Does a one hour general grounding cost so much ? In terms of image for sure, but in terms of money I am not so sure...
Who is actually going to get a refund for this ? One to two hours delays are not rare.
It is certainly reasonable for server-side software in which a security team ensures that the current installation is not vulnerable to exploits, and performs the required patching/updating operations.
For commercial software aimed at general users, the benefits of (very) prompt disclosure are more questionable:
- Regardless of the disclosure status, these users will most likely never hear about it.
- Even if they hear about it, in the specific case of games such as Fortnite, a significant proportion of the users will not care about the vulnerability as long as they can play.
- Updates will be pushed through the app store/update manager/etc, with no user interaction.
ALTERNATE INSTRUCTION EXECUTION
When set to 1, the ALTINST bit in the FCR enables execution of an alternate (not x86) instruction set. While setting this FCR bit is a privileged operation, executing the alternate instructions can be done from any protection level.
This alternate instruction set includes an extended set of integer, MMX, floating-point, and 3DNow! instructions along with additional registers and some more powerful instruction forms over the x86 instruction architecture. For example, in the alternate instruction set, privileged functions can be used
from any protection level, memory descriptor checking can be bypassed, and many x86 exceptions such
as alignment check can be bypassed. This alternate instruction set is intended for testing, debug, and special application usage. Accordingly, it is not documented for general usage. If you have a justified need for access to these instructions, contact your VIA representative.
The mechanism for initiating execution of this alternate set of instructions is as follows:
1. Set the FCR ALTINST bit to 1 using WRMSR instruction (this is a privileged instruction). This
should be done using a read-modify-write sequence to preserve the values of other FCR bits.
2. The ALTINST bit enables execution of a new x86 jump instruction that starts execution of alter-
nate instructions. This new jump instruction can be executed from any privilege level at any time
that ALTINST is 1. The new jump instruction is a two-byte instruction: 0x0F3F. If ALTINST is 0,
the execution of 0x0F3F causes an Invalid Instruction exception.
3. When executed, the new 0x0F3F x86 instruction causes a near branch to CS:EAX. That is, the
branch function is the same as the existing x86 instruction
jmp [eax]
In addition to the branch, the 0x0F3F instruction sets the processor into an internal mode where the
target bytes are not interpreted as x86 instructions but rather as alternate instruction set instructions.
4. The alternate instructions fetched following the 0x0F3F branch should be of the form
0x8D8400XXXXXXXX where 0xXXXXXXXX is the 32-bit alternate instruction
That is, the alternate instructions are presented as the 32-bit displacement of a
LEA [EAX+EAX+disp]
instruction. This example assumes that the current code segment size is 32-bits, if it is 16-bits, then an address size prefix (0x67) must be placed in front of the LEA opcode.
5. Upon fetching, the LEA “wrapper” is stripped off and the 32-bit alternate instruction contained in the displacement field is executed.
6. The alternate instruction set contains a special branch instruction that returns control to x86 fetch
and execute mode. The x86 state upon return is not necessarily what it was when alternate instruction execution is entered since the alternate instructions can completely modify the x86 state.
While all VIA C3 processor processors contain this alternate instruction feature, the invocation details (e.g., the 0x8D8400 “prefix”) may be different between processors. Check the appropriate processor data-
sheet for details.
This is pretty much a niche use. I do not think that it will be a big problem for the environment if people continue to use combustion engines for such niche uses... and likewise, if rally cars do not convert to electric.
In other words, they're making an ASIC. Great, but I would have expected that most of these computer vision-based self-driving platforms would indeed be using ASICs. So the news here is probably that they are moving away from NVidia's turnkey hardware solution.
Military grade temperature range is -55 / +125 C (junction temperature). Of course, there can be adaptations to other temperature ranges... Here, they probably used the standardized military test methods, but with a more limited temperature range.
At least, there was Captain Phasma. She was a female villain, however her character development was pretty much non-existent. As for many characters of these movies...
What a good piece of news ! I was aware of the development of Descent:Underground, but I did not heat about Overload. I am really looking forward to playing this, as 6DOF games have really been missed during all these years. This game seems to have all the required mechanics of a modern-day Descent, with tri-cording and limited turn rate. I wonder how it will play on consoles with a game controller, when it will be released.
