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Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

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Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#101

Post by watwut »

teekert wrote: post #68
watwut wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they ask politely? It is not like the Linux mailing list would be polite environment. Nothing against impolite environment, people make case for it daily here and I don't care. But it combined with the standard expectation that when someone else talks to them he should be always polite is getting funny in that context.

If you want something from someone you ask it politely. If you produce BS, you get told you produce BS. I'm guessing it's a cultural thing I'm also guessing you are an American. Americans coming here often tell us we are very direct and it takes getting used to. We often tell Americans we prefer they speak their mind and don't pretend something is great or we are best friends when it isn't the case. I'm from the Neth…

1.) I am not American. I am also not talking about Torwalds, because as far as I know Linus did not explicitly demanded to be spoken to "politely" (afaik).

2.) Talking politely and talking directly are orthogonal categories. You can be impolite while not direct and also polite while being direct.

3.) An environment in which people just speak their minds and is ok with people being impolite when those feel like it is characterized by everyone speaking is mind or being impolite, not just your hero. Meaning, you will not put emphasis on "be polite" when someone you dont like asks for something.

3.) I am pointing out the difference between how people who are not Torwalds demand that you talk to mailing list and what they defend as "good way to communicate" by people they admire. Because actual openly speaking culture is symmetric.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#102

Post by deckard1 »

roel_v wrote: post #63
gambiting wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who finds this extremely difficult to read? The top says "David wrote" and then it looks like he's replying to a message from Linus Torvalds. So any quoted text is by Linus, right? But then....the letter is signed by Linus? So who wrote it? I know this is some ancient technology but Jesus, the user interface is horrendous.

Probably depends on how old you are. To me it was completely obvious and much, much clearer than most 'modern' user interfaces. Every person replying prefixes each line with > . Proper email clients do this automatically. This way you can tell from the number of >'s how far back on the 'stack' you have to go to know who wrote it. You start reading from the top, mentally associating an indent level (nr of >'s) with a…

People live in Slack and github today. The last time I had an actual conversation via email was probably 2 years ago.

It's rather refreshing to see the Linux kernel keeping the tradition of using mailing lists. Every company I've worked at has felt the need to gather a bunch of people in a room (or teleconference) and "knock things out" in real-time. Then, everyone leaves and develops a severe case of amnesia. Never mind that for technical debates you really need some time to think and reply in detail. Which Slack is not good at, but... surprise, email is. But alas, it's "too old."

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#103

Post by askvictor »

dang wrote: post #75
chrisper wrote: post #29

Whoever changed the title managed to make it less clear. With "Linus" in the title it was clear that it was Linux.

I did that. We've observed over the years that celebrity names in titles tend to make for poorer discussion. HN is better when the focus is on content rather than personalities. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... Edit: ok, you guys have convinced me that this is a special case and we've put Linus back in the title above.

But it would certainly be good to have some context on the quote (i.e. that it has to do with Linux, Intel and Meltdown)

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#104

Post by bkor »

cm2187 wrote: post #58
mikekchar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't completely understand the technical issues, but reading between the lines I think the patches in question add super huge overhead. The overhead is so huge that nobody in their right mind would enable them by choice. However, the behaviour is governed by an opt-in configuration at boot time. What this means is that by default the patches will do nothing but if you opt in, you will get a huge performance hit. T…

But are we talking about fixing it on current chips or future chips? If the former I understand Linus’ position only if there is a better solution. But if it is a hardware problem it may not. If we are talking about future chips, I thought that the fix even on 7th and 8th generations had a low overhead. Why would it have a bigger overhead in future designs?

> I thought that the fix even on 7th and 8th generations had a low overhead.

One of the fixes slow down kernel syscalls by a significant amount. So much so that your IO will be heavily affected. Intel is mostly responding is dishonest ways, e.g. showing the impact on CPU-only benchmarks.

The current patches do have a significant impact!

What someone else explained here is that due to the heavy impact, it seems Intel isn't planning to fix it in future CPU's. Basically a "if you are super security minded enable that special slow secure mode Linux has where they slow down your performance". Meaning, blame Linux/your requirements not Intel.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#105

Post by nolok »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #91
lucb1e wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense though. If Intel indeed plans to leave chips vulnerable except if you set a flag, then how are these bullshit patches? This will be the only solution Intel is going to deliver right? I get that he doesn't like it, but that doesn't explain why he feels lied to. If Intel says "we're going to not turn the patch on by default", wherein does he suspect the lie?

