That would be a fair comment if Firefox hadn't taken so bloody many absolutely bad choices and committed them to the stable tree. As it is, I count this fair warning of what's coming.
The reports are, however, that you still can't manage individual cookies, even when to go to the UI locale (Settings?) for the sites.
Not good. I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether it's even acceptable. I rarely manage individual cookies, but still...
Let's put it this way, I've started looking for an acceptable alternative. That I haven't found a good choice yet doesn't mean that at some point I won't decide it's worth the pain of changing to something that wasn't as good, even though it's now no better than it was.
Where? (I'm not about to install a nightly, so I can't find out directly. But without knowing that, I've started considering alternatives while I've got time to plan.)
Firefox has made LOTS of bad choices recently from my point of view. I don't use it on a phone or a tablet, I use it on a desktop, and I want a browser that works well on a desktop. I also want one that lets me keep open a sidebar of nested bookmarks, which is why I'm still using Firefox despite their recent garbage moves about the menubar, etc. But they've made *enough* bad moves that I've started looking for a decent alternative, because who can tell what idiotic brainstorm they'll come up with next.
Chrome may have market share, but the last time I looked it was hopeless for my use case. Firefox now isn't as good as it was last year, but it's still (version 52) a lot better than Konqueror, which is my second place choice.
The problem is "why he joined" and "what he's working for five years later" can be rather extremely different...and he may not even realize it after 5 years of being socialized to a particular viewpoint. All too often it morphs into "supporting my comrades in whatever they do". During the 1960's thinking that was "being paranoid", but since then lots of new evidence has come out, to the point where people supporting the normal police policies are reduced to finding exceptional cases to point out. And this isn't fair either, because most police most of the time try to do a good job and be good citizens. But because they worry that they might make a mistake, or need someone else's support, they don't work to get the bad apples disciplined. The saying "one bad apple..." is a bit of an overstatement, but as far as public support there's a lot of truth to it, and justifiably so.
Well, this wasn't a federal job, but I took a government job right out of college (state civil service) because I plain *HATE* the idea of job hopping. Now this *was* a few decades ago, and the group I used to work for is not a place that I wouldn't have wanted to work, but I was rather happy with my job, and they let me refuse to go into management. (I think I was an excellent programmer, but I would have been really incompetent as a manager. They did keep pushing me towards management, but they also continued to allow me to decline.)
So sometimes it's personal characteristics rather than skill level.
OTOH, I always consider that my job was "right livelihood". To me that's important. I wouldn't say the same about those who work to ensure that people's computers can be broken into.
IIRC that $500 hammer was because the government wanted them to go through authorized channels and fill out a ream of paperwork rather than just going down to the hardware store. For a gross of hammers, that's not too unreasonable, for one hammer, though.... well, the company didn't want to jump through hoops, but the government insisted, so they set a discouraging price...but the government wasn't discouraged.
Well, since you make that as a statement of belief, I can't say your first sentence is wrong. Your second sentence, however, is off by at least an order of magnitude. At least in the cities and towns I have lived in. Sometimes it's off by closer to two orders of magnitude.
I really question that "average commute in America is 26 minutes", since I don't think I've ever know a time or place where that was true. Unless you count people who live where they work or some such. I guess telecommuters would lower the time average.
Even during non-rush-hour times I found that planning a local trip to a nearby store I had better allow half an hour, though admittedly a lot of that was before getting in the car, looking for parking, or traversing from parking to the destination. So say 15 minutes to traverse streets, including time waiting at stop lights and waiting for someone else to park who was blocking traffic. And that's to a place that's actually within walking distance.
Well, if work provides the phone, then I guess you aren't out much, and they probably got the phones at a huge discount.
But I still don't understand how people find them useful except for certain specialist applications. And for the specialist applications that I know of a tablet would be a better choice.
The screen is one drawback. The keyboard is another. It's easier to see how to work around the screen problem than the keyboard problem. (Voice entry is *not* an adequate replacement, even were it error free.)
The think is, a decent keyboard requires haptic feedback. There have been versions that project on any flat surface or use the surface of your arm, for decades. They actually work fairly well at recognizing key strokes accurately. And they are abysmal failures. You'd be more likely to succeed by replacing the keyboard with one of the key-chording systems than with one of those.
