Hacker News: voidbert

New comment by voidbert in "Run RISC-V Binaries on AMD Zen-Series CPUs via Microcode Modification"

voidbert — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 23:15:10 +0000

So, could it be a feasable for a Zen CPU to have multiple microcode banks it switches between, so that it can run code in multiple architectures? For example, in addition to x86, some microcode for running WebAssembly or Java bytecode with native performance and no JIT overhead?

New comment by voidbert in "FOSDEM 2025: Streaming Schedule"

voidbert — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 14:59:18 +0000

If you are going to specific devrooms instead of specific talks, you usually don't need to wait in line before getting in. At least that was my experience last year: I got there early in the morning and the rooms were not very full.

New comment by voidbert in "SiFive's P550 Microarchitecture"

voidbert — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 13:40:28 +0000

From what I understand, this core tries to ourperform the A75 in IPC whilst using less area. However, the P550 cores run at a lower frequency (1.4GHz) than the A75 (2GHz). I wonder if this optimization for area, like in Zen4c, makes it impossible to drive the core at a high frequency, hindering its maximum performance. Nonetheless, it's a great RISC-V core, especially when compared to what brands like SpaceMit and Alibaba T-Head offer.

New comment by voidbert in "Picking Glibc Versions at Runtime"

voidbert — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:23:09 +0000

You can use bubblewrap, the sandbox Flatpak uses. However, the command lines will get pretty long.

New comment by voidbert in "What happened to the Japanese PC platforms?"

voidbert — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 09:32:47 +0000

And interestingly for a graphing calculator, it lacks an FPU, and all floating point math has to be done in software.

New comment by voidbert in "Turning Disposable Vapes into a Fast Charge Power Bank"

voidbert — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 21:50:01 +0000

If these vapes are disposable, wouldn't it be cheaper for the manufacturers to use non-rechageable battery technologies like the many ones on AA(A) batteries?

New comment by voidbert in "Japan wants its hardworking citizens to try a 4-day workweek"

voidbert — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 18:22:34 +0000

From what I read, Greece's policy was (partially) due to labour shortages during the tourism season, while Japan has lots of workers who work many unproductive hours (some just go to the office for the sake of going). I'd say they're different policies for quite different contexts.

New comment by voidbert in "RISC-V CPU arrives on a tablet starting at $149"

voidbert — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 12:43:22 +0000

If the tablet has both mainline kernel and uboot, it shouldn't be too hard for someone with embbeded Linux experience to port other distros over. However, there's quite a learning curve to doing it yourself.

New comment by voidbert in "RP2350 Hazard3 Added to LLVM"

voidbert — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 22:11:17 +0000

That was possible before when targeting RV32. If I understand correctly, this makes it possible for LLVM to use all RISC-V extensions supported by the core with a simple command line (the patch describes what features the core supports), resulting in better-optimized code.

However, to run any language on the Pi Pico, that language still needs to interop with Pico's SDK, which you'd have to do manually if no one created bindings yet.

New comment by voidbert in "Using alternative browser engines in the European Union"

voidbert — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 09:14:12 +0000

Even if someone got unsigned machine code execution on V8's or SpiderMonkey's JIT, the same could happen on JavaScript Core. All browsers could be vulnerable to something like this (it's just a matter of time before a vulnerability appears), and Apple should be focusing on securing their app sandbox.

In terms of privacy and third party apps, isn't the protection domain name based? Those are native apps, so browser protection wouldn't work.

New comment by voidbert in "EU Council to Vote on Chat Scanning Proposal on Thursday"

voidbert — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:31:03 +0000

Fixed deputy -> MEP. Thanks!

New comment by voidbert in "EU Council to Vote on Chat Scanning Proposal on Thursday"

voidbert — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:01:15 +0000

Most people are just concerned about economic and social issues, and the implications this proposal has on freedom of speech and what that means to democracy seems to be unknown to most. In Portugal, this proposal was not debated nor was it present on most parties' electoral agendas. Furthermore, I got no replies from the MEP candidates I emailed about their opinion on chatcontrol. Even if I wanted to vote accordingly to this proposal, I simply couldn't.

New comment by voidbert in "Goodbye to the C++ Implementation of Zig"

voidbert — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 16:08:34 +0000

(2022)

New comment by voidbert in "Intel-undervolt: CPU undervolting and throttling configuration tool for Linux"

voidbert — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:20:45 +0000

Please consider the risks of the following vulnerability before deciding whether or not to undervolt: https://plundervolt.com/

New comment by voidbert in "The European Union's remarkable growth performance relative to the United States"

voidbert — Wed, 01 May 2024 12:41:50 +0000

From an ethical perspective, tech monopolies aren't a very good idea. However, from a purely economics standpoint, tech giants make up a not insignificant part of the US's GDP.

New comment by voidbert in "Reddit Will License Its Data to Train LLMs, We Made a FF Extension to Replace"

voidbert — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 11:47:51 +0000

I don't know about singular posts, but if you wish to delete your account and all your data, they must comply.

New comment by voidbert in "Did any processor implement an integer square root instruction?"

voidbert — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 17:18:08 +0000

Yes, but the part that got me was the halving of the result followed by the clamping. SIMD generally makes sense, but for something like this to exist usually there's something very specific (like a certain video codec, for example) that greatly benefits from such a complex instruction.

New comment by voidbert in "Did any processor implement an integer square root instruction?"

voidbert — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 16:42:06 +0000

What task benefits from using such a complex instruction so easily dividable in simpler ones for it to be present in aarch64?

New comment by voidbert in "A disk so full, it couldn't be restored"

voidbert — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 12:22:44 +0000

But charging through many ports requires extra circuitry to support more power on every port, while booting from multiple ports just requires the boot sequence firmware to talk to more than one USB controller (like PC motherboards do, for example)

New comment by voidbert in "Don't dry your iPhone in a bag of rice, says Apple"

voidbert — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 13:08:13 +0000

Their argument doesn't even make any sense - rice particles may damage your already damaged phone.