Category Archives: cat /dev/life

My Virtualization Setup

2021-01-26 Cocoa Leave a comment

This post mainly demonstrates my personal virtualization setup. The configuration of my computer (along with some peripherals) is listed below.

AMD Ryzen 3900XT 12 cores 24 threads
ASUS TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS (WI-FI)
64GB DDR4
Samsung 860 Pro 512G NVMe
Intel 760p 2TB NVMe
NVIDIA RTX 3090
NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super
Dell TypeC-Ethernet Dongle

I tried to use unRAID to fulfil my purpose, but I could not do a PCIe passthrough for the Intel 760p drive because there were some glitches with the SM2271 controller. Also, the specific motherboard I used is kind of cheap, so there are only 2 m.2 sockets (x4.CPU + x4.Chipset) and 3 PCIe sockets. The layout is shown in the figure below.

As the manual says that PCIEX1 and PCEIX16_2 share bandwidth and the maximum bandwidth for PCEIX16_2 is PCIe 3.0@x4. PCIEX16_1 can reach up to PCIe 4.0@x16. So I'm going to plug in my RTX 3090 in PCIEX16_1 and plug in 2070 Super in PCIEX16_2. The PCIEX1 will not be used.

Then, of course, we need to switch on IOMMU in UEFI. This is part of what I get when I check the IOMMU grouping. There are literally a bunch of devices in IOMMU Group 15 (I guess that came from the B550M Chipset). But as you can see, the RTX 2070 Super GPU is one of the devices in IOMMU group 15. I cannot do PCIe passthrough for this GPU. (Next time I perhaps will buy a better motherboard and a better CPU with more PCIe lanes).

IOMMU Group 15:
 02:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43ee]
 02:00.1 SATA controller [0106]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43eb]
 02:00.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43e9]
 03:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43ea]
 03:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43ea]
 03:08.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43ea]
 03:09.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43ea]
 04:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 [GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER] [10de:1e84] (rev a1)
 04:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 HD Audio Controller [10de:10f8] (rev a1)
 04:00.2 USB controller [0c03]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 USB 3.1 Host Controller [10de:1ad8] (rev a1)
 04:00.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 USB Type-C UCSI Controller [10de:1ad9] (rev a1)
 05:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983 [144d:a808]
 06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200 [8086:2723] (rev 1a)
 07:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller [10ec:8125] (rev 04)

Alright, I cannot use unRAID or just passthrough my RTX 2070 Super. But it's not that bad. Because I only use Windows for games at my free time. I can just unbind RTX 3090 from nvidia kernel driver and bind it to the vfio-pci one if I want to use Windows, and vice-versa if I need to run Tensorflow or PyTorch. And most importantly, with unRAID, I need to shut down my Ubuntu, add/remove the RTX 3090 to/in it and then power it on. Now I can use my Ubuntu without interrupting.

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Doodles

2021-01-25 Cocoa Leave a comment

Last summer I had some fun with FiveYellowMice playing a doodle game. The game is quite simple, just 2 people both think of 3 different words and then draw whatever the first word the other one said to you. When the first round is done, swap your drawings and then draw the second word the other one thought. Finally, swap your drawings again and draw the last word you heard from the other one.

Here are some interesting doodles we drew.

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cat /dev/life

The first amazing thing in 2021

2021-01-04 Cocoa Leave a comment

My backpack was stolen in London back in October 2019 and the second day in 2021, I received this direct message from Ilona.

The story begins in October 2019, I was visiting one of my friend in London and we went to Baker Street to see one of the famous travelling sites, 221B Baker Street.

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cat /dev/life

Don't let numbers make one numb to others feelings

2020-06-12 Cocoa Leave a comment

Today is my first time going home from work after 9 PM in this company, but that's not important. What I want to talk about and matters is that, one of my colleague seems to be emotionally hurt by another colleague from our quants depts.

