Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lkml.iu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 702 posts

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

#311

Post by wazoox »

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…

It's easier to read in a proper email agent, which usually color-code quotation levels, allows quotation collapse, and similar things. But that means you're an old fart reading their email in an actual, dedicated application instead of some webmail :)

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

#312

Post by PrimHelios »

I always appreciate Linus' rants. In addition to being somewhat humorous, I usually learn a thing or two from them. It amazes me that people focus on how much of a jerk he's being instead of actually looking at the contents of his emails and learning something.

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

#313

Post by awakeasleep »

josteink wrote: post #309
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most other FOSS projects people would be afraid to be that frank when referring to Intel's behavior though.

You also have the case of SJWs and Internet lynch mob’s being a real life threats to your project, your personal privacy and potentially your employment if you don’t show yourself to be “tolerant” enough in your communication. Calling genuine shit out as such can literally land you in a shitstorm if the person receiving message is of wrong color or sexualual orientation, etc, and decides to make that the point of the…

Wow I didn’t think of that but what if a woman wrote the code in that patch? Linus would be making her feel unwelcome.

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

#314

Post by jpgvm »

dingo_bat wrote: post #56
Johnny555 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an explanation of retpoline: https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7625886 “Retpoline” sequences are a software construct which allow indirect branches to be isolated from speculative execution. This may be applied to protect sensitive binaries (such as operating system or hypervisor implementations) from branch target injection attacks against their indirect branches. The name “retpoline” is a portmanteau of…

Maybe I wasn't clear. Your explanation and the linked article is very informative, but I wanted to understand what's the "garbage" Linus is talking about. As I said, I do understand retpolines from a high level.

The garbage part is still somewhat beyond my understanding but as I see it he isn't so much talking about the decision to not disable insecure branch prediction by default but rather addressing some very weird behaviour the patches add to kernel entry/exit points. Namely writing to MSRs (Model Specific Registers). This seems non-sensical as the branch predictor shouldn't need screwing with at this stage because the kernel already has retpoline protection. So he is musing there is further ulterior motives here.. perhaps another vulnerability (beyond Meltdown/Spectre) they are getting out ahead of with these very peculiar changes.

He is still ofcourse mad that they don't seem like they want to fix Spectre correctly but that seems tangential to how pissed he is that they are trying to get code merged that clearly does something other than just mitigate Spectre.

Unfortunately this entire thread is derailed with garbage about how Linus talks, rather than the fact he thinks Intel is doing something really fucking dodgy here and we should all try work out what it is.

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

#315

Post by mannykannot »

ethani wrote: post #36
integricho wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel transformed from a technology company to a management company. That somewhat explains their highly unreasonable behavior.

Yea... and what about every other chip maker who also have the same exploits? Can someone explain whether AMD and Qualcomm licensed this tech or if they also independently made the same mistakes? Either way, we really haven't seen much activity from them either.

The issue is how Intel is handling these problems. If other vendors handle their issues similarly, they may deserve a similar response, though Intel, as the market leader in x86-64, has a special responsibility (and corresponding culpability), as other vendors may have to conform to remain competitive, as the marketplace is capricious in rewarding virtue.

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

#316

Post by JoeAltmaier »

PrimHelios wrote: post #312

I always appreciate Linus' rants. In addition to being somewhat humorous, I usually learn a thing or two from them. It amazes me that people focus on how much of a jerk he's being instead of actually looking at the contents of his emails and learning something.

Really? The internet is full of ranting commenters. They all have content of a sort. His don't deserve any more attention just because he's the subject of a hero-worship cult.

Its actually possible to find thoughtful commentary on most any subject, without suffering jerks.

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

#317

Post by vog »

joelthelion wrote: post #85
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only spot, but also invests the energy in calling it out and explaining it. Which is why FOSS is so important. Can you imagine a world where Linux was closed source? You’d never have any insight into security patches, or these discussions.

> FOSS is so important FOSS is nice, but it's not a silver bullet. In this case I think Linus is largely to thank. Things will be a lot harder if he decides to retire.

So you demote FOSS from "important" to "nice" just because it isn't a silver bullet? (which does not exist, anyway)

That doesn't make any sense. This is a strawman argument.

Nobody ever said that FOSS is a silver bullet, not even FSFE, FSF, or Stallman himself.

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

#318

Post by dschuetz »

ams6110 wrote: post #293
dschuetz wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there needs to be a clear distinction of what a bully is and what they do. Bullies are violent for no reason, for the pleasure of it. Linus is at most verbally harsh for pretty obvious reasons, the main reason being the harsh his language the more important the issue is. His attacks and critique are never on the personal basis, yet people get offended for no apparent reason instead of focusing on the issue. S…

> Bullies are violent for no reason, for the pleasure of it. Not quite. Bullying is continuing targeted agression for the purpose of demeaning another person and getting power over them. A one-off diatribe, blunt or even mean-spirited statement, by itself, is not bullying. A person can be an ass without being a bully.

If that is true then Linus is a wrong bully. I haven't seen him continuously targeting other people personally to make them look weak. He criticizes other people's bad decision making or bad judgement, not their persona! There is a clear difference here!

But I get the point that there's more to actual bullying than I initially stated, thanks for clarifying that.

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

#319

Post by carlmr »

subway wrote: post #282
joelthelion wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A silver bullet is having one smart guy at the top who doesn't care how much pressure you exert on getting something into the codebase, Well if Linus goes too far, Google and a couple other big corporate contributors could team up and fork Linux, and it would be very hard for the open project to compete. I think the fact that Linus is so good is a big part of what makes the whole thing hold together.

They could, and they often do (Android and ChromeOS effectively run forked kernels). At the end of the day though, they always wanna rebase against that sweet sweet mainline quality.

It's simple, the stack of hacks they produced in the meantime at some point becomes a tall tower prone to fall over.

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

#320

Post by simias »

draugadrotten wrote: post #303
eeeficus wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not the other way around? You have the fix enabled and if you don't know you get protected by default. If you really know better then you can disable the fix (via a special CPU instruction), because you know you're not running anything critical?

> you can disable the fix (via a special CPU instruction) The CPU can not be allowed to disable the fix, because then that could be done by an attacker. Therefore the only more secure way is to move in the secure direction, from insecure to more secure.

Nonsense, just make it so that only privileged kernel code can modify this configuration. Tons of CPU configuration parameters already work that way, it's a non-issue.

If for some reason you even want to forbid even privileged code from modifying the config then add an other "lock" bit that forbids subsequent reconfiguration till the next reboot.

Post reply on HN