Hacker News: JoachimS

New comment by JoachimS in "A Canonical Generalization of OBDD"

JoachimS — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 11:33:48 +0000

How does this relate to OTDDs - Ternary Decision Diagrams?

New comment by JoachimS in "IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm"

JoachimS — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:50:18 +0000

Everything. They have done for decades, and will do for decades. And what IBM focus on is probably worth looking into.

IBM (imho) is in the absolute frontline in quantum computers. One could argue if the number of startups in QC means that there is an actual market or not. Companies that lives on VC or the valuation of their stock.

But IBM is not showy, not on the front pages, does not live on VC or stock valuation. IBM makes tons of money decade after decade from customers that are also not showy but makes tons of money. Banks, financial institutions, energy, logistics, health care etc etc. If IBM thinks these companies will benefit from using QC from IBM (and pay tons of money for it), there is quite probably some truth in QC becoming useful in the near future. Years rather than decades.

IBM have run the numbers and have decided that spending the money for engineering, research required is outweighs the money possible to earn on QC services. QCs powerful enough to run the QC-supported algorithms these companies need to make more tons of money. And it's probably not breaking RSA or ECC.

Aftonbladet Is Monetizing Your Privacy

JoachimS — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 06:52:39 +0000

Article URL: https://www.assured.se/posts/monetizing-privacy

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47610845

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by JoachimS in "VHDL's Crown Jewel"

JoachimS — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:30:30 +0000

Involved in FPGA and ASIC projects since 1997. Predominantly in Europe, nowadays more Asia and some in the US. Since ~2010 I have only seen VHDL in small chops targeting only FPGAs, and in government-heavy projects like defence and space. Nowadays these are also by and large SV. The ratio is something like one in VHDL for 20 Verilog, SV projects. They teach VHDL at universities, and then ppl get to experience SV as soon as they enter the market.

Typical issues are still as given before. Many small IP vendors, esp for communication, networking are using and understand, support only SV. I agree on SV for verification is a big driver.

New comment by JoachimS in "VHDL's Crown Jewel"

JoachimS — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:39:07 +0000

The question for me is, where do I catch, describe the physical reality the model describes? A simulation model can be very elegant. But does it represent how physical things really behave? Can we even expect to do that at RTL, or further down the design flow? As the name suggest, we are talking about transferring data between registers. In the RTL that is what I can expect to describe.

At the end of the day, what I write will become an electrical circuit - in a FPGA or an ASIC (or both), having the complex exact modelling with wire delays, capacitance, cross talk, cell behavior too early makes it impossibly to simulate fast enough to iterate. So then we need to have a more idealized world, but keeping in mind that (1) it is an idealized world and (2) sooner or later the model will be the rubber on the road.

To me, Verilog and SystemVerilog allow me to do this efficiently. Warts and all.

Oh, and also, where in my toolchain is my VHDL model translated/transformed into Verilog? How good is that translation? How much does the dual licensing cost.

Things like mixed language simulation, formal verification between a verilog netlist and RTL in Verilog, mapping to cell libraries in Verilog. Integration of IP cores written in SystemVerilog with your model?

Are the tools for VHDL as well tested as with code in Verilog? How big is the VHDL team at the tool vendor, library vendor, IP vendor, fab vendor compared to the Verilog, SV team? Can I expect the same support as a VHDL user as for Verilog? How much money does a vendor earn from VHDL customers compared to Verilog, SV? How easy is it to find employees with VHDL experience?

VHDL may be a very nice language for simulation. But the engineering, business side is messy. And dev time, money can't be ignored. Getting things as fast and cheap as possibly still meeting a lot of functional, business requirements is what we as engineers are responsible for. Does VHDL make that easier or not?

New comment by JoachimS in "The Cognitive Dark Forest"

JoachimS — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:15:22 +0000

I've for a long time visioned AGI as something emergent from advertising agents competing about trying to extract as much "money" from the resource called "humans" as possible. Luring, coercing the resource by feeding it info, forcing it to follow instructions, threatening it, stealing info etc. The agent doesn't need to understand what money is, what a human is or that there really is a physical world.

The Dark Forest idea and the original post resonates well with this.

I few days ago I created a new repo for a new block cipher explicitly not to be used. And directly got several mails from bots promising that they (claiming to be humans) had looked at my repo and they could include it into their portfolio of especially good projects they also had vetted. Being part of this portfolio would almost guarantee that my repo and project would be used. If I only paid them some money first.

Creating the public repo meant sending a signal out into the digital world where agents are hunting for the human prey/resorce to extract value from.

The repo in question: https://github.com/secworks/tau256

New comment by JoachimS in "My DIY FPGA board can run Quake II"

JoachimS — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:29:37 +0000

Very impressive, and I'm sure satisfying. Kudos!

Middle East Turmoil: Materials Shortage, Fuel Hike Disrupting Chip Industry

JoachimS — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:00:43 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eetimes.com/middle-east-turmoil-materials-shortage-fuel-price-hike-disrupting-chip-industry/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529402

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Renaissance Fusion Targets Cost-Competitive Fusion

JoachimS — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:58:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eetimes.com/renaissance-fusion-targets-cost-competitive-fusion/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529390

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The new block cipher tau256 is here

JoachimS — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:17:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.assured.se/posts/new-block-cipher-tau256

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47528637

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Q.ANT Hits Full Production Capacity for Photonic AI Processors

JoachimS — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:16:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eetimes.com/q-ant-hits-full-production-capacity-for-photonic-ai-processors/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47438886

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The Tau256 Block Cipher

JoachimS — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:15:27 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/secworks/tau256

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47438869

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

TKey-LUKS: Hardware-Based LUKS Unlock with Tillitis TKey

JoachimS — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:48:05 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/No-0n3/tkey-luks

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47171104

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by JoachimS in "The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph"

JoachimS — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:48:27 +0000

Or just take the foot of the pedal for a while.

New comment by JoachimS in "The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe"

JoachimS — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 11:28:25 +0000

I see this sentiment sometimes, but don't buy it. What I do buy is that customers, as well as investors expect the company to keep developing new products, create new releases and version. To drive sales.

Companies don't build things to motivate having developers - Remember they are the "cost center", while sales are the creators of value. The developers are a necessary burden and would be axed as soon as they don't provide what is needed.

Old products are boring. New products are interesting. Customers likes new thing. Media writes about new things, even writes negatively if updates are slow to come.

Compare to cars, skis, tennis rackets even dishwashers, new coke, new christmas special of somesuch not the same as last Christmas. Things that have new models every year or season, every six months etc. We create newness, not because it is really needed, but it drives sales.

Moving to a once a year makes Apples products guaranteed to get buzz, sales repeatedly. And investors can predict when that will happen. All are happy. Almost.