People in quants depts usually deal with data, lots of data. And of course, most, if not all, are numbers. However, if one work with numbers for a really long time, it can magically make people numb to others feelings.

In this morning, I heard that a colleague from quants depts (will use Q for shorthand) talked with our ops (will use O for short). There seemed to be a log analyser should be changed by O to meet the standard in Q's depts. But the task contains some specific terms in quants, and O cannot be sure about the meaning for some fields with these quant terms. Then Q said something really harsh to O, "I feel it's very difficult to have you understood", "Why don't you ask me for explanation earlier?!", "It almost makes me feel angry to talk with you!".

Well, I don't really think that Q was trying to communicate with others at that time. Intentionally or not, Q seemed to be numb with others feelings. Though O wasn't starting any argument with Q, O became depressed a day long. Moreover, during the weekly meeting in this afternoon, O looked his own phone for a few seconds, and the big boss asked him to stop looking at the phone with a little bit anger.

Yes, the second one is really a small case. But it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. After the weekly meeting, our leader also found that O was in depress and wanted to have a talk with him. It not to my surprise that O refused the talk and said to the leader, "If you or boss is unhappy with my work, you or he can just fire me, that OK. It's late and I don't want to talk anything now. I just want to go home, otherwise I'll miss the last subway."

It may sound childish, but IMHO, it's better than numb / indifference in some way.

As a matter of fact, I'm thinking about to learn some quant skills recently. But I don't want to be numb or indifference to others. Are numbers making one numb? Or themselves? Perhaps both, perhaps we are just making excuse so that numbers are the ones to be blamed instead of ourselves.

cat /dev/life

「不可愛」清單

2020-02-24 Cocoa Leave a comment

昨天和今天看到推特上有在玩把人加入到「可愛」清單的遊戲，我自己的話，既沒有被任何人加到這樣的清單裡，也並不在意這些的說，但是剛有看到 @FiveYellowMice 發 post 說 ——

于是黄鼠有想做类似的事情，可是在考虑了一下之后，觉得还是放弃会比较好了。

因为有着被加入清单的人，就意味有没有被加入清单的人。被加入的人会很开心，可是对于没有加入的人而言，这样就是明显的排除和拒绝了。不在意黄鼠的人当然不会去在意自己有没有被加入，可是如果是在意黄鼠的人，没有被加入清单一定会是一个打击吧。也许这个打击不会很大，因为黄鼠大概也不会有那么重要，也许会很在意黄鼠的看法的人根本不存在。但是那是黄鼠没有获知的事情，万一在意黄鼠的看法的人是存在的，或者在未来的某一天出现了，那样的话，黄鼠不想要让他们觉得自己被排除和拒绝了呢。

那麼既然建立類似於「白名單」的可能會對在意自己的看法的人造成傷害的話，不如建立一個「黑名單」好啦！

於是咕嚕咕嚕地跑去創建了一個空白的「不可愛」清單，然後裡面一個人都沒有～！

不知道為什麼，突然間就想到了內田彩的「Merry Go」裡的一段歌詞

何だって裏表だね
為什麼會有表裡存在
裏だって表なら
如果說裡是表
表だったさ裏なんです!
那表也是裡了呀(・8・)
幸せの反対も
就算在幸福的背面
回せば幸せに姿を変える
只要轉身就能遇見幸福
悲しみの背中には
悲傷的背後
喜びの翼が生えてるの
也有喜悅的翅膀在生長

cat /dev/life

一片祥和、歌舞升平有什么卵用？

2020-01-25 Cocoa 5 Comments

2020 年 1 月 24 日到 25 日，是中国农历传统的除夕夜与大年初一，电视里春节联欢晚会歌舞升平，一片祥和，而在这个国家几乎中心的位置 —— 湖北，其最后一个市襄阳也同时宣布于 2020 年 1 月 25 日 00:00 起“封城”，至此湖北省完成了“封省”。这也意味着武汉市、湖北省和中共中央政府的失职、渎职而加深的肺炎疫情比上次 2003 年的 SARS 疫情还要严重得多。

