The General Technology Thread

[ArcadiaGP]

Linus Torvalds: I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look at their CPU's, and actually admit that they have issues instead of writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed.

 

[BugI02]

You're talking millions of p***ed off people and billions of dollars in potential litigation liability. Ain't nobody going to admit nothing if they want to keep their job

As much as a 30% hit in speed in some applications! It will be pitchforks and torches

 

[PistolBob]

So intel admits they have a problem...are they pulling product off the shelf? Nope. Are they still manufacturing flawed CPU chips? Yup.

Sell short.

 

[KLB]

They are working as designed. There was a choice between speed and security, and they chose speed. That was what the consumer wanted. Now security is becoming ever more of a focus for people, so that decision seems like a bad one.

 

[JettaKnight]

They are working as designed. There was a choice between speed and security, and they chose speed. That was what the consumer wanted. Now security is becoming ever more of a focus for people, so that decision seems like a bad one.

AFAIK, there was no choice made - it was later found that an exploit was possible. It's not like someone thought through the possibility and then decided to ignore it in favor of speed.

Security has always been a major concern; it's fascinating to see all the security implementations that this exploit can bypass.

 

[BugI02]

nothing connected to the internet is ever completely secure, nor likely ever will be

 

[KLB]

AFAIK, there was no choice made - it was later found that an exploit was possible. It's not like someone thought through the possibility and then decided to ignore it in favor of speed.

Security has always been a major concern; it's fascinating to see all the security implementations that this exploit can bypass.

Not in the creation of hardware. Security tends to be a software level concern.

 

[KLB]

nothing connected to the internet is ever completely secure, nor likely ever will be

People don't realize how true that is. It is getting to the point where anything that uses a computer is never truly secure.

 

[BugI02]

Not in the creation of hardware. Security tends to be a [STRIKE]software level concern[/STRIKE] [post-exploit afterthought].

*.*

 

[thej27]

White Noise On YouTube Gets FIVE Separate Copyright Claims From Other White Noise Providers
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ight-claims-other-white-noise-providers.shtml
Shows how broke YouTube's system is. All five are claiming just certain times frames of a few seconds to a few minutes of the ten hour video and all want to monetize it for themselves.

 

[KLB]

*.*

 

[jkaetz]

You're talking millions of p***ed off people and billions of dollars in potential litigation liability. Ain't nobody going to admit nothing if they want to keep their job

As much as a 30% hit in speed in some applications! It will be pitchforks and torches

Average consumers will notice little difference. The "fix" stops the processor from guessing what will happen next and peeking at memory addresses to look at the contents. If the processor was a good guesser at the workloads it was doing then there will be a performance loss when this functionality is removed. If it was bad at guessing then no performance loss will happen. I doubt this will be big news except in specialized cases.

 

[BugI02]

My understanding is slowdown is variable between 5 and 30%, biased toward the low end but job (software) dependent. Running certain types of software will maximize the slowdown. It is my understanding that they will not be retrofitting some permission-testing protocol but isolating the table completely so would expect perhaps worst effects on graphics heavy operations with complex embedded operators such as gaming

 

[ArcadiaGP]

NVIDIA will be licensing out the Shield platform, integrated into 65" 4K 120hz refresh rate "Big Format Gaming Displays" from ACER, HP and ASUS due later this year

Shield, aside from being the most powerful tablet for the price, is also the architecture behind the Nintendo Switch.

 

[JettaKnight]

Not in the creation of hardware. Security tends to be a software level concern.

Not true. Memory protection has to occur at the hardware level. You inherently can't protect the kernel using just software.


I believe Windows NT 3 was the first to take advantage of the CPU's protection, but before that the hardware was there, even as early as the 1970's or 1960's.


Even small MCU's that I work with have memory protection units. But, since I write all the software, this feature is used for reliability, not security.

 

[BugI02]

Some preliminary real world benchmarking. Not as bad as I feared

https://www.techspot.com/article/1554-meltdown-flaw-cpu-performance-windows/
Testing Windows 10 Performance Before and After the Meltdown Flaw Emergency Patch

 

[ArcadiaGP]

nVidia Geforce Driver 390.65 has released with security updates for Meltdown/Spectre

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/product-security/

 

[ArcadiaGP]

10 Best New things for Gamers at CES 2018 (these things aren't really gaming exclusive, at all... like a mousepad that charges your wireless mouse)

[video=youtube;yYekvWXtMIs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYekvWXtMIs[/video]

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Scientists are making carbon fiber from plants instead of petroleum

 

[KLB]

Scientists are making carbon fiber from plants instead of petroleum

Sweet. Except for making the cost of straw go up in the future.