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Author Archives: gx

Space anemia is tied to being in the void and can stick around awhile

Space isn’t easy on humans. Some aspects are avoidable—the vacuum, of course, and the cold, as well as some of the radiation. Astronauts can also lose bone density, thanks to a lack of gravity. NASA has even created a fun acronym for the issues: RIDGE, which stands for space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance fromContinue reading “Space anemia is tied to being in the void and can stick around awhile”

Computer Life at 800MHz

Using a Sony Vaio VGN-P588E for the past few months as our primary personal laptop. This thing’s great; it’s got a small but not uncomfortable keyboard. It’s got a trackpoint, which we absolutely need to keep our hands healthy. Crucially, it’s only 1.5 pounds. We’re disabled in a way that means we’ve got to careContinue reading “Computer Life at 800MHz”

Are You Sure You Want to Use MMAP in Your Database Management System?

Memory-mapped (MMAP) file I/O is an OS-provided feature that maps the contents of a file on secondary storage into a program’s address space. The program then accesses pages via pointers as if the file resided entirely in memory. The OS transparently loads pages only when the program references them and automatically evicts pages if memoryContinue reading “Are You Sure You Want to Use MMAP in Your Database Management System?”