The bullshit part is that Intel is trying to push this as a 'solution'. Linux is incredibly important, so if Linus does not approve of this 'solution', it'll be very difficult for Intel to go through with it (of course, they could also be brash and still do it).

See my second message (next to yours), it's not just that, yes he thinks and clearly says that thissolution is terrible but that's not why he calls them out to be basically liars; this one is because they put useless filler garbage code all around to hide what's happening in their patches.

I think we're lucky to have someone as clear, outspoken and refusing such crap in charge of the kernel.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#106

Post by phyzome »

Kalium wrote: post #81
beebmam wrote: post #77

Really abusive language. There are ways to communicate his objections to the patches with extremely strong language WITHOUT resorting to abusive language. I wouldn't tolerate anyone treating me like this. There are unseen consequences to a wild tongue.

Do you think Linus would get a maximally friendly reception if he said: > You clearly mean well. Your heart is in the right place. Thank you so much for all your hard work. There's this weird thing going on where it seems like a bunch of patches experiencing opportunity for improvement are being pushed. These patches also could maybe be better explained. > I don't understand. Can you help me understand, so we can fix…

You and I both know there's a (large) middle ground.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#107

Post by Latty »

lucb1e wrote: post #84
nolok wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big simplification: Proper way to fix an hardware bug like this, is that newer cpu gets protected by default, and they answer they are when queried. So you can ask the CPU "what's your status on bug X" and the cpu answers "i'm good, you don't need to do anything" (newer fixed chips), or "i know about it but was already built, and need microcode update/special behavior to protect myself" (current chips with microcode…

This doesn't make sense though. If Intel indeed plans to leave chips vulnerable except if you set a flag, then how are these bullshit patches? This will be the only solution Intel is going to deliver right? I get that he doesn't like it, but that doesn't explain why he feels lied to. If Intel says "we're going to not turn the patch on by default", wherein does he suspect the lie?

To be clear: I'm not knowledgeable about this at all, so I could be way off base, but my reading is that he's saying that the patches seem to be doing things that don't make sense (given the information supplied with them) - that is, Intel are trying to sneak in extra fixes or other things alongside without talking about them.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#108

Post by ealexhudson »

smcleod wrote: post #11
dotancohen wrote: post #4

I must say that I'm really happy that Linux is taking a stance on this one. He doesn't care what the legal consequences to Intel are, he is pushing for a proper technical solution damned be the consequences.

You’re not the only one, he may be brash at times but god damn we need him and maybe we need his brash anti-bullshit meter too.

Being able to call out bullshit doesn't mean having to curse it out. All Linus needs to do is say something like "I don't understand why this is here, and I'm not merging it until I do", rather than "They do literally insane things. They do things that do not make sense". The latter is not a technical argument, and it doesn't provide accuracy or clarity about next steps.

"So somebody isn't telling the truth here. Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons" - maybe the patches are bad. Or maybe there is an undisclosed vulnerability (like https://skyfallattack.com/ ?) that needs this "garbage" to mitigate it, and no-one got Linus properly in the loop. If it's the latter, all this shouting and cursing about "They do things that do not make sense" has likely attracted the attention of people interested in such things...

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#109

Post by Eupolemos »

nolok wrote: post #74
dingo_bat wrote: post #15

I'm going to be honest, I need an ELI5 here. I know what the meltdown/spectre issues are, and kinda understand what retpoline is.

Big simplification: Proper way to fix an hardware bug like this, is that newer cpu gets protected by default, and they answer they are when queried. So you can ask the CPU "what's your status on bug X" and the cpu answers "i'm good, you don't need to do anything" (newer fixed chips), or "i know about it but was already built, and need microcode update/special behavior to protect myself" (current chips with microcode…

Thank you.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#110

Post by majewsky »

bashcoder wrote: post #67
StudentStuff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root question is what else is Intel trying to cover up with these garbage patches? Are they afraid of power leakage across gates allowing an attacker to gain a higher level of privilege in certain generations of silicon, and trying to cover it up with these patches (hence some of the seemingly crazy things they do)?

Alternatively, it could also be in the interest of many for these patches to have an inordinate negative affect on performance with Intel CPUs. I am reminded that Linus has experience in the CPU industry (Transmeta), so he is in a position to see both sides on this.

Sorta off-topic, but what did Linus actually do back at Transmeta? Did he contribute to their JIT compiler for x86?
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