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

371–380 of 702 posts

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

#371

Post by khana »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #126
joelthelion wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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, or how much man-hours were spent (sunk cost fallacy). I think in a lot of "corporate" projects (not-open source) there's much less of that and the software is designed by commission, with the lead developer(s) quickly no longer having much of an influence on the code itself, being dr…

Well by all means don't 'speculate'.

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

#372

Post by plorkyeran »

hajile wrote: post #351
koheripbal wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You face a big issue there. Meltdown is a core architecture issue. It will take a long time to make a fix. Add to that the need for a completely new branch predictor (a notoriously hard design issue) and you're talking about a lot of time. Intel and AMD should already have next years designs done (AMD has said as much with Zen 2). You'll most likely be looking at late 2020 to early 2021 before the fixed architecture…

Even 2021 is overoptimistic. Typical turnaround for a major design change in a CPU is more like 5 years.

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

#373

Post by jokola »

EpicEng wrote: post #344
pessimizer wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think that directness and honesty is identical to saying racist, sexist, and homophobic things. So "PC" becomes equivalent to "lying to make people like you."

>Some people think that directness and honesty is identical to saying racist, sexist, and homophobic things Not any serious people, so why do we care?

There are plenty of ordinary people that e.g. prefer one religion to other or believe in traditional gender roles. Some of those people believe they should be able to express those opinions in the same way people express opinions about diversity or equality regardless if other people considered those opinions e.g. sexist. I happen to disagree with those people, but I wouldn't consider their opinions less serious.

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

#374

Post by [deleted] »

Fnoord wrote: post #144
DoreenMichele wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gather, some of this is cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. That directness is generally associated with multicultural environments where subtler context-dependent communication simply does not work. Some of the quotes I am seeing here from him are things I think are unnecessarily harsh, but most are not. Discussions about something he has said or written seem…

> From what I gather, some of this cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. I've heard this blunt(/direct/honest) argument quite often (and the same about my country, The Netherlands), but I've also seen Americans in IT who can be very blunt. I attribute it not to country_of_origin, but to the [autism] spectrum.

[deleted]

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

#375

Post by IntelMiner »

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?

The reasonable expectation would be that Intel fixes one (or both) of the bugs

- In newer CPU's. There should be mitigations against these attacks. That would probably seriously hurt intel by delaying their future processor launches

- In Older/existing CPU's through microcode updates. Bar literally making "fixed" versions of every Intel CPU in the last 10~ years. This is the only way to resolve the issue on existing hardware

Instead of doing that. Intel wants to avoid the much-reported "30% performance hit" by simply saying "Well if you want this FEATURE, you can enable it in your OS!"

Intel is trying to downplay a massive security vulnerability in their hardware as something that OS vendors can just let users opt in/out of

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

#377

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

Linus would be just as effective if he never used another swear word. It is his technical knowledge, his position as the final committer, and his willingness to stand up for what he believes in, that gives him power.

Ranting and swearing is part of who he is personally, but those are not generally required for being a good project leader.

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

#378

Post by justherefortart »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #316
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.

Sometimes you just get sick of people pushing off garbage like it's a 3 star Michelin meal.

As the primary kernel developer, the amount of crap he has to deal with gives him broad levity IMO.

I've worked with engineers across many fields over my ~35 years of working. When they're ripping you a new one, you pretty much always deserve it.

Putting shit on a plate is being a jerk, because you're not only wasting your time, you're wasting his time as well.

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

#379

Post by IntelMiner »

alerighi wrote: post #225
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…

The problem is that every fix that you could think for Spectre reduces the performance of the CPU. So not enabling this by default it's a good choice, Spectre is very difficult to exploit: so if you do critical things you enable the fix, if you use the computer for gaming, video rendering, and things where you don't care too much about security but you care about performance, you don't enable it.

"Spectre is very difficult to exploit"

From what I've seen. There's been demonstrated attacks using Javascript in Chrome to dump the saved passwords from the browser using these bugs

If an attack is that easy to pull off, I don't think it's reasonable to make it an "opt in"

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

#380

Post by jasonkostempski »

bashcoder wrote: post #30

The most striking thing here is that Linus has apparently dismissed incompetence as a rational explanation. Yes, he is often brash, but usually he is accusing someone of sheer stupidity. He does not do that here. Linus alleges that we are being lied to - that we don’t know the full story, nor Intel’s motives. Furthermore, we are left to wonder if Microsoft is also being fed “bullshit” patches, and if they may be less…

Hanlon's razor should include an exception where PR and politics are involved. Discounting malicious people as just stupid is the reason so many "stupid" people are in power.
Post reply on HN