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ndesaulniers

6,870 karma · joined July 30, 2012

https://nickdesaulniers.github.io
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ndesaulniers··on Grok 4.7
> Grok 4.5 solved some issues setting up a buildroot system that Fable 5 couldn't do.

Lol, probably because Tesla's software stack is buildroot based. I'll bet that was in the training data.

ndesaulniers··on Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields
> The important thing is really who's on the girl's soccer team

I've not heard this expression before; can someone explain it to me?

ndesaulniers··on The V8 JavaScript Runtime Undermined My Constant-Time JavaScript Library
Definitely. I wasn't aware about constant time constraints at the time.
ndesaulniers··on The V8 JavaScript Runtime Undermined My Constant-Time JavaScript Library
I was working on reimplementing the WebRTC stack in JavaScript a long time ago, never finished. The crypto folks at Mozilla (ekr@) suggested "maybe don't do that for dTLS."
ndesaulniers··on Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
I encourage folks with a PlayStation 5 (or 4) to participate in the blackout by unplugging their console for the week of August 23 at 7:00 PM your local time and run to August 31 at 7:00 PM your local time. Hopefully that helps send a message. We should irrevocably own our games, not rent a revokable license. And we should have price competition from multiple store fronts.
ndesaulniers··on We accidentally built an LLVM compiler for Jax
Ah, I'm behind the times.
ndesaulniers··on We accidentally built an LLVM compiler for Jax
Yeah, guess I should have used the past tense there.
ndesaulniers··on We accidentally built an LLVM compiler for Jax
Neat. XLA predates MLIR. Interesting stories there. You'd have to stop by the Bay Area LLVM monthly meetup to hear them. :-X

> So if XLA already uses LLVM, why is our approach different?

Uses MLIR, XLA does not.

> So… what is the point?

> Honestly? We aren’t entirely sure yet.

> Let me be perfectly clear: this is not going to beat XLA for standard deep learning workloads. XLA has years of hyper-specific optimizations for linear algebra on GPUs and TPUs. If you are training a massive transformer, stick to standard JAX.

> But what we do think is cool is what happens when you connect JAX directly to the broader LLVM ecosystem and drop the heavy XLA runtime. (Plus, no need to build XLA using Bazel either! You’re welcome.)

ndesaulniers··on RipGrep musl binaries occasionally segfault during very-large searches
Heh, from the kernel patch: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CALCETrXbj__SFQMzPZhES5y6-sh4np-...

> I saw a fun bug report in ripgrep and a studious but pretty bad AI-generated analysis

Referring to https://github.com/dfoxfranke/ripgrep-3494-analysis which I indeed thought "that's an awful lot written to have been written by a human."

Looks like that thread is from...today!

ndesaulniers··on The Art of 64-bit Assembly
I was able to use Claude to translate a few thousand lines of assembler from one syntax+toolchain to another. Process was definitely iterative; had to keep adding a few rules along the lines of "don't do this...here's the equivalent pattern." But in the end it did a good job and saved me a ton of time. Allowed me to move a ton of unit tests off a hand rolled broken+bad assembler to a modern production toolchain.
ndesaulniers··on The Art of 64-bit Assembly
The Linux kernel prefers GAS (or clang) w/ the C preprocessor. Luckily most of clang's assembler unit tests (and LLVM's MC layer unit tests) also use GAS style syntax.
ndesaulniers··on Fil-C: Garbage In, Memory Safety Out [video]
I like the inline asm sanitizer; probably could be extracted out of Fil-C.
ndesaulniers··on Neither GCC nor Clang are compliant with standard C++
Shrug, then write a defect report?
ndesaulniers··on The lost joy of music piracy
Just setup lidarr and plex. Not happy about having to re-arrange all my loose files, but claude and beets are helping.
ndesaulniers··on The lost joy of music piracy
Final Fantasy FMVs set to edgy nu metal.

Man, I _had_ a limewire shirt (somewhere); they interviewed at my college. Where is that important piece of history?

ndesaulniers··on Memory Safe Inline Assembly
> There's no control flow out of the inline assembly.

So no `asm goto` support yet?

ndesaulniers··on The beauty and simplicity of the good old C-style void* in C++
I find this point to be generally why C can typically beat C++ in terms of code size; generic functions operating on void* are much less type safe, but the tradeoff is code size. Those template instantiations add up.
ndesaulniers··on C extensions, portability, and alternative compilers
> it took significant effort to e.g. get clang to compile the Linux kernel (needing patches in both projects).

Tell me about it. :-)

ndesaulniers··on sp.h: Fixing C by giving it a high quality, ultra portable standard library
I spent a bit of time implementing parts of a C runtime for the brief tenure I had maintaining LLVM's libc. I quickly came the realization that a lot of the interfaces that made it all the way to standardization were trash. How the language is standardized is still comical to me. I agree with TFA that C style strings are trash.
ndesaulniers··on Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses
Good then that Amazon sells it by the 55 gal drum then.

https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Lubes-Natural-Water-Based-Lub...

> This product is out of stock

Ah, shoot, there go my weekend plans. Bummer.

ndesaulniers··on Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit
I find it ironic; George Orwell was English!
ndesaulniers··on No way to parse integers in C (2022)
It's a shame we never got a package manager for C (or C++).

EDIT: perhaps I should have been clearer; by not having one early on, we now have multiple competing package managers, with no clear winner. Responses prove that point.

ndesaulniers··on Saying Goodbye to Asm.js
A long time ago, I wrote a small chapter in a WebGL book on asm.js.

https://webglinsights.github.io/

It was fun to see the rise of asm.js, which was a precursor to Web Assembly. Some of the early demos were so cool to see; Unreal Engine running in the browser. :) Bitter sweet to see the sun set here, but it did lead to much better things.

ndesaulniers··on The Fil-C Optimized Calling Convention
Dig the posters in the background; I just saw Burning Ambition in theaters last week. Up the irons, Earth dog! Ghost opened for Iron Maiden a few years ago; I saw them all together in Oakland.
ndesaulniers··on Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid
There was a recent class action suit against GM for this.
ndesaulniers··on Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)
Interesting. This past weekend, I got a chance to speak with Corvette's chief engineer Josh Holder at Chevrolet's Corvette Corral for the IMSA race at Laguna Seca.

I asked him if we'd see an all electric Corvette in the C8 timeframe, or would have to wait until the C9?

He confirmed (to the group) there would not be an all electric C8.

GM has long done "crate" engines, where people swap their cars OE engine for one of GM's small block v8s (an "LS or LT swap") frequently found in Corvettes, Escalades, and probably Silverado/large trucks/SUVs.

Seeing an electric crate engine from GM shows me that they plan to do the same with an electrified power train. Cool.

ndesaulniers··on WiiFin – Jellyfin Client for Nintendo Wii
I run it in a docker container behind traefik in another container. Getting that wired up and working in podman was quite the challenge. Docker container mounts my media as read only.
ndesaulniers··on System Card: Claude Mythos Preview [pdf]
Also, https://web.archive.org/web/20260407181432/https://www-cdn.a...
ndesaulniers··on Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta
It was a page turner. I recommend it.
ndesaulniers··on Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
When you buy movie tickets, you go see the movie.

When I purchase a game, I generally don't have time to play it.

We are not the same.

This may be why gaming is a few multiples larger an industry than film.

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