Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 09 2020 01:37 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, April 11 2020 05:21 AM (cTMj+)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 11 2020 06:33 AM (Iwkd4)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• I downloaded Nim and installed it on WSL and compiled a trivial test application and...  It worked.  Completely painless.  Compiles in roughly a second, most of which is spent loading the compiler because WSL is kind of slow at initialising binaries.
  
  The compiled size for a trivial app that just reads some text from the user and responds is 90K.  75K stripped, 41K upxed.  (upxed binaries don't work on WSL1 though.)
  
  That's pretty acceptable; I'll rewrite my Crystal system monitoring agent in Nim and see how it goes with a simple real-world app (it needs, for example, HTTPS support).  On advantage I'm hoping to see from the C back-end is a smarter linker than Crystal has.
  
  The problem with using either one seriously at my day job is the state of the MongoDB drivers, since we have many terabytes of MongoDB databases we aren't about to migrate.
  
  Both come with MySQL and PostgreSQL drivers, and Elasticsearch is a REST API and therefore not a problem, but we need solid MongoDB support.
  
  Update: With the HTTPClient and SSL libraries pulled in - and working, since I had it actually download this page - the binary is 287K in full or 97K stripped and upxed.  That is entirely acceptable.  It's an order of magnitude smaller than the Crystal equivalent.
  
  Update Two: Wait, is that really a static binary? My usual test is to drop it on a horribly out-of-date Linux box and see if it still works, but I just turned off all of those.
  
  The documentation suggests that Nim builds static libraries by default, but that's awfully small if it's really pulled in OpenSSL.  I suspect that it might be "static except for OpenSSL" or some such nonsense.  But then, that's pretty much what Crystal does on Mac.
  
  
  
• Replace the innards of your Gamecube with a Ryzen 3200G-based Gamecube emulator.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Because why not?
  
  
  
• So in what sense is OpenVMS open?  (Legacy OS)
  
  The final hobbyist licenses for OpenVMS will expire at the end of 2021.
  
  
  
• A look at the Xeon 5220R.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Wait, didn't we just do that one?  Oh, that was the 6226R?  Okay.
  
  This is a 24 core Xeon at a sharply reduced price compared to last year, as Intel struggles to find a way to compete with AMD.  And mostly fails, to be brutally honest.  It's beaten soundly by the 24 core Epyc 7402, and in many cases, by the 16 core Epyc 7302.
  
  Where the 6-series supports up to four sockets, the 5-series only supports the more common two.  Although the 6226R also only supports two sockets, so there's not a huge difference here.
  
  In short, it's a much more cost-effective chip from Intel if you're stuck with Intel.  If you're not stuck with Intel and don't need a ton of RAM per sever, there are faster better cheaper options.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 09 2020 01:05 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 09 2020 02:01 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 09 2020 03:45 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 09 2020 04:20 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 09 2020 09:36 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Posted by: GreyDuck at Wednesday, April 08 2020 02:43 AM (rKFiU)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• We have two more Threadripper servers being configured at my day job. 
  
  I'm going to set them all up as an LXD 4.0 cluster.  We're probably going to need Docker, which is not exactly best friends with LXD, but with LXD 4.0 I can run a full virtual machine and then run Docker inside that.
  
  72 cores at up to 4.5GHz, 384GB RAM, 45TB of enterprise MLC NVMe SSD, and 48TB of spinning rust across three servers.
  
  I could have gone for the 3970X, but I don't think we need those extra cores, and the price difference will pay for a nice little dev server - probably a Xeon 2276.
  
  
  
• Yes, we don't like Fox News.  No, that doesn't mean this lawsuit against them is anything more than goat vomit.  (TechDirt)
  
  This is why TechDirt remains sort of worth reading.  On the third hand, they note:

  The San Diego article has quite the interview with Arthur West, who runs WASHLITE, and it feels like every word he said is designed to troll Ken "Popehat" White

  Which seems laudable to me.
  
  
  
• The most 2020 headline ever.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  
  
• The stupid you will have with you always.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  In this case it's almost certainly moderately stupid grifters shaking down the truly stupid, but the result is the same.
  
  
  
• This video will die in 100 days.
  
  
  
  
  
• AMD, could you release another CPU please?  The last one gave me content for days.
  
  
  
• Crystal 0.34 is out.  (Crystal-Lang)
  
  Not a lot of language changes; things are getting more stable as they approach 1.0.  They have tidied up some features so that, for example, a case statement will detect whether you are checking all the possible values and refuse to compile if not.  You can include an else condition as a catch-all, but you have to do that explicitly.
  
  I like Crystal, and I like the direction it's headed in.  I need to catch up on Nim as well and see where that is, because I'd like to be able to deploy to Windows and Crystal won't be there for a while yet.
  
  
  
• Mochizuki's inter-universal Teichmüller proof has been published.  (Phys.org)
  
  Mathematicians are still debating whether it actually is a proof, and Mochizuki and Teichmüller themselves aren't being terribly helpful.
  
  This - if it is validated - would prove the abc conjecture, which would in turn prove a whole bunch of stuff, including a much simpler proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.  (Which has been proven, but is fiendishly complicated.)
  
