Hacker News: fvwqcecvq

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Tech note: making your own V-I plots at home"

fvwqcecvq — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:13:26 +0000

> $150k in today's dollars. They were very, very expensive.

It's very expensive for a hobbyist, but not very very expensive for a professional lab, which I think would be the target market for something like a Tektronix 576 in 1970. It's basically equivalent to buying a mid-tier 10GHz scope today Which is a normal piece of lab equipment in 2026 for a professional lab. It's not even uncommon to see them in University labs.

If a hobbyist wants an I-V curve you generate a 1Hz triangle wave of current with an dual opamp and use X-Y mode on your scope. More than good enough for the overwhelming majority of hobby applications. Unless you're writing a textbook and want fancy plots, then fine. Use an SMU. :)

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters"

fvwqcecvq — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 04:49:58 +0000

I think it's fair to say absorbing functions onto the CPU die, reducing the part count of motherboards, was a natural evolution of the PC and made sense. So I don't really fault Intel for that. But they definitely had other tricks up their sleeve...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters"

fvwqcecvq — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:36:19 +0000

Just out of curiosity, what is the change and how are you measuring its rate?

From no internet to internet the change is pretty profound. But my job is already very automated for the most part. It's true AI might automate it a bit more, but it's not like I'm going from zero automation to full on automation. That's not nothing, and it is worth something, but it's also not internet from no internet level of change either.

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Apple's rumored M7 Ultra targets 1.5TB and Blackwell-class AI performance"

fvwqcecvq — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:04:42 +0000

> On a performance-per-watt basis, Apple is still behind an Nvidia card with the juiced up power consumption, and when you dial back the power draw, Nvidia cards are miles ahead of Apple's silicon for performance-per-watt.

Do you have a citation on Apple vs nVidia performance-per-watt? I'm not aware of any benchmark that shows nVidia with a better performance-per-watt. Higher performance, sure, but performance-per-watt, not that I'm aware of.

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Apple's rumored M7 Ultra targets 1.5TB and Blackwell-class AI performance"

fvwqcecvq — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:00:42 +0000

No. It's always been about power efficiency. Apple's GPU are very good in that area just like the CPU.

https://arxiv.org/html/2502.05317v1

Apple vs. Oranges: Evaluating the Apple Silicon M-Series SoCs for HPC Performance and Efficiency

"Apple's M-series GPUs offer massive performance-per-watt, scaling efficiently from roughly 5W in base chips to around 40-50W in top-tier Max chips. This efficiency generally sits between 200 and 250 GFLOPS per Watt."

Sure. nVidia GPUs have higher performance. But they do it with 450W+ a.k.a. 10x the power

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Global review confirms mRNA vaccines are safe, effective and full of promise "

fvwqcecvq — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:45:25 +0000

No. And even during covid the all cause mortality rate was below pre 90s rates.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/189670/death-rates-for-a...

The highest cause was heart disease (~680K) which has a best preventative step of maintaining at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise weekly. Between 45% to 50% of Americans, of any age, are estimated to have done that.

New comment by fvwqcecvq in "Cursed circuits #6: reverse avalanche oscillator"

fvwqcecvq — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 02:26:10 +0000

I don't know, I found Sedra/Smith to be an excellent introduction.

But personally I think the whole Sedra/Smith vs Razavi argument is basically vi vs emacs for EEs.