As for the screen, I can see how one of the "project onto the retina" systems might evolve to be a suitable replacement for a decent screen, at least in dim lighting conditions. For the keyboard the only thing I can imagine is a pair of gloves that not only evoke the sensation of impact, but also some audio feedback. I haven't even heard of a decent prototype of that.
In a way it's reminiscent of the virtual reality problem where sickness is caused because the visual field movements aren't coordinated with the semicircular canal sensations. Certain reactions are inherent in the nature of the body, and devices need to work with them to be well designed.
I don't know about you, but I only got a smartphone because I could do that a lot more quickly than getting an decent phone. I can pretty much do without the smart, though the "frequently called numbers" is convenient. I don't download any apps because I don't use any.
OTOH, I guess I am an "old codger", though I don't think of myself that way. To me social media is slashdot and email. And I don't even like web-based mail interfaces.
P.S.: What the hell *are* AR emojis? An ad that doesn't explain itself is a really stupid allocation of resources.
Yes. Just timeouts, but lots of them for the last several days. At first I suspected a ddos, but then they went down for maintenance, and when they came back up it was worse. Maybe someone's mining bitcoins on the site.
Yes, but I originally encountered the discussion of speculative execution flaws in print media which never hit the internet, and that was the reference to the earliest discussion of the problem that I could quickly find. It wasn't the original discussion (which was, I believe, before the chip was designed), but that (probably) didn't hit the internet, and was, AFAIK, only in print. So this was the best I could easily dig up.
And that's why I count all military expenses related to actions in the middle east subsidies to the petroleum industries. Of course, it also strengthens the dollar, so it had economic advantages, as well as expenses, to the US.
After seeing the text I noticed that the link, https://hackaday.com/2018/01/0... , didn't show the problem it was discussing. The title of the page was speculative-execution-was-a-troublemaker-for-xbox-360.
Well the Register and Wikipedia seem to be in partial agreement with you about his influence on the Pentium. But the thing I heard about was before the Pentium was designed. That's all that showed up on the first page of a Google search. The earliest reference I quickly located was https://hackaday.com/2018/01/0... But this clearly isn't what I was referring to. The article I read wasn't about something in production, but rather about an approach to design that was being discussed.
That you couldn't find it on Google isn't a real surprise, as most such things never made it to the internet. That only happens if copyright has expired AND someone is interested enough to put it there. Even then you've got to wonder about the accuracy, because someone that interested often has an axe of some sort to grind. If it came out of the Internet Archive or the Gutenberg Project I'd trust it, but from somebody I don't know....probably not.
I didn't say "white papers", I said "probably ComputerWorld or InfoWorld". That should say how detailed my knowledge was (when it was fresh). I don't remember what it was based on, but at a wild guess some conference proceeding or discussion. Something public, anyway.
As far as I can remember, it only came up once. It could also have been in Datamation, but I think by that time I'd stopped reading that one. The only other possibility is Byte, and that's really unlikely, as after the early 1970's I skipped most issues. (I did by the one about implementing a C subset in M6800 macros, though. And the Smalltalk issue. I don't remember any others.) I'm sure I'd dropped Dr. Dobbs, and they didn't cover that kind of news anyway.
Intel knew, or had reason to know, of the risk. Whether the management did is a different question, of course. I suspect not. But the risk of this kind of attack was discussed publicly before speculative execution chips were designed. I believe that at that point everyone decided that while there was a theoretical risk, it was too difficult to exploit, so it was safe to ignore it.
I don't see any reason to presume that this conclusion was ever privately revisited until extremely recently.
Ehhh.... if I remember correctly, the possibility of this kind of attack was discussed at around the time speculative execution started to be considered. Unfortunately, I don't remember my source for this, but it was based on non-specialist technical publications that were widely available. (It might have been ComputerWorld or InfoWorld. Something along those lines.)
This isn't a comment about this particular implementation of the attack, but the idea of the attack. Meltdown is the result of thinking the attack was too difficult in principle, so it was safe to ignore the risk. I think Spectre is the result of thinking it was too difficult in practice, so the cost of speculative execution was worth the risk.
So the idea of the attack was out there before the chips were designed, it was just disregarded as impractical. I don't know who Vladimir Pentkovski is (or was), but he was definitely not the sole figure responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be a fair comment if Firefox hadn't taken so bloody many absolutely bad choices and committed them to the stable tree. As it is, I count this fair warning of what's coming.
The reports are, however, that you still can't manage individual cookies, even when to go to the UI locale (Settings?) for the sites.
