Current Word

Snowden Backlash

Friday 2:27 pm, June 14th, 2013

It’s the institutions that need to demonstrate respect for the public they allegedly serve. If Snowden or any other American is skeptical of institutional power, it is not due to any personal failing on their part. The lack of respect is a direct outgrowth of the bad behavior of the nation’s institutions, behavior that has undermined Americans’ trust in them.

Link

The whole PRISM thing

Saturday 2:15 am, June 8th, 2013

I’m all for ubiquities SSL or a variant that doesn’t involve a third party on the server side. The web needs to be encrypted and there shouldn’t be any middle men.

Lua.js

Friday 12:26 pm, April 26th, 2013

I thought it might be cool to try to convert the Lua VM over to js using emscripten. Turns out someone already did it. Pretty neat.

Link

Competitive

Saturday 1:52 pm, April 20th, 2013

Costs and management issues aside, the biggest shock to most marijuana growers has been pot prices. As the industry becomes more competitive and there is more pot available, the price for a pound of high-quality weed in Denver has slid from $2,900 at the beginning of April in 2011 to $2,400 in the same period in 2012 to $2,000 this year, according to Roberto’s MMJ List, a service that connects wholesale sellers and buyers. At the height of summer demand in 2011, a pound sold for as much as $3,900.

Link

$125 for an ounce, $15 for an eighth. That’s the right way to bring an end to illegal drug trade.

SimCity is buggy!

Sunday 10:57 am, March 31st, 2013

I was pretty excited about this release, but the game as it currently stands is so riddled with bugs it’s practically unplayable. I’ve had multiple cities go down as a result of the dreaded “your city is not processing correctly” error, I’ve had one city simply disappear off the server it was supposed to be saved on, and last night I lost a city after it went nuclear despite a high education level for all the workers. The potential here is great, but this game is currently not worth the effort since you are pretty much guaranteed to lose your work after a few days of playing.

Maybe in six months once they work out all the bugs, but currently I just don’t feel like playing knowing something will eventually go wrong and I’ll have to start over.

SimCity is back

Sunday 3:43 pm, February 17th, 2013

Link

Check out the video. One of my all time favorite desktop games. Can’t wait.

Surface RT Jailbreak

Saturday 2:11 pm, February 2nd, 2013

Link here.

I’ve been experimenting with getting Firefox running on the RT. VS 2012 has full support for ARM development, and the ARM version of Windows 8 supports the Win32 API. Amazing really, Microsoft obviously thought about allowing 3rd party development, but backed out at some point. The tools though are there and work.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces perf

Saturday 1:27 pm, February 2nd, 2013

Interesting –

Sequential Read : 40.028 MB/s
Sequential Write : 24.254 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 25.066 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 24.446 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 0.624 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 2.037 MB/s

Using Seagate USB 3.0 5400 rpm drives for storage.

Hard Drive Perf

Saturday 12:54 pm, February 2nd, 2013

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WD, 7200 rpm
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Sequential Read : 88.048 MB/s
Sequential Write : 69.699 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 40.149 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 69.042 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 0.554 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 1.007 MB/s

Sequential Read : 29.525 MB/s
Sequential Write : 30.093 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 21.548 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 29.557 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 0.667 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 3.777 MB/s

Solid state drives rock. Interesting too that a USB 3.0 5400 rpm beat a USB 2.0 7200 rpm drive.

With various tweaks to settings for the solid state drive:

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no write caching
--------------------------------------------------
Sequential Write : 189.780 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 193.286 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 58.288 MB/s

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with write caching, no write buffer flushing
--------------------------------------------------
Sequential Write : 228.540 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 196.989 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 57.035 MB/s

Write caching helps, but turning off flush isn’t needed for the best performance.

Update – adding data from a new Microsoft Surface Pro – this is pretty mind blowing. The integrated Micron RealSSD C400 is freaky fast -


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Surface Pro Micron RealSSD C400
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 492.928 MB/s
Sequential Write : 114.242 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 385.979 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 114.220 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 20.494 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 43.988 MB/s

Compare that to my OCZ Vertex3 above. Wow.

How does this compare to expanded storage with a 64GB Kingston MicroSD?


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Surface Pro Kingston MicroSD expansion
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 37.170 MB/s
Sequential Write : 13.813 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 33.336 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.030 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 4.162 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.482 MB/s

blech.

Frank Quote

Friday 12:06 pm, December 21st, 2012

“I don’t think the government should be trying to make you a better person.”

Link