Hacker News: rathel

New comment by rathel in "Ask HN: People to follow online like Caroline Ellison?"

rathel — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 14:30:36 +0000

From what I was able to gather, the onus is on the SBF for misappropriating FTX customers' funds. On the Alameda side it does not seem like a typical scam in the sense of "get money and run with it". "Just" a desperation out of illiquidity due to a credit crunch. Keep in mind that SBF was a 90% owner in Alameda anyway.

I am however positive she should have stayed out of crypto. Everybody in this space becomes at least morally gray at some critical point, even if they started well-intentioned.

But regardless of CE's intentions, you're posing a philosophical question: should we evaluate worldviews for what they are, or by who is possessing them. I lean towards the first one.

Ask HN: People to follow online like Caroline Ellison?

rathel — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 12:05:42 +0000

Abstracting from the company she was definitely not fit to lead, the more I researched her, the more she came through as an interesting personality. I binge read most of her Tumblr blog [1]. Guess I am platonically attracted to weirdos and misfits. And her takes on various stuff (SJ, relationships, society) really resonate with me.

But now that she's disappeared, whom in the same vein should I follow?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200419212155/https://worldoptimization.tumblr.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608135

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

New comment by rathel in "Where Are the Microelectronics Engineers?"

rathel — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 15:35:26 +0000

Internships? Yeah, nah. TSMC doesn't hand out technology NDAs to interns, which makes them kinda useless.

All in all, the IC design field is a decade or two behind software dev in terms of ergonomics. They're not going to attract a lot of talent, if the tooling remains as kludgy and unreliable as it is. What if GCC or Clang crashed on you once in a while "just because"? That's the reality of IC design flow.

On the flip side, the world at large has just realized the importance of chips, which makes the outlook mildly positive.

New comment by rathel in "Designing Billions of Circuits with Code"

rathel — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 18:53:44 +0000

Yes, BUT... Each new technology node (excluding shrinks) already disrupts the flow in many breaking ways. Seemingly small changes, new DRC requirements, the need to model more side effects all cooperate to make porting to a new node all but easy.

New comment by rathel in "Designing Billions of Circuits with Code"

rathel — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 18:29:49 +0000

Rest assured that one of the companies you mentioned has deployed a catalog of reusable software components not long ago. It's already quite populated. But the funny thing is, you need VP approval to submit your modules.

I agree that EDA companies are unnecessarily siloed and dated in many places.

Weren't it for the moat of hundreds of PhD's working on the algorithms, it'd have been disrupted to hell by startups.

New comment by rathel in "Use LC_ALL=C for big ASCII sorts"

rathel — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 15:02:36 +0000

Same with PostgreSQL:

https://www.paulnorman.ca/blog/2016/05/improve-your-st-geoha...

New comment by rathel in "Spain Plans to Invest $12.4B in Chips, Semiconductors"

rathel — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 14:59:49 +0000

I wonder what will come of it. Portugal had Chipidea which was somewhat successful, to be later acquired by MIPS and sold shortly after to Synopsys.

New comment by rathel in "Receiving FLEXlm Error -88,309: System Clock Has Been Set Back (2020)"

rathel — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:22:04 +0000

Cadence and Synopsys use it.

New comment by rathel in "An Old Vendor-Antagonizer Finally Gets His Comeuppance"

rathel — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 14:03:30 +0000

Sadly, the "cocktail party test" part is so true. How am I supposed to be proud of my work between that and "this one asshole customer" from Japan? (Tier 1's from USA are demanding, but reasonable).

We are woefully underappreciated industry. While we're B2B vendors, it's no rent-seeking sales-driven crap. It's actual innovation 1-3 years ahead what's in consumers' hands.

However, I think it is slowly beginning to change - with news about "chip sovereignty" initiatives and AI helping design SoC's going mainstream. People now realize how crucial ICs are when car factories close.

New comment by rathel in "Intel in talks to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30B"

rathel — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 16:01:04 +0000

Just designing on their node as a foundry customer.

New comment by rathel in "Intel in talks to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30B"

rathel — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:23:07 +0000

Intel did offer foundry services, at least 3 years ago or so, albeit designing stuff for that node required putting everything in separated environment, and simulating in separate compute farms. Even TSMC which was and is far ahead does not demand this level of paranoia, only documentation is put in secure isolated environment, other stuff being managed in the more reasonable way of unix groups, which are, well, good enough.

New comment by rathel in "Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?"

rathel — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 21:31:47 +0000

Do you realize that most locations where tech companies would seek talent have much better employee protection? No at-will employment, guaranteed annual and parental leave.

New comment by rathel in "Ditherpunk: The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering"

rathel — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 18:11:27 +0000

Why aren't such dense polynomials used more often?

Is it that we trade off something in return for less short-term correlation (maybe more long-term correlation)?

New comment by rathel in "GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran"

rathel — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 11:41:20 +0000

At work I had to take a course on US export control. The restrictions they bully everyone into are pretty nazi. Likewise with SWIFT. As evidenced by TFA it's always regular citizens that suffer. Compare this with EU sanctions that are targeted to particular companies and individuals.

New comment by rathel in "Computers Without Clocks – Ivan Sutherland (2002) [pdf]"

rathel — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:49:31 +0000

As Moore's law slows down, this time for real, there have been a few unorthodox ideas lately. 3DIC, or Cerebras' whole-wafer CPU. This looks like a thing worthy pursuing. With free money and big corps racing for a market first (disruptors trying not to be disrupted), who knows.

I wonder how much in terms of power-performance-area can be gained from going asynchronous.

Why do musicians ignore high-end audio? [video]

rathel — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:28:46 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM8sxFxmOUw

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25456401

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by rathel in "A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night"

rathel — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 14:38:36 +0000

Corner reflectors are crazy effective for such application, as referenced in another comment thread here.

New comment by rathel in "Computers Without Clocks – Ivan Sutherland (2002) [pdf]"

rathel — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 14:31:02 +0000

The whole digital ASIC synthesis flow revolves around timing closure i.e. satisfying setup and hold at max possible clock speed.

I guess we may even have to invent a new HDL to pursue asynchronous paradigm efficiently.

New comment by rathel in "Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them"

rathel — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 01:43:32 +0000

Not every form of cultural misunderstanding is racism. Why dilute the word? What does it even mean in this context?

I think, that this "art of" while exaggerated as you point out, is thrown around not entirely without reason. It's the first association that comes to writers' mind when you see how Japanese can elevate the most mundane (in Western understanding) stuff to the next level - think polishing mud balls, senko hanabi, kintsugi and so on.

Wikipedia: Don't Be High-Maintenance

rathel — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 19:51:39 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_be_high-maintenance

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25447621

Points: 29

# Comments: 15