<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: jdewerd</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jdewerd</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:42:37 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=jdewerd" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Every GPU That Mattered"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Loads of games from the era roundtripped their textures through lossy S3/DXT compression and then stored them as uncompressed RGB or RGBA.<p>I know this because I wrote a Unreal Engine texture repacking tool with a "DXT detection" feature so that I wouldn't be responsible for losing DXT compression on a texture which had already paid the price, only to find that this situation was already hyperabundant in the ecosystem.<p>Many Unreal Engine games of the day could have their size robotically halved just by re-enabling DXT compression in any case where this would cause zero pixel difference. This was at a time before Steam, when game downloads routinely took a day, so I was very excited about this discovery. Unfortunately, the first few developers I emailed all reacted with hostility to an unsolicited tip from what I'm sure they saw as a hacker, so I lost interest in pushing and it went nowhere. Ah well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:20:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47675829</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47675829</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47675829</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How long until it comes with a DRM AI and then my anti-DRM AI will have to fight it in a virtual arena (with neon lights and killer soundtrack, of course)?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 18:46:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45904152</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45904152</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45904152</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Europe to decide if 6 GHz is shared between Wi-Fi and cellular networks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>ISM is thriving, the only tragedy is that carriers haven't figured out how to charge rents on it and that's a tragedy for <i>them</i>, it's a spectacular success for everyone using it for free.<p>Carriers don't need 6GHz for backhaul. They have fiber and cable and (other) microwave. Not to mention the ability to shape their own links with antennas and beam forming and do a good job of it rather than a "default job." What they don't have -- and shouldn't be given under any circumstances -- is the excuse to build a moat in the bustling public park.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 18:11:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878840</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878840</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878840</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Europe to decide if 6 GHz is shared between Wi-Fi and cellular networks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Completely independent of bandwidth, higher frequencies also fall off faster. That's bad if you are trying to cover max space but good if you are trying to avoid noisy neighbors.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:11:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878103</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878103</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878103</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Europe to decide if 6 GHz is shared between Wi-Fi and cellular networks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I never said anything about free or government-run WiFi, just about auctioning off the spectrum. Companies that build out the infrastructure should be able to charge for access, but they shouldn't be able to prevent others from competing by paying the government for exclusivity. That's a scam.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:06:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878033</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878033</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878033</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Europe to decide if 6 GHz is shared between Wi-Fi and cellular networks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The most efficient way to extract money from people is to sell off the spectrum to the highest bidding rent seeker, I agree.<p>As for most efficient use of the resource, well, consulting my spectrum analyzer, ISM bands are winning by a mile and we should want more of them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 16:35:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45877670</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45877670</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45877670</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "AMD adds RF-sampling data converters to Versal adaptive SoCs (2024)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is that because defense doesn't like them or is it because (non-wartime) defense moves on geological timescales and these are "new"?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2025 14:51:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933070</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933070</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933070</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Benchmarking RSA Key Generation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, but the more we mix sieve rejection into candidate selection the more we complicate the rule of thumb. "Reject even numbers as prime candidates" is probably OK to leave as an exercise for the reader, as is the equivalent "round every candidate to odd" optimization. The point about random vs sequential is well taken, though, and it doesn't complicate the rule of thumb, so I changed it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jan 2025 17:31:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42587632</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42587632</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42587632</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Benchmarking RSA Key Generation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, excellent point! I originally omitted this detail for simplicity, but on reflection I don't think it actually achieved much in the way of simplifying the rule so I changed it to reflect reality. Thanks for pointing that out.<p>EDIT: the rush of people offering up sieve optimizations is pushing me back towards formulating the rule of thumb on a consecutive block of numbers, since it makes it very clear that these are not included, rather than implicitly or explicitly including some subset of them (implicit is bad because opacity, explicit is bad because complexity).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jan 2025 16:32:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42587036</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42587036</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42587036</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Benchmarking RSA Key Generation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The prime-counting function approximation tells us there are Li(x) primes less than x, which works out[5] to one prime every 354 odd integers of 1024 bits.<p>Rule of thumb: Want a 1024-bit prime? Try 1024 1024-bit candidates and you'll probably find one. Want a 4096-bit prime? Try 4096 4096-bit candidates and you'll probably find one.<p>The approximate spacing of primes around p is ln(p), so ln(2^1024) = 1024*ln(2), and ln(2)=0.693 so if you are willing to absorb 0.693 into your rule of thumb as a safety margin you get the delightfully simple rule of thumb above. Of course, you'll still want to use a sieve to quickly reject numbers divisible by 2, 3, 5, 7, etc, and this easily rejects 90% of numbers, and then do a Fermat primality test on the remainders (which if you squint is sort of like "try RSA, see if it works"), and then do Miller-Rabin test to really smash down the probability that your candidate isn't prime. The probabilities can be made absurdly small, but it still feels a bit scandalous that the whole thing is probabilistic.<p>EDIT: updated rule of thumb to reflect random candidate choice rather than sequential candidate choice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jan 2025 14:58:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42586168</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42586168</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42586168</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Jimmy Carter has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh, he only busted the Great Depression, won WWII, built half of the infrastructure that we keep kicking the expiration date on, and negotiated 80% of the beneficial fine print in your employment contract. Don't you think he could have done a bit more?