new developments, have decided that this is not worth the expense or danger.

[0] September 2025: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/monthly/pdf/table_20.pdf
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-12-23 01:35:48+00:00
To illustrate the point about silly names for so-called "tech" companies, which are generally nothing more websites operating as middlemen conducting surveillance on www users in order to sell ad services, consider this directory of companies from 1987

https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Computers_And_Automation/Com...
by alphazard | 2025-12-23 01:35:49+00:00
> Why do you say it's rent seeking?

Because that's what economists call it when you get something for nothing, as is the case with any subsidy.
I'm not going to argue this point; interested readers can look up how these energy projects are financed.
Windmills that are privately funded, including debt and risk show you where it actually makes sense to put a windmill.

> Offshore wind is efficient, turbine blades can safely be much larger giving 3x the output, turbine arrays have unobstructed space giving twice the capacity factor. It's more efficient than onshore.

Not going to argue with any of this, although you left out maintenance costs, and larger blades means more value at risk.
I'm not convinced that your efficiency calculation is measured in dollars and not windmill hours.

I would caution any engineer types reading from pressing their nose too close to the details of a particular energy technology.
Instead, it's better to focus on the business plan or economic shadow that a particular energy project leaves.
Dollars go in and energy comes out.
A bunch of money has to go in up front, then trickles of money slowly over time, and occasionally spikes of money have to go in randomly.
In exchange there is a modest, predictable flow of money out, which eventually is larger than all the in-flows in the bull case.
The question to ask is: how much in and out of dollars and of Joules at each point in time?
How does that compare to hamsters on wheels, people on bicycles, and lighting things on fire?

> You appear to be starting from a premise that wind turbines don't generate profits?

This was never a stated premise, and my post starts with the opposite sentiment.