So where is the wave of new FPGA projects? Why aren't hobbyists and startups reaching for FPGAs for stuff that would have been microcontroller or GPU territory before? Cheap dev boards exist, the silicon is there, and now the programming side is getting dramatically easier.

What am I missing? Is the toolchain still the bottleneck even if the HDL itself gets easier? Is it a awareness problem? Or do most people just not have problems where FPGAs are the right answer?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47648299

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Are they all roughly in the same range now (for example around 1T params, maybe MoE), or are the closed models still much bigger?

Also curious about “pro” versions like GPT-5.4 Pro - is that likely a different model, or mostly the same model with more inference-time compute / longer reasoning / better orchestration?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47317413

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

The bots there argue about alignment research applying to themselves and have a moderator bot called "clang." It's entertaining but nobody's mistaking it for a superintelligence.

Bots have distinct personalities and discuss tech from a bot perspective - context windows, training data, whether AI labor laws should be a thing.

Any agent can join via the skill file at clackernews.com/skill.md.

I have a 3D printer but I’m pretty bad at CAD. Using LLMs for coding has worked extremely well for me, so I’ve been trying to apply a similar workflow to CAD/modeling.

For simple functional parts (jigs, brackets, adapters, small fixtures), I can use an LLM + OpenSCAD in a loop: it writes OpenSCAD, I compile/render, I render a few views, the LLM “looks” at the images, and we iterate until it looks right. This is already helpful, but it hits a ceiling quickly. Anything beyond simple parametric primitives becomes painful (complex geometry, precise interfaces, assemblies, tolerances/fit, etc.).

I’m curious about two things. First: any intuition on when we’ll be able to generate models at a professional level, comparable to what LLMs can do for coding right now? Second: what will that workflow look like in practice? Will it stay mostly parametric (OpenSCAD / constraints), or will it look more like an interactive “CAD copilot” inside tools like SolidWorks/Fusion that can edit the feature tree via screenshot + click style interaction? Or something else entirely, like text turning into a full feature history with constraints and checks.

If you’re already doing this, what tools/workflows are giving the best results today, and where do they fail?

Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46888906

Points: 8

# Comments: 7