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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.”

#521

Post by BRAlNlAC »

cromwellian wrote: post #516

A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, blameless postmortems, and a host of other mechanisms that de-escalate and de-personalize things. The Meltdown work at Google probably didn't begin with a rant about morons. It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize other…

>it's likely to kill productivity

Possibly, but I don't think that arguments, even heated ones, aren't without benefits that may not be otherwise obtainable. Arguments require passion and commitment, you have to care about something to get heated over it face-to-face and when you, as an adult, get upset over something you are putting your reputation on the line to some extent. This motivates some people.

This provokes an interesting question-does googles desire for a very... harmonious work environment have any relationship with their reputation for project ADD?

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

#522

Post by jessaustin »

dom96 wrote: post #479
yorwba wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with those patches, since they haven't been merged yet. The performance decreases that have been reported so far are for Meltdown patches, those new patches are apparently meant to mitigate Spectre.

Spectre affects AMD as well, how have they been handling this?

They might not "handle" it until there is a POC?

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

#523

Post by jessaustin »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #380
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.

Hanlon's Razor is stupid... actually I misspoke. It's just evil.

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

#524

Post by jechamt »

dwmw2 wrote: post #482
yeukhon wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree his language and tone can be very painful to read. Imagine getting called a moron in front of the whole world, when you could have private conversation first with a smaller group. When I read his reply, I could feel the pain. I imagined I would reply back to him and say "well fuck you too." When I finished reading the email, regardless of who is more right or more wrong, I can understand and feel his frust…

Pfft. If I've been a moron in front of the whole world, you might as well call me one; that part doesn't make a lot of difference. And if I know I haven't, well it doesn't make a lot of difference if you call me one either. I'm not five years old any more, having to chant "sticks and stones may break my bones..." to convince myself it's true, choking back the tears. There was no "pain" on reading the reply. Only a mi…

Thanks for replying here. I'm not so interested in the debate about decorum and word choice as the technical matter, but it's good to head off the branches of speculation (if you will) into them to have your insights.

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

#525

Post by calimac »

you out there who play the absurdity of the situation down as anything short of conspiratorial and fraudulent and try to make the author out to be crazy are sheep.

His tone is the result of witnessing you people, who are supposedly intelligent, act as ushers walking bystanders users into Stalin's Strawberry patch pits of current day, the ultimate surveillance state.

Wake UP SHEEPLE

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

#526

Post by jessaustin »

quotheth wrote: post #520
cromwellian wrote: post #516

A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, blameless postmortems, and a host of other mechanisms that de-escalate and de-personalize things. The Meltdown work at Google probably didn't begin with a rant about morons. It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize other…

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic . The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend on…

Complaining about downvotes is never cool.

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

#527

Post by crpatino »

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.

Sorry, but no. That's very much NOT how you want to think about security. And because that's how most executives, technical leaders and managers think, we ended up in this shit storm in the first place.

Given how integrated is IT with everybodie's financial information, and now with the Internet of Things with automatic devices that have real effects in the physical world, you must enable secure defaults for everything. Only on devices whose purpose is 100% entertainment, like smart TVs (and then, you cannot trust that assumption either because everything is connected to everything, but I digress) you may set unsecure defaults.

What we need is a secure default, and a way to enable usafe features, on a per process basis if possible. That way, you can delegate the decision of what level of security is required for the application developers. Other than that, you need to educate the public to pick Safe!Device vs Fast!Device, which goes very much against the common wisdom dujour.

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

#528

Post by eevilspock »

cromwellian wrote: post #516

A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, blameless postmortems, and a host of other mechanisms that de-escalate and de-personalize things. The Meltdown work at Google probably didn't begin with a rant about morons. It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize other…

Counter point is that Google, like Intel, puts profits ahead of doing the right thing, selling out its users to advertisers with virtual impunity because those same users are addicted to the "free" stuff that Google gives them. So maybe we need more prominent people like Torvalds calling bullshit on them too. Finally we are starting to get such voices re Facebook, but even those not as honest as Torvalds.

See the bashcoder thread for a more hardnose analysis of this article, Torvalds and Intel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539

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

#529

Post by quotheth »

jessaustin wrote: post #526
quotheth wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic . The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend on…

Complaining about downvotes is never cool.

I'm not complaining. Merely expecting, given that this is not the first time I've posted something similar, and I felt the need to point out the double standard ahead of time this time.

Downvote away! I just hope that the hypocrisy is clear. edit: Or there may be a totally non hypocritical reason to downvote me, which I would also encourage.

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

#530

Post by jessaustin »

microtherion wrote: post #420
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…

Thanks for your informative explanation. However… > "boot an older os and it's vulnerable since it doesn't know to call this" Presumably the hardware that fixes this is not even available on the market yet. How likely is it that somebody will go out of their way to install an obsolete OS version on their brand new hardware?

An obsolete version that runs faster and benchmarks better, which some customers won't realize is less secure? It doesn't seem unlikely...
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