Yet, you know that there are important differentces in way it works.
Monitoring an airplane autopilot is a very passive activity which does not requires a lot of alertness (except in an autoland situation, which does not last so long).
However, an airplane autopilot can disconnect if it encounters a situation it cannot cope with - and at that time, the pilot has to become very active. However, the analogy between the Tesla autopilot and the airplane autopilot ends here:
- There are visual and audible warnings when the autopilot encounters a situation it cannot cope with in an airplane, and it will automatically disconnect
- When something goes wrong, you only have seconds to react in a car. On an aircraft, the reaction time required is tens of seconds (even minutes sometimes).
- As a consequence, a Tesla you need to keep the hands on the controls at all times. Not so in an aircraft.
- Finally, both systems will "happily" drive/fly into an undetected obstacle - with the important difference that an airplane autopilot is supplemented in most of the cases by a GPWS/TAWS terrain avoidance warning system.
Of course, youâ(TM)re right. The satellites we are talking of are not running on x86, and are certainly not using Windows 95. In fact, on a lot of them, there isnâ(TM)t any ÂÂoperating systemÂÂ layer. And on the others, youâ(TM)re more likely to find an RTOS running on PPC or SPARC. As you said, the article writer probably mistook the operating systems running on the ground support equipement and command/control stations rather than the satellite itself. Nevertheless, if the command/control station can be hacked, it still raises security related questions...
Yet the environment in which an airplane autopilot operates is very different from the environment in which a car "autopilot" operates. When monitoring an aircraft autopilot and something goes wrong, you have dozens of second (if not minutes) to react. For instance, after AF447 autopilot disengaged, the fall of the aircraft lasted for about 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and the situation could have been recovered during most of them. In a car, the problem is very different - you only have a few seconds to react before you run into a wall or drive over someone. This is why comparisons with airplanes are not so much relevant.
Yes, but there's also the autoland feature on aircraft - which is arguably more refined than just keeping an altitude. As all things in aircraft, it still requires supervision.
Except that there is a flaw in the article summary:
While the VSC was active on Sunday, second-placed Vettel ducked into the pit lane, where the virtual car's speed rules did not apply, picked up fresh tires, and emerged ahead of Hamilton to take first place.
When he pitted, Vettel was not in second place, but in first place because he hadn't stopped yet. By pitting under VSC, he just lost less time than Hamilton who had stopped a few laps before. Gaining time during a pit stop during a VSC period, or even worse, during a real safety car period, is nothing new. It just turns out that this time, Mercedes miscalculated the time difference between a regular pit stop and a pit stop under VSC.
There is more to it than just dynamic range (which is quite difficult to measure on the eye anyway). The eye is a log-scale sensor, whereas most of the image sensors we are using are linear scale. In such low-light situations with bright elements, this improves a lot the clarity of the scene.
Except that they are paid to do precisely that and not to drive. It's far from being something impossible to do if they are not careless, however I wonder how long their shifts actually are. It could get tiring quite quickly.
It's more than a concept : such railway signalling systems have already been designed and have been in use for a long time ! See for instance KVB, which was introduced in the 90's, or the many other equivalent systems. They prevent trains from exceeding the speed limit or from entering blocks of the tracks already used by other trains.
Newer systems such as ETCS are more advanced and flexible, but the basic functionality you are describing has been here for a long time.
There have been automatic speed control systems in subways since at least the 60's.
There has been fully automatic subways lines operating since at least the 80's.
It's not a technology problem.
It is surprising that slashdot makes no reference to the Advanced Mobile Location system, given that it already wrote about it in an article. Because we would like to compare the pros and cons of those different systems.
You have really never waited for ages while the AI was trying to get a turn done in Civilization ? Of course, you could also say that the AI logic is ill-programmed, but the bottleneck is clearly in the game logic.
Slashdot Mirror
As it should be ? Yes, of course...
Well, this has been on sale for more than 10 years... I think most of the problems have been solved, maybe except theft.
Does a one hour general grounding cost so much ? In terms of image for sure, but in terms of money I am not so sure... Who is actually going to get a refund for this ? One to two hours delays are not rare.
