Facebook Embed

01 December 2014

Rowhammer: ECC DRAM by default?

Apparently, there has been a weakness in modern DRAM which had been known within the computing industry since 2012 which has been given name rowhammer. It is particularly the interesting because if how nearby memory locations have their bits flipped which violates the very foundation of our modern multiprocess systems.
Perhaps, it is time that all our PCs should have ECC memory by default which would at least fix single bit disturbances?

25 November 2014

Some project foundation classes for Java.

Have been organising and repackaging some of my source code for release as free open source code. The flavour du jour is Java and these are just a few foundation classes which will be built upon in further packages, hopefully released soon (time permitting). #OpenSource #BSD #Java https://github.com/xiphis/xiphis-utils

13 November 2014

Oh, how editing standards at The Guardian has fallen.

The Guardian posted this article, entitled: Women, beware this PUA army of sleazebags, saddos and weirdos by Hadley Freeman
"They’re sci-fi saddos; they’re World of Warcraft weirdos"
As someone who enjoys sci-fi and whose name is in the credits for more than one WoW game, this is inappropriate offensive mischaracterization. Some people are jerks because that is simply what they are and it has nothing to do with what fiction genre they enjoy or what computer games they have played.
I guess The Guardian is becoming just another sleazy tabloid with ineffective editors.

#TheGuardian

Originally posted at Facebook

07 August 2014

The right tool for the job...

I've just thought of a great analogy for something:

Imagine that a team has an OKR:

  • Objective: Secure a piece of wood to another piece of wood.
  • Key Results:
    1. Select a suitable fastener.
    2. Select a suitable tool.
    3. Fasten the pieces of wood together.

The team chooses a good wood screw.
The team chooses a good electric screwdriver.

The two items are designed to work together.


The team puts the wood screw into the hole.
The team then proceeds to use the electric screwdriver as a hammer,
hammering the screw into the hole.
Bits of the electric screwdriver shatter. The head of the screw is mangled.

OKR objective and key results achieved.


Now imagine that someone needs to fix this, afterwards.

31 July 2014

Opinion: Blogging about homophones and homonyms.

Homophones and homonyms are two very important aspects of the English language which non-native speakers of the language need to understand in order to adequately communicate unambiguously with native English speakers. If this person was fired for blogging about them from a "language school", then it can't have been a good language school.

31 May 2014

On Intelligence

Before going on holiday, I grabbed a book from my "to be read" pile and this time, it was the book "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins.
This is, by far, the most approachable book I have read on the topic in about 15 years and even though the first 100 pages of this 245 page book hasn't yet expounded upon the meat of the topic which the author wants to discuss, he does excellent job of using analogies to bring readers of many levels to the same point.
Jeff Hawkins puts together a very convincing case and I think that this book is a "must read" for everyone who, at least, has a passing curiosity on the nature and nurture of consciousness.

30 May 2014

Google Play Services

Why must "Google Play Services" use up 40% of my phone's power consumption? Ugh.
#android #googlefail