Riding the Flow

CityHash is a modern family of hash functions for strings (variable-length arrays) that provides one of the best performance and quality, requiring only standard 64-bit instructions for optimal performance. This makes it very useful "general-purpose" hash. In particular, CityHash64 hashes to 64-bit value, which makes it primary function of choice on 64-bit platform. For some tests (e.g. containers), it's beneficial to know which pairs of strings will produce same hash value (collision). Finding collisions for well-designed hash function could be difficult - since brute force most likely will be most viable approach. I've recently have calculated some collisions for CityHash64 using multi-threaded birthday attack algorithm. So I provide two such pairs there for your convenience: StrA=" oH]pPZccPmOEHjBW " StrB=" vm`sd|obCXIKJ}aE " CityHash64= DCBE2B1930540000 StrA=" ?];lLLK:R_@XddTg " StrB=" bgW^Wi]IkQgDM3WW " CityHa...

I've bought the Logitech K360 wireless keyboard in addition to K800 just to try, which one I will like more (K800 was the obvious first choice, because of standard full size layout, palmrest, backlit keys and unifying nano-receiver support). I wanted to also try K360, because it has compact layout that I like coming from laptops (dispenses with right-side key duplication), and also it looked much like my laptop chiclet keyboard (that I liked). However, on actually trying the K360 out I've found it to be worse in feel:

* Update - in version 17 Google finally have added ability to set zoom factors like 125% and 150%. This makes Chrome perfectly suitable for High DPI browsing out of the box. This article is kept for historical reasons only. * * Update 2 - some people getting blurry Chrome 17 out of the box on High DPI displays. To solve this, open Task Manager, right click on Chrome.exe process, Properties, Compatibility, tick "Disable Display Scaling on High DPI", restart Chrome * Previously I have posted an article about common problems with and choosing the best web browser for High DPI displays. Since then, Google addressed situation somewhat - they've introduced some experimental default zoom setting support to Chrome. However, I still prefer some alterations kept from my previous patches, so I am still making customized versions.

When I've chosen Thinkpad W701 as a laptop, one of the potential pluses I've considered is the usage of MXM 3.0 Type B slot for video card. Because MXM is a standard like PCIe, it would have potentially enabled upgrading to more powerful third-party graphics card. The Quadro 2800M is still quite respectable, but recent-gen like AMD 6970M already does better. Of course I did realise this was a  potential , not guarantee , but it still worth to try. In my previous blog post I've described details of mechanical tinkering, you can read it here - Thinkpad W701–anatomy of MXM video module Since I've established that mechanically and electrically almost any MXM card would be accepted, all that remained is to try the actual card(s) - I was prepared to try several different ones starting from most powerful in case it would not work.