Not good. I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether it's even acceptable. I rarely manage individual cookies, but still...
Let's put it this way, I've started looking for an acceptable alternative. That I haven't found a good choice yet doesn't mean that at some point I won't decide it's worth the pain of changing to something that wasn't as good, even though it's now no better than it was.
That, however, is freeware, not FOSS, or even open source. So when you use that, you're operating on blind trust.
Where? (I'm not about to install a nightly, so I can't find out directly. But without knowing that, I've started considering alternatives while I've got time to plan.)
Firefox has made LOTS of bad choices recently from my point of view. I don't use it on a phone or a tablet, I use it on a desktop, and I want a browser that works well on a desktop. I also want one that lets me keep open a sidebar of nested bookmarks, which is why I'm still using Firefox despite their recent garbage moves about the menubar, etc. But they've made *enough* bad moves that I've started looking for a decent alternative, because who can tell what idiotic brainstorm they'll come up with next.
There don't seem to be deb packages for either of those on the repository. I'd really prefer a browser that a group I sort of trust has validated.
Chrome may have market share, but the last time I looked it was hopeless for my use case. Firefox now isn't as good as it was last year, but it's still (version 52) a lot better than Konqueror, which is my second place choice.
The problem is "why he joined" and "what he's working for five years later" can be rather extremely different...and he may not even realize it after 5 years of being socialized to a particular viewpoint. All too often it morphs into "supporting my comrades in whatever they do". During the 1960's thinking that was "being paranoid", but since then lots of new evidence has come out, to the point where people supporting the normal police policies are reduced to finding exceptional cases to point out. And this isn't fair either, because most police most of the time try to do a good job and be good citizens. But because they worry that they might make a mistake, or need someone else's support, they don't work to get the bad apples disciplined. The saying "one bad apple..." is a bit of an overstatement, but as far as public support there's a lot of truth to it, and justifiably so.
Well, this wasn't a federal job, but I took a government job right out of college (state civil service) because I plain *HATE* the idea of job hopping. Now this *was* a few decades ago, and the group I used to work for is not a place that I wouldn't have wanted to work, but I was rather happy with my job, and they let me refuse to go into management. (I think I was an excellent programmer, but I would have been really incompetent as a manager. They did keep pushing me towards management, but they also continued to allow me to decline.)
So sometimes it's personal characteristics rather than skill level.
OTOH, I always consider that my job was "right livelihood". To me that's important. I wouldn't say the same about those who work to ensure that people's computers can be broken into.
IIRC that $500 hammer was because the government wanted them to go through authorized channels and fill out a ream of paperwork rather than just going down to the hardware store. For a gross of hammers, that's not too unreasonable, for one hammer, though.... well, the company didn't want to jump through hoops, but the government insisted, so they set a discouraging price...but the government wasn't discouraged.
Since most of the population lives in cities, your argument doesn't work...but telecommuters might be enough to cut the time.
Well, since you make that as a statement of belief, I can't say your first sentence is wrong. Your second sentence, however, is off by at least an order of magnitude. At least in the cities and towns I have lived in. Sometimes it's off by closer to two orders of magnitude.
True. But most parking spots in a city are "free" if you are sitting in the driver's seat and ready to leave at the sign of a parking official.
I really question that "average commute in America is 26 minutes", since I don't think I've ever know a time or place where that was true. Unless you count people who live where they work or some such. I guess telecommuters would lower the time average.
Even during non-rush-hour times I found that planning a local trip to a nearby store I had better allow half an hour, though admittedly a lot of that was before getting in the car, looking for parking, or traversing from parking to the destination. So say 15 minutes to traverse streets, including time waiting at stop lights and waiting for someone else to park who was blocking traffic. And that's to a place that's actually within walking distance.
Well, there were a few SF authors during the 1940's that suggested that rather than a prison we were an insane asylum.
Well, if work provides the phone, then I guess you aren't out much, and they probably got the phones at a huge discount.
But I still don't understand how people find them useful except for certain specialist applications. And for the specialist applications that I know of a tablet would be a better choice.
The screen is one drawback. The keyboard is another. It's easier to see how to work around the screen problem than the keyboard problem. (Voice entry is *not* an adequate replacement, even were it error free.)
The think is, a decent keyboard requires haptic feedback. There have been versions that project on any flat surface or use the surface of your arm, for decades. They actually work fairly well at recognizing key strokes accurately. And they are abysmal failures. You'd be more likely to succeed by replacing the keyboard with one of the key-chording systems than with one of those.