歌舞升平、一片祥和既不能当疫苗使也不能当饭吃，这次已经这样了，普通人在捐款捐物的同时，为什么不能好好问责政府，难道问责政府的人是希望还有下一次？需谨记，若批评不自由，则赞美无意义。

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当真相被隐瞒的时候

2020-01-23 Cocoa Leave a comment

原来以为，自 SARS 过去了 10 多年之后的今天，“小汤山”只会存在于历史中，没想到 ——

越是隐瞒，越是想要“维稳”，延后到不得不承认的时候，造成的社会影响、恐慌越大。

对比一下这两种情况，「某省市 3、5 人确诊感染未知肺炎」和「634 例确诊，422 例疑似，仅 2 省市无疑似病例」。

前者早知晓、早控制，周边无论是医护还是民众也有时间做好预防与准备。同时民众在有及时的公开、透明信息的情况下，自身也会“趋利避害”地远离易感染的场所，疫情则不至于悄无声息的扩散。

而后者，疫情已经扩散开来，在政府隐瞒真实疫情的时候，多米诺骨牌一个一个倒下，现在已然来到了需要对源头甚至其周边城市“封城”的时间。

选择了后者，花出去的人力物力也必然大于前者，对经济的影响无疑也是巨大的。最重要的是，在“一片祥和”中感染了病毒的人数则可能大大增加，带来的后果现在大家有目共睹。

有人说，“都现在这个时候了，问责不是首要的”。

在某种程度上是 —— 对于疫区以及现在因为政府没有及时、有效、透明公开信息而感染的患者来说，他们现在连自己是否能撑过去，撑过去了是否会留下后遗症都不知道；对于在疫区第一线工作的医护人员来说，他们都是冒着可能被感染的风险 —— 而这些可能的后遗症与风险对于他们当中多数人来说本是可以避免的。

但是对于我们，既不是医护人员，也不是感染了武汉肺炎 2019-nCoV 病毒的人来说，我们除了为疫区的朋友提供物资、信息之外，另一件还可以做的就是对政府问责！毕竟提供物资、信息等可以帮助减缓到这一次的疫情，可是却防不了下一次。

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我們的敵人是遠比病毒可怕的愚昧和壞

2020-01-22 Cocoa Leave a comment

我最早聽聞有武漢肺炎病毒「2019-nCoV」的時候，大約是在 2019 年 12 月初，當時在推特上已見到有不少人討論。然而那個時候國內還是摀得嚴嚴實實，到後來還有“闢謠”，甚至還逮捕了 8 個“散佈謠言者”。

同時，當有人在某網站上提問“武漢肺炎”時，該網站直接刪除掉用戶提問，而理由則是狗屁不通的“違反社區管理規定”

今天再回過頭來看這些，真的不禁讓人想問責武漢市的 CDC 和警方，為什麼沒有在第一時間通報疫情，為什麼民間自發傳遞信息第一時間想到的是“謠言”、“抓人”、“刪帖”？

不僅官方渠道失職，民間渠道被噤聲，甚至武漢市還舉辦“萬家宴席”！

四萬餘家庭的話，即便按每家去 2 人來計算，也有將近 8、9 萬人。這要是在“瘟疫公司”遊戲裡發生的話，玩家大概玩的是「白痴」難度，這種規模的活動傳播起病毒來真的不能再棒了！

官方自以為聰明的瞞報、謊報，權力不受約束的警方，沒有衛生健康常識的民眾，他們為這次病毒的傳播提供了絕佳的溫床。哪怕十多年前發生過「SARS」，這個國家從官方到民間不但未見得有總結多少經驗，反而相比以前更差了 —— 當有人在微博上紀錄下自己家人的不幸感染了這次的冠狀病毒時，被網絡暴力指責“製造恐慌”，被迫道歉。