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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.”

#641

Post by Superleroy »

donatj wrote: post #604
somestag wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that it's impossible to learn without feeling bad about yourself? As in, you must feel personally ashamed and hurt, or else you're going to make the mistake again? If not, you're probably going to have to explain your position a little more, because that's how I'm reading it right now. Note, this can't be some abstract equivalence between "feel bad" and "know you made a mistake," because if that's wha…

Look back on your life. Do you remember the individual lessons in school? Unlikely. Do you remember the time you got sent to the principals office or the time you got yelled at for breaking a lamp or having a party? Much more likely. Lessons bundled with strong emotions make far better memories.

You learned pretty much everything that you are doing right now and I am fairly certain that 99% or more of that was learned without you feeling bad about yourself.

I for one can't remember a single lesson from school, yet I can still recall some of the stuff I learned and apply it, despite nobody yelling at me for doing it wrong at some point.

Being upfront and honest about stuff is all nice and good but when I give a code review or get one, I find it far better to constructively discuss stuff and not yell at people or insult them for whatever reason. Linus did not even ask why it was done that way, he did not have all the info. Would you prefer being instulted for doing something the "wrong" way, eventhough you had a perfectly good reason for doing it that way? Even if you knew it was "wrong" but there just isn't a good solution and you are just trying to fix the problem at hand?

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

#642

Post by lucideer »

salvar wrote: post #638
lucideer wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The response is shockingly adult Some snippets from the response: > since the peanut gallery is paying lots of attention it's probably worth explaining it a little more for their benefit > not just drop it quietly because poor Davey is too scared that Linus might shout at him again > If we can be done with the shouty part, I'd actually quite like to have a sensible discussion None of this is adult. I'm not directly…

Linus doesn't get personal when he calls Intel engineers morons? Are they not persons?

Yeah you're right. I should have worded that differently, my point was that in using the term "moron", he was focusing on the interface design: code.

Linus' tone is not really defensible, but I just don't think the response compares favourably either.

And, perhaps more importantly, Linus' concerns aren't addressed and the response isn't particularly informative. dwmw2 mentions in comments here on this HN thread that he has been pushing back on Linus' concerns, but the response appears rather to defend those decisions in Intel. Perhaps I misread?

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

#643

Post by lucb1e »

nolok wrote: post #90
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?

He's complaining about their "fix" being terrible, but isn't fully against using it the end since as you said, that's all there is going to be to have the chips work properly. The reason he refuses those current patches and directly call it a lie/deception is because of what my last two paragraphs related; if you read his message (where the link points to) it's about half way: Intel tries to disguise it by doing it i…

That makes sense, thank you!

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

#644

Post by watertom »

The "rant" is an attention getter, no more no less, a bit of theater. Once everyone is paying attention, then the real purpose begins. Yes, there are other ways of doing it, but I would argue that none, are even remotely as effective gaining the necessary focused attention.

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

#645

Post by nnq »

vlovich123 wrote: post #582
nnq wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the top comment on this about engineering culture?! Linus is valuable precisely because he occasionally d-slaps people around, waking them up, even when what he says may be factually wrong, and reminding them the at the core the tech must be sane, f people and their feelings! Yeah, it's good to have a 1 in 1000 brilliant people being aholes because it keeps the culture balanced. We need a dose of rascality, an…

For the most part he actually does a good job staying away from personal attacks. The problem is that his approach isn't going to yield great results. For there's 2 problematic parts to this e-mail. The first is the personal attack when he calls Intel engineers morons. That 1 little unnecessary addon is uncalled for because it's quite reasonable that there's a lot of politics going on at Intel that's interfering with…

> did his finger to nVidia in any way improve relations between Linux & nVidia

Purely anecdotal evidence, but in my experience the few pieces of hardware that I can generally bet they'll be fine with Linux are those branded Intel or NVidia (one may argue about the "optimus" thing, but if you want CUDA on a Linux laptop, nvidia's drivers do their job fine in the end, and this is what most Linux users will care about I guess)

Dunno the mechanics of it, but some things did work up just right about this :)

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

#646

Post by mcv »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #545
mcv wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users can already choose. They can buy old processors without the fix. I really don't see what case anyone could have against Intel if they just fixed this. Having a fix but turning it off by default seems far more dangerous from a legal perspective. Or having the processor perform far worse in reality than advertised.