  
  
• The hot new game for 2020 is finding a time when your supermarket both has toilet paper in stock and has delivery slots open.
  
  Right now it's a but not b.  Earlier it was b but not a.
  
  I went out yesterday - I needed to resupply on antihistamines, because if my allergies started playing up and I was sneezing all the time I wouldn't be able to go out in public - and not only was the toilet paper aisle empty, the toilet paper aisle was gone.  
  
  Lots and lots of nappies where it would have normally been.  If you're a tiny baby - or elderly and infirm, I suppose - you can continue pooping on your regular schedule.
  
  I have groceries arriving tomorrow morning between 4 AM and 9 AM, which is a time slot that didn't exist in pre-apocalypse days, though the ETA is between 6:50 and 7:50 which is not entirely insane.  If I get what I ordered or some reasonable facsimile I'll be good for three weeks.
  
  Food I already have.  There's no shortage of food.  Food is goddamn everywhere.
  
  Except somehow Easter eggs, but I bought some yesterday so that's okay.
  
  

Not Exactly Tech News

• Then he opened the thirty-second seal, and behold, Berserk resumed serialisation.  (Reddit)
  
  How many signs do you need for one apocalypse?
  
  
  
• Novartis is starting phase 3 trials of ruxolitinib to treat severe Corona-Chan.  (Novartis)
  
  This is a treatment for cytokine storms, which are believed to have been a major killer during the 1918 Flu Pandemic - the reason it killed so many young and otherwise healthy people.  I'm not sure how common that is in WBSDP, but it's a good drug to add to the toolbox - if it works.
  
  Also, ruxolitinib is binitiloxur backwards.
  
  

Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 08 2020 01:40 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 08 2020 01:58 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 08 2020 01:59 AM (Iwkd4)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Had a visit today from the smoke alarm maintenance guy, the most social interaction I have had since January.
  
  
  
• Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
  
  DNS over Wikipedia.  (GitHub)
  
  
  
• How SEO ruined the internet.  (Superhighway 98)
  
  This is essentially a problem with measurement by proxy.  If you count coins rather than measuring the weight, people will clip them.  If you measure the weight, people will substitute cheaper metals.  (Though that doesn't work terribly well for gold.)
  
  The solution is the same for SEO firms as for counterfeiters.
  
  
  
• New York  has banned the use of Zoom in schools.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Apparently New York forgot to tell New York that all the schools in New York are closed.
  
  
  
• Crafting Crafting Interpreters.  (Stuff Wtih Stuff)
  
  I should read this now that the whole thing is finished.
  
  
  
• How Tesla is making ventilators from car parts.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not only do they keep you breathing, they can follow the lane on the highway.
  
  
  
• The CanSecWest conference went ahead in Vancouver despite the threat of Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague.  (Fast Company)
  
  Total physical presence: Six staff, three attendees, and one reporter.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, April 06 2020 11:59 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 07 2020 12:01 AM (Iwkd4)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• How long does the battery on the new Ryzen-based Asus Zephyrus G14 really last?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  For watching videos and browsing the web, 11 hours.
  
  For 3D rendering and gaming, about 2 hours and 20 minutes.
  
  That's not bad at all given its small size and high performance.
  
  
  
• Mars needs COBOL programmers.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  So do New Jersey and Connecticut.
  
  
  
• Ha-ha, you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," but only slightly less well known is this: "Never roll your own crypto."  (Citizen Lab)
  
  Yes, you guessed it, it's our friends at Zoom again.
  
  
  
• Don't bind your critical server applications to 0.0.0.0.  (CSO Online)
  
  Seriously, cut that shit out.
  
  Also, firewall everything. 
  
  Sometimes there's a mistake in the firewall rules, sometimes there's a mistake in the port binding, so always do both.
  
  Our current cloud server configuration has two firewalls for every server - the one provided by the platform and our own UFW / iptables configuration.  Which is sometimes too secure; we had problems with out new GitLab server because it was unable to make certain API calls to itself.
  
  
  
• Stop reading this and update your Chrome.  (Forbes)
  
  Maybe I should have put that first?
  
  Nah.
  
  
  
• I set up Gluster on my test cluster today.  It seemed the easiest option compared to Lustre and Ceph.
  
  It is indeed easy, and it works.  Performance is slightly odd, with one node running measurably faster than the other. 
  
  (It does recommend against running with just two nodes, because it can't form a quorum during a network partition event.  Not just in the docs, but when you run the setup command with the parameter replica 2.)
  
  I need to look at the SSL config settings to make it nice and secure, but a nice thing with Gluster is you don't need dedicated servers or block devices or even partitions: Just assign it a directory on an existing filesystem that exists on all the servers, and it will handle the rest.
  
  So you can easily use it on top of ZFS, for example, and take advantage of features like transparent file compression and deduplication.  And in theory snapshots as well, though I'm not sure how to restore a Gluster filesystem from a ZFS snapshot.  There's a page in the docs on running Gluster on ZFS that mentions restoring from snapshots, but only provides one sentence on how to do it, which doesn't really explain anything.
  
  Update: Aha.  It was under the "Features" submenu in the Administrator's Guide.
  
  Good: Gluster supports snapshots.
  Bad: It uses LVM.
  
  Hmm.