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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.”

#321

Post by pjmlp »

vonmoltke wrote: post #300
pjmlp wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just an excuse from Google that many blindly accept. First, of all there are legal obligations known as contracts. If Google was serious about Nexus 5 support from OEMs, it would have had contract in place that would assure the necessary support regardless of what OEMs would decide. Secondly, Treble is yet another solution that will die, because Google, again, decided to leave to OEMs the task of delivering T…

> First, of all there are legal obligations known as contracts. That kind if snark is unnecessary and degrades the conversation. > If Google was serious about Nexus 5 support from OEMs, it would have had contract in place that would assure the necessary support regardless of what OEMs would decide. I'm not sure who you are referring to with "OEM" here, but Google took on the responsibility of maintaining the OS image…

> That kind if snark is unnecessary and degrades the conversation.

May be, but apparently discussions about Android's and OEMs usually leads to hand waving regarding the legal options available to Google, if they really cared about enforcing updates.

> I'm not sure who you are referring to with "OEM" here, but Google took on the responsibility of maintaining the OS images for the Nexus devices, not the companies they contracted to build them.

Like the customers they have abandoned after TI cut down support on their chipsets?

Had Google taken the legal requirements to enforce TI to maintain support or face monetary sanctions for the three years it was supposed to take place, this would not have happened as it did.

It always circles down to how much Google cares.

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

#322

Post by koheripbal »

jhoechtl wrote: post #260
mrmondo wrote: post #8

I think we should count ourselves lucky we have someone so good at spotting bullsh*t like this - and isn’t afraid to call it out as they sees it. Intel & friends have absolutely disgusted me lately, it could be all to easy to settle for less based on their standards, but let’s not let them set the standard - they’ve shown they can’t be trusted with quality and when they fail - they can’t be trusted to be transparent…

I full agree with your sentiment. I also see Intel lawyers working overtime, closely interacting with marketing, to somehow ward of lawsuits coming from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, which must be seeking ways out of Intel contracts to turn towards AMD processors for their currently more attractive TCO characteristics. Could be the end of Intel as we know it.

There's no question that Intel's response is entirely dictated by the legal ramifications of the coming lawsuits.

...but irrespective of that, it ALSO appears that there's no leadership within Intel to actually fix the underlying issue.

I don't care if the PR is BS - that's what I expect. But if the chips are not fixed the right way, I'm taking my business elsewhere, and I'm not alone.

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

#323

Post by skarap »

Sean1708 wrote: post #298
roel_v wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The issue I have with most mailing list interfaces like this is how difficult it is to find context. This post is a perfect example, it's pretty easy to find David's email by clicking the "In reply to:" link but I've been searching for a good 10 minutes and I still can't find Linus' original email. Going to "Messages sorted by: [ thread ]" doesn't show it, going to "Messages sorted by: [ date ]" and looking for email…

The email you're searching wasn't posted to the list. You won't find it - no matter the interface.

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

#324

Post by chowells »

ForHackernews wrote: post #129
aidenn0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus seems to have two complaints: 1) Recent patch submissions imply that Intel has no good hardware or microcode mitigation for spectre-like attacks. There is a sub-complaint that Intel has a bad (i.e. kills performance) fix, but will not enable it by default because benchmarks matter. 2) This series of patches in particular appears to be doing either something different, or more than what their descriptions imply…

> Intel has no good hardware or microcode mitigation for spectre-like attacks I was under the impression that for at least one category of attack, there is no hardware mitigation possible because it's a fundamental problem with the x86-64 design. Fixing it would require building a chip that uses some other architecture. Is that not the case?

That's not exactly true. You could build an x86-64 chip without these flaws, but it would require a new internal architecture with a lot more silicon.

One obvious approach would be to have two caches per core. Speculative execution would use a different cache than normal execution. If the speculative action is committed to, it swaps which cache is the normal one and which is the speculative one. Then you'd also need to flush the branch predictor on context changes. And a few other issues.

Nothing that's impossible to do, but it would require a huge amount of new design and a lot more silicon just to maintain the performance of current chips without mitigation.

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

#325

Post by nolok »

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.

Uh no, they would obviously make it so only kernel code can run that, like many other such settings.

And if an attacker can run code at the kernel level it's a non issue, as they're already on the other side of the airtight hatchway anyway [1]: they're in control of the computer and the memory.

[1]: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060508-22/?p=...

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

dschuetz wrote: post #285
icelancer wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a big defender of Linus, but: >> His attacks and critique are never on the personal basis This is really not true. Linus takes it way too far from time to time. The person is always in the wrong, but Linus goes well beyond what is necessary. Again, I get it and I don't mind. But he makes it personal occasionally.

"You're a moron, because of this and that issue" isn't as personal as "you're a moron, because you were born stupid, and your family is stupid too" See the distinction? It's up to the person to take it personal or not to.

[deleted]

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

#327

Post by 1911z »

dfischer wrote: post #306
icelancer wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> C++ This is the only way you can get Linus to really lose his shit. I'm surprised his comments in this Intel thing approach the level of anger he has for C++. It's my barometer for how important something is to him.

Have an example post? Would like to read for a chuckle. :$

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

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

#328

Post by eecc »

fareesh wrote: post #158

From what I understand of meltdown and spectre, they use a side channel attack to figure out CPU cache values after some speculative execution has been done. Can it not be solved by ensuring that the CPU either clears or purposefully does not cache memory that is read during speculative execution?

more or less... I'm surprised the CPU doesn't already flush caches after speculative execution branches are abandoned

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

#329

Post by syshum »

piyush_soni wrote: post #257
icelancer wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Having a Linus who doesn't yell at people And having my cake and eating it too in every scenario would be great. That's not how things work all the time. It's up to you to deal with it, not Linus to change. He's the scarce resource. He has the leverage. You're just someone on the Internet mad.

Again, your understanding is that intelligent people have the right to abuse. That's just akin to supporting oppression of weaker by stronger. That might be how things are for a lot of people, but not how they should be. Also, mad internet people have historically changed a lot of things, so I'm justified in showing my disapproval even if it won't change Linus. Changing at least one upcoming Linus in life would be a…

>> right to abuse.

Equating harsh even personally offensive language to "abuse" is the biggest disagreement here.

Many people, myself included, prescribe to axiom of "sticks and stones will break my bones but words can never hurt me" I understand that the current generation believes that feels are the most important thing ever...

I reject the idea that a person has the right not be offended, and I reject the idea that words on a linux mailing list are abuse

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