Yeah if you could point me towards instructions on how I can install this old processor I just bought in my Macbook that'd be great, also if you know how I can install this old processor in my AWS instances that'd be awesome too.

Macbooks are not great for replacing processors. I was assuming it's not possible at all, but if it is, I'd love to know how.

Though personally I'd be more interested in a new processor.

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

#647

Post by mcv »

jacquesm wrote: post #505
mcv wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users can already choose. They can buy old processors without the fix. I really don't see what case anyone could have against Intel if they just fixed this. Having a fix but turning it off by default seems far more dangerous from a legal perspective. Or having the processor perform far worse in reality than advertised.

> They can buy old processors without the fix. Tell me where you could buy old processors in sufficient quantity today and please explain how a modern motherboard with sufficient RAM would hold such an old processor?

Good question! I found this site that's selling plenty of older Intel processors: https://www.intel.com/buy/us/en/catalog/components/boxedproc...

If that's not old enough, there's also this: https://ark.intel.com/products/series/79666/Legacy-Intel-Cor...

But if you want a processor without this fix, then you're in luck: from what I understand, all modern Intel processors don't have this fix yet. And they're very well supported by motherboards.

And by the time the current crop of processors becomes unavailable, I suspect newer processors will be much faster than anything currently available.

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

#648

Post by jacobolus »

donatj wrote: post #604
somestag wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that it's impossible to learn without feeling bad about yourself? As in, you must feel personally ashamed and hurt, or else you're going to make the mistake again? If not, you're probably going to have to explain your position a little more, because that's how I'm reading it right now. Note, this can't be some abstract equivalence between "feel bad" and "know you made a mistake," because if that's wha…

Look back on your life. Do you remember the individual lessons in school? Unlikely. Do you remember the time you got sent to the principals office or the time you got yelled at for breaking a lamp or having a party? Much more likely. Lessons bundled with strong emotions make far better memories.

For sure. The proximate lesson was 'make sure not to trust teacher X or administrator Z; those two are assholes who don't pay attention and just try to solve problems in whatever way is most personally convenient without caring about anyone else or what really happened or fairness.' It was an effective more general lesson in (a) what never to do if you want people to like or trust you, and (b) what to watch out for before trusting someone in a position of authority.

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

#649

Post by quotheth »

lucideer wrote: post #615
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…

> The response is shockingly adult Some snippets from the response: > since the peanut gallery is paying lots of attention it's probably worth explaining it a little more for their benefit > not just drop it quietly because poor Davey is too scared that Linus might shout at him again > If we can be done with the shouty part, I'd actually quite like to have a sensible discussion None of this is adult. I'm not directly…

> None of this is adult.

Really? The long technical explanation, with the word "shouty" is not adult? The plea for sensible discussion?

Your post isn't worth responding to beyond that. You've taken extreme liberties in your reading of his response. "Directly insulting Linus" lmfao are you fucking kidding me? You're calling "shouty" as directly insulting, when it's a response to "Fucking morons" writing "garbage" code? This is disingenuous at best if not willfully ignorant.

Cheap jokes about Linus's behavior?????

Seriously, take a step back and realize the loops you're jumping through to try to somehow justify Linus's behavior by attacking a reasoned response to it.

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

#650

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

wyldfire wrote: post #360
mcv wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That bit sounds to me like Intel is trying to pull a "Volkswagen": have it perform better in benchmarks than in real life (when hopefully secure execution will be enabled).

Wow, I can imagine that expression becoming a very compelling analogy in a trial or competitor's marketing.

I winced as an owner of Volks Wagon stock when I read that. 3 people on this thread have now reacted to it.

If that type of behavior gets branded as "pulling a VW", that is the type of thing that could destroy VW in the long term. I agree it is a great analogy though.

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