Hacker News: blackguardx

New comment by blackguardx in "AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes"

blackguardx — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:00:46 +0000

Xilinx is/was an FPGA company until AMD bought them. Their primary revenue stream is selling chips. This is the equivalent of going back to the days of paid C/C++ compilers (anybody else remember that?).

New comment by blackguardx in "AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes"

blackguardx — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:56:50 +0000

The "free" version of Vivado is used to develop for Xilinx/AMD's lower tier FPGAs. While offering what I assume are lower profit margins, these lower tier FPGAs make up a large portion of Xilinx/AMD's chip volume.

Xilinx/AMD charging for any of their tools is also a recent thing. 20 years ago, you could download these tools freely without even having to register on their website.

New comment by blackguardx in "Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers"

blackguardx — Wed, 27 May 2026 21:05:46 +0000

NORAD relies on radar stations in Canada.

New comment by blackguardx in "Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027"

blackguardx — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:32:35 +0000

It is probably a good idea to review some instructions before jump starting a car because even though it is simple, if you do it wrong (connect the battery terminal last) you can blow up your battery from the ignition of hydrogen gas.

New comment by blackguardx in "Another Day Has Come"

blackguardx — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:55:05 +0000

The iPhone 4 was easily disassembled with screwdrivers...

New comment by blackguardx in "Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence"

blackguardx — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:54:56 +0000

You don't need rivers for nuclear reactor cooling, they are just very convenient.

New comment by blackguardx in "Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court"

blackguardx — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:38:17 +0000

It is almost like the flip-flopping policy was never meant to boost US manufacturing, but to secure kickbacks and deals from big companies and countries to get favored treatment.

Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

blackguardx — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:27:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c0l9r67drg7t

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47089213

Points: 1527

# Comments: 1291

New comment by blackguardx in "Doin' It with a 555: One Chip to Rule Them All"

blackguardx — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:33:52 +0000

555 timers were everywhere back in the day. It was one of the most mass produced chips at the time with over 1 billion made per year.

New comment by blackguardx in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

blackguardx — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 22:34:17 +0000

Altium isn't great, but you must not have tried the others...

New comment by blackguardx in "Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15"

blackguardx — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 04:29:44 +0000

My minivan has more 50% weight capacity than a Toyota Tacoma. I can haul more construction debris and load/unload them easier because my tailgate is lower. I wouldn't want to try to haul mulch or manure though. That being said, most of my friends with trucks have caps on the back and can't haul mulch any easier than me.

New comment by blackguardx in "Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15"

blackguardx — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:24:01 +0000

Loading drywall into my minivan is a lot easier than a truck. I can fit whole sheets and close the back gate so I don't need to strap them down and they are protected from the elements.

New comment by blackguardx in "Eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece (2023)"

blackguardx — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 19:31:37 +0000

mm/hr is more useful for areas that get lots of rain. When I was living in Seattle, chance of rain was meaningless but mm/hr made the difference between being able to do an outside activity or not. In California, chance of rain makes sense because it rains very little.

New comment by blackguardx in "We recreated Steve Jobs's 1975 Atari horoscope program"

blackguardx — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 06:01:38 +0000

Jobs was actually a technician at Atari, assembling circuit boards during the night shift. Jobs was later paid by Atari to make Breakout, but basically subcontracted it to Wozniak for 50% of the contract. Jobs ended up paying Wozniak less than 1/10 of how much Atari paid him.

New comment by blackguardx in "FPGAs Need a New Future"

blackguardx — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 21:02:56 +0000

VHDL is based on Ada, so it also inherits from sequential programming models.

New comment by blackguardx in "FPGAs Need a New Future"

blackguardx — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 01:53:42 +0000

I think this can just be summarized to "write any HDL like you are modeling real hardware." Both VHDL and Systemverilog were primarily intended for validation and synthesis is a second class citizen.

New comment by blackguardx in "FPGAs Need a New Future"

blackguardx — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:48:04 +0000

You can pretty much do everything in Vivado from the command line as long as you know Tcl...

Also, modern Verilog (AKA Systemverilog) fixes a bunch of the issues you might have had. There isn't much advantage to VHDL these days unless perhaps you are in Europe or work in certain US defense companies.

New comment by blackguardx in "US Administration halted largest Offshore Wind project in the U.S."

blackguardx — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:56:14 +0000

I live near both wind turbines and oil/gas fracking sites in Colorado. The wind turbines are far less obtrusive. Fracking sites produce a lot of noise and they try to hide them with these giant walls that look like a post-apocalyptic fort. On top of that, because they don't disclose their fracking fluids you always kind of have ground water contamination near your home on the back of your mind.

I'm not even against fracking but the alternatives to wind and solar are more a public nuisance to live around.

New comment by blackguardx in "After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up"

blackguardx — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 12:02:12 +0000

They have plenty of mines for iron amd otber metals in western countries as well. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana

New comment by blackguardx in "Bad Dye Job"

blackguardx — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:50:31 +0000

TouchID doesn't really for me on my Macbook or iPad. It has about a 25% success rate. I think one issue is that I work with my hands a lot.