As for the screen, I can see how one of the "project onto the retina" systems might evolve to be a suitable replacement for a decent screen, at least in dim lighting conditions. For the keyboard the only thing I can imagine is a pair of gloves that not only evoke the sensation of impact, but also some audio feedback. I haven't even heard of a decent prototype of that.
In a way it's reminiscent of the virtual reality problem where sickness is caused because the visual field movements aren't coordinated with the semicircular canal sensations. Certain reactions are inherent in the nature of the body, and devices need to work with them to be well designed.
I don't know about you, but I only got a smartphone because I could do that a lot more quickly than getting an decent phone. I can pretty much do without the smart, though the "frequently called numbers" is convenient. I don't download any apps because I don't use any.
OTOH, I guess I am an "old codger", though I don't think of myself that way. To me social media is slashdot and email. And I don't even like web-based mail interfaces.
P.S.: What the hell *are* AR emojis? An ad that doesn't explain itself is a really stupid allocation of resources.
Yes. Just timeouts, but lots of them for the last several days. At first I suspected a ddos, but then they went down for maintenance, and when they came back up it was worse. Maybe someone's mining bitcoins on the site.
Yes, but I originally encountered the discussion of speculative execution flaws in print media which never hit the internet, and that was the reference to the earliest discussion of the problem that I could quickly find. It wasn't the original discussion (which was, I believe, before the chip was designed), but that (probably) didn't hit the internet, and was, AFAIK, only in print. So this was the best I could easily dig up.
And that's why I count all military expenses related to actions in the middle east subsidies to the petroleum industries. Of course, it also strengthens the dollar, so it had economic advantages, as well as expenses, to the US.
After seeing the text I noticed that the link, https://hackaday.com/2018/01/0... , didn't show the problem it was discussing. The title of the page was speculative-execution-was-a-troublemaker-for-xbox-360.
Well the Register and Wikipedia seem to be in partial agreement with you about his influence on the Pentium. But the thing I heard about was before the Pentium was designed. That's all that showed up on the first page of a Google search. The earliest reference I quickly located was
https://hackaday.com/2018/01/0...
But this clearly isn't what I was referring to. The article I read wasn't about something in production, but rather about an approach to design that was being discussed.
That you couldn't find it on Google isn't a real surprise, as most such things never made it to the internet. That only happens if copyright has expired AND someone is interested enough to put it there. Even then you've got to wonder about the accuracy, because someone that interested often has an axe of some sort to grind. If it came out of the Internet Archive or the Gutenberg Project I'd trust it, but from somebody I don't know....probably not.
I didn't say "white papers", I said "probably ComputerWorld or InfoWorld". That should say how detailed my knowledge was (when it was fresh). I don't remember what it was based on, but at a wild guess some conference proceeding or discussion. Something public, anyway.
As far as I can remember, it only came up once. It could also have been in Datamation, but I think by that time I'd stopped reading that one. The only other possibility is Byte, and that's really unlikely, as after the early 1970's I skipped most issues. (I did by the one about implementing a C subset in M6800 macros, though. And the Smalltalk issue. I don't remember any others.) I'm sure I'd dropped Dr. Dobbs, and they didn't cover that kind of news anyway.
Intel knew, or had reason to know, of the risk. Whether the management did is a different question, of course. I suspect not. But the risk of this kind of attack was discussed publicly before speculative execution chips were designed. I believe that at that point everyone decided that while there was a theoretical risk, it was too difficult to exploit, so it was safe to ignore it.
I don't see any reason to presume that this conclusion was ever privately revisited until extremely recently.
Ehhh.... if I remember correctly, the possibility of this kind of attack was discussed at around the time speculative execution started to be considered. Unfortunately, I don't remember my source for this, but it was based on non-specialist technical publications that were widely available. (It might have been ComputerWorld or InfoWorld. Something along those lines.)
This isn't a comment about this particular implementation of the attack, but the idea of the attack. Meltdown is the result of thinking the attack was too difficult in principle, so it was safe to ignore the risk. I think Spectre is the result of thinking it was too difficult in practice, so the cost of speculative execution was worth the risk.
So the idea of the attack was out there before the chips were designed, it was just disregarded as impractical. I don't know who Vladimir Pentkovski is (or was), but he was definitely not the sole figure responsible.