Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.” • Hacker News Board

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

#651

Post by isostatic » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

pintxo wrote: post #631

lmm wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The processor's security features should perform as described - anything less is a very nasty surprise waiting for users. Intel could allow users to opt-in to insecure behaviour for performance, but insecurity absolutely must be opt-in rather than opt-out.

"The processor should perform as described - anything less is a very nasty surprise waiting for users. Intel could allow users to opt-in to less performant behaviour for security, but bad performance absolutely must be opt-in rather than opt-out." Take away: it all depends on the users preferences. I am with you, in most cases, it should be about security, but I guess there are legitimate use-cases for the opposite a…

I do video crunching on internal systems, I'm happy that the code I run has nothing to gain from spectre or meltdown, but even a 10% drop in performance is bad, and sometimes can mean doubling the cost (if the cpu that was encoding two real time feeds is no longer powerful enough to do so without dropping frames)

Not every one runs a lamp stack on the intenet.

That said the default should be security. I have to opt in for "maximum performance" in the bios of my hp kit, rather than "balanced power and performance", why shouldn't I have to opt in to "faster but less secure"?

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

#652

Post by rayvd » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

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…

Sometimes a rant is warranted. Sometimes it's time to get fired up and angry...

The issue occurs if you're not bulletproof on your position and then get too caught up on 'winning the argument' rather than solving the problem at hand.

This is why it's typically best to leave the theatrics aside unless absolutely necessary.

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

#653

Post by detaro » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

HelloNurse wrote: post #621

beached_whale wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that penalizes the single process systems, they exist. One already pays a cost of overhead for multiprocess/multiuser systems and this is part of it. Pay for what you use. But have sane defaults(protect the common case). Then again, I cannot see this costing much in future chips.

This debate is about desktop and server processors. You are imagining there is a market segment, worth caring about for non-niche companies like Intel, of non-hackable systems with no network access that use high-end microprocessors, but it isn't so. Most relatively complex systems that use deluxe microprocessors and could be air-gapped are accessible for convenience instead, and more extreme actually inaccessible sy…

Why do you exclude all single-purpose networked servers? e.g. why wouldn't it be reasonable tradeoff for a private compute cluster with a limited set of applications (or even just one), systems running really dumb services, ...?

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

#654

Post by nitwit005 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

p0rkbelly wrote: post #542

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…

Not just Google. This is standard in any major tech company. His behavior and abhorrent and there is no excuse. Tech should embrace mentoring, learning, constructive criticism, and learning from failures. Yes, this is hopefully a once in a lifetime situation -- but our values need to transcend that. This is not the first time that Linus has swept decency under the carpet. Linus would be such an HR issue at most compa…

> This is standard in any major tech company. His behavior and abhorrent and there is no excuse.

I work at one of those "major tech companies", and I can assure you that people call things garbage with regularly.

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

#655

Post by chisleu » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

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…

I agree wholeheartedly that it is not a good way to live. I don't enjoy it.

> I've worked at a lot of places where engineer got into heated shouting matches. It's is not a way to increase the probability of zeroing in on a problem, or reaching agreement faster.

That hasn't been my experience. A boss at a previous job and I often had heated discussions about technologies and direction. It worked for us. We came to great solutions that neither of us started advocating. Years after I left, we are still good friends.

One lady we worked with started keeping a nerf gun on her desk if we got too close to her while arguing. This was the problem for me.

It wasn't good for us to fall back on raised voices to accomplish discussion. It accomplished the goals, but it did it in a way that was bad for our psyche. Even if we are both willing participants in that, we were effecting others who were both not willing participants AND unwilling to speak up because we were both her senior.

So I say fuck that. There is a way to say what needs to be said without being an asshole or spending time trying to make it politically correct. You just have to say the core of what you are trying to say, without the asshole flair attached to it.

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

#656

Post by Iwan-Zotow » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #160

azernik wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's quite clear about his theory as to Intel's motives: > The whole IBRS_ALL feature to me very clearly says "Intel is not serious about this, we'll have a ugly hack that will be so expensive that we don't want to enable it by default, because that would look bad in benchmarks". > So instead they try to push the garbage down to us. And they are doing it entirely wrong, even from a technical standpoint."

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).

> to pull a "Volkswagen"

Very specific model - The Bug

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

#657

Post by monktastic1 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

nnq wrote: post #633

remon wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a broken argument. The one upside of behaving this way is that it makes the HN frontpage and one can argue about the value of that for the issue at hand. It's pretty much established fact that, all other things being equal, being an asshole to people doesn't further your objectives and generally just results in people either ignoring you or getting more defensive and less cooperative than they would othe…

> Being socially inept is [...] a personality flaw. That's a very dangerous and messed up reasoning. For a significant proportion of the population "society" is just a nasty scheme we put up with since we know not better way of not killing each other or exterminating ourselves as a species... Having to contort and torture one's personality just so you can be "socially adept" is a great pain, and when one occasionally…

> just a nasty scheme we put up with since we know not better way of not killing each other or exterminating ourselves as a species

Sometimes I "have to do stuff to keep my wife happy." Once I discovered that I'm doing it because I want both her and myself to be happy, and stopped viewing it as an obligation, my life significantly improved. I learned to enjoy the ride. I think it made life a little better for the people around me, too. I learned that being petulant/sulky/edgy was not a sign of sophistication or wisdom.

Similarly, if we don't want to kill each other or exterminate ourselves as a species, then "society" doesn't have to feel so nasty. If you really do want to burn it all down, then by all means, go right ahead. At least that's authentic. But to choose to live amongst society, and still begrudge it, is insanely unhealthy. Literally.

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

#658

Post by ufo » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #584

quotheth wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show me an example where a leader of an OSS project had reasonable discussions with other developers (read: n steps below calling them morons who write garbage code), and as a result their project was "stolen" by a powerful tech company?

Firefox + Mr. Robot for a very recent example. Someone at some level should have exclaimed angrily that pushing people an extension without their consent that fiddled with content was a “garbage idea for garbage people”. Instead they lost face and now I and many other privacy concerned users can never trust Firefox ever again.

The firefox situation had more to do with the extension bypassing typical review processes than with engineers seeing the problem but not voicing their opinion. Many Mozilla engineers learned about that debacle the same time that we did.

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

#659

Post by chisleu » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

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…

Google culture is jerky in it's own way though. The demonization of James Damore was disgusting. Trying to silence educated voices from responding to request for comments on the topic is wrong.

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

#660

Post by monktastic1 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #599

somestag wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a native English speaker in the world who reads the phrase " is garbage" and interprets that literally as "this is just a metaphor for deciding not to use something and thus throwing it out." No, there's always vitriol, and the writer knows that, which is why they say it like that--because they're feeling vitriolic. I'm sure you can imagine equally accurate ways to reject code contributions; it…

The vitriol is the most important part of the message. If they don’t feel bad about what they’ve done what reason do they have not to do it again? Without the vitriol you solve only the most immediate problem, when the true intention of calling something g garbage is to prevent many future problems. You learn nothing from being politely shoed off.

I'd consider rethinking this view.

Being torn into and being called a moron, useless, pathetic, etc. leaves deep trauma that will bleed into other areas of your life. Even if you're tough and think you've brushed it off.

The idea that we're duty-bound to inflict emotional cruelty on people when we think they've made a mistake is probably the cause of most of the suffering we see in the world.

You can tell someone that their code is very bad and make sure they get it, without trying to twist the thumbscrews and make sure that they feel rotten to their very core.