<p>My list would be: 1. FDR, 2. Carter, 3. Teddy. Carter because he sacrificed his career to fix inflation (Republican attempts to rewrite history notwithstanding), and Teddy because he wasn't merely an excellent man with excellent politics, but also because whenever present-day Republicans try to claim the man without claiming his politics I can turn it into a teachable moment, and putting him on a list with the other two is the perfect bait.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 29 Dec 2024 22:42:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42544121</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42544121</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42544121</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "US could ban TP-Link routers over hacking fears: report"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I love cheap and reliable TP-Link routers as much as the next guy, but it's definitely also a security issue. The CCP almost certainly has a backdoor. Maybe a respectable one in the form of an undisclosed bug or the ability to lean on an update provider, but the point stands: it's absolutely a security issue and denying this is cope.<p>Routers are going to be a bit more expensive and a bit less reliable for a while. We'll live.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Dec 2024 16:13:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451749</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451749</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451749</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "The First 50M Prime Numbers (1975) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I thought Shor's algorithm could attack ECC too and the lattice crypto with the sci-fi crystal names (Kyber and Dilithium) was the response?<p>If I go to <a href="https://www.google.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com</a> using Chrome and Inspect > Security, I see it is using X25519Kyber768Draft00 for key exchange. X25519 is definitely ECC and and Kyber is being used for key encapsulation (per a quick google). I don't know to what extent it can be used independently vs it's new so they are layering it up until it has earned the right to stand on its own.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2024 01:44:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427292</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427292</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427292</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "The First 50M Prime Numbers (1975) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Cool, I hadn't run into it before so thanks for introducing me!<p>I was going to include the digits for comparison, but yes, on second thought 6002 digits is probably too much for polite inclusion in a HN post.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2024 01:27:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427219</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427219</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427219</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "The First 50M Prime Numbers (1975) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The 50 000 000th prime is 982451653, but fun fact: you may have already memorized a prime much larger than this without even realizing you have done so!<p>2^255-19<p>This is where Curve 25519 and the associated cryptography (ed25519, x25519) gets its name from. Written out, 2^255-19=57896044618658097711785492504343953926634992332820282019728792003956564819949.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:29:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426978</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426978</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426978</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> There's already a panoply of CUDA alternatives<p>Is there?<p>10 years ago, I burned about 6 months of project time slogging through AMD / OpenCL bugs before realizing that I was being an absolute idiot and that the green tax was far cheaper than the time I was wasting. If you asked AMD, they would tell you that OpenCL was ready for new applications and support was right around the corner for old applications. This was incorrect on both counts. Disastrously so, if you trusted them. I learned not to trust them. Over the years, they kept making the same false promises and failing to deliver, year after year, generation after generation of grad students and HPC experts, filling the industry with once-burned-twice-shy received wisdom.<p>When NVDA pumped and AMD didn't, presumably AMD could no longer deny the inadequacy of their offerings and launched an effort to fix their shit. Eventually I am sure it will bear fruit. But is their shit actually fixed? Keeping in mind that they have proven time and time and time and time again that they cannot be trusted to answer this question themselves?<p>80% margins won't last forever, but the trust deficit that needs to be crossed first shouldn't be understated.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Dec 2024 17:19:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42298219</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42298219</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42298219</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Nukefix: Simulating your nuclear weapons program"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Haha, yep. Under construction!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2024 20:01:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40278868</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40278868</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40278868</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "A Mathematical Theory of Communication [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Jargon and shared context are barriers for newbies. In a new field they simply don't exist yet. The avenues for accidentally excluding people (or intentionally but I like to be charitable) don't exist yet.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 03:33:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40254583</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40254583</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40254583</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Could have done without the first paragraph. :)<p>Sure, let's turn down the temperature.<p>> youre being flippantly dismissive to the point of shading instead of illuminating<p><i>Let's turn down the temperature.</i><p>> I wouldn't be excited to have either Australia ... or Chile ... as my sources<p>China is even less excited than you are to have Australia and Chile as their sources. Eliminating a small pain from the USA and a big pain from China gives a net benefit to China, so it's weird to see it advertised as a net benefit for the USA.<p>That said, raw material availability isn't the limiting factor here. We probably shouldn't even be discussing it.<p>> requires discussion about new battery chemistry supply chains to only discuss lithium-ion (??)<p>That's the alternative Na-ion has to beat. We could build lithium refining and manufacturing capacity in the US sphere of influence. Evaluations of any new technology should compare it to the best available alternatives, yes?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 21:36:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252665</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252665</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252665</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by jdewerd in "Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) has been ramping for a decade, with "no cobalt" as a selling point. It's not huge in the US, but it is in China.<p><a href="https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/en/blog/themen/batterie-update/globale-batterieproduktion-analyse-standorte-mengen-zellen-lfp-nmc-nca-kathoden/jcr:content/fixedContent/pressArticleParsys/wideimage/imageComponent/image.img.jpg/1687946436618/Battery-production-LFP-NMC-NCA-cathode-material.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/en/blog/themen/batterie-update...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2024 21:02:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252356</link><dc:creator>jdewerd</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252356</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252356</guid></item></channel></rss>