Replying to undo badly chosen moderation.
It is certainly reasonable for server-side software in which a security team ensures that the current installation is not vulnerable to exploits, and performs the required patching/updating operations.
For commercial software aimed at general users, the benefits of (very) prompt disclosure are more questionable:
- Regardless of the disclosure status, these users will most likely never hear about it.
- Even if they hear about it, in the specific case of games such as Fortnite, a significant proportion of the users will not care about the vulnerability as long as they can play.
- Updates will be pushed through the app store/update manager/etc, with no user interaction.
From the datasheet itself:
ALTERNATE INSTRUCTION EXECUTION
When set to 1, the ALTINST bit in the FCR enables execution of an alternate (not x86) instruction set. While setting this FCR bit is a privileged operation, executing the alternate instructions can be done from any protection level.
This alternate instruction set includes an extended set of integer, MMX, floating-point, and 3DNow! instructions along with additional registers and some more powerful instruction forms over the x86 instruction architecture. For example, in the alternate instruction set, privileged functions can be used from any protection level, memory descriptor checking can be bypassed, and many x86 exceptions such as alignment check can be bypassed. This alternate instruction set is intended for testing, debug, and special application usage. Accordingly, it is not documented for general usage. If you have a justified need for access to these instructions, contact your VIA representative.
The mechanism for initiating execution of this alternate set of instructions is as follows:
1. Set the FCR ALTINST bit to 1 using WRMSR instruction (this is a privileged instruction). This should be done using a read-modify-write sequence to preserve the values of other FCR bits.
2. The ALTINST bit enables execution of a new x86 jump instruction that starts execution of alter- nate instructions. This new jump instruction can be executed from any privilege level at any time that ALTINST is 1. The new jump instruction is a two-byte instruction: 0x0F3F. If ALTINST is 0, the execution of 0x0F3F causes an Invalid Instruction exception.
3. When executed, the new 0x0F3F x86 instruction causes a near branch to CS:EAX. That is, the branch function is the same as the existing x86 instruction
jmp [eax]
In addition to the branch, the 0x0F3F instruction sets the processor into an internal mode where the target bytes are not interpreted as x86 instructions but rather as alternate instruction set instructions.
4. The alternate instructions fetched following the 0x0F3F branch should be of the form
0x8D8400XXXXXXXX where 0xXXXXXXXX is the 32-bit alternate instruction
That is, the alternate instructions are presented as the 32-bit displacement of a
LEA [EAX+EAX+disp]
instruction. This example assumes that the current code segment size is 32-bits, if it is 16-bits, then an address size prefix (0x67) must be placed in front of the LEA opcode.
5. Upon fetching, the LEA “wrapper” is stripped off and the 32-bit alternate instruction contained in the displacement field is executed.
6. The alternate instruction set contains a special branch instruction that returns control to x86 fetch and execute mode. The x86 state upon return is not necessarily what it was when alternate instruction execution is entered since the alternate instructions can completely modify the x86 state.
While all VIA C3 processor processors contain this alternate instruction feature, the invocation details (e.g., the 0x8D8400 “prefix”) may be different between processors. Check the appropriate processor data- sheet for details.
This is pretty much a niche use. I do not think that it will be a big problem for the environment if people continue to use combustion engines for such niche uses... and likewise, if rally cars do not convert to electric.
In other words, they're making an ASIC. Great, but I would have expected that most of these computer vision-based self-driving platforms would indeed be using ASICs. So the news here is probably that they are moving away from NVidia's turnkey hardware solution.
Military grade temperature range is -55 / +125 C (junction temperature). Of course, there can be adaptations to other temperature ranges... Here, they probably used the standardized military test methods, but with a more limited temperature range.
At least, there was Captain Phasma. She was a female villain, however her character development was pretty much non-existent. As for many characters of these movies...
What a good piece of news ! I was aware of the development of Descent:Underground, but I did not heat about Overload. I am really looking forward to playing this, as 6DOF games have really been missed during all these years. This game seems to have all the required mechanics of a modern-day Descent, with tri-cording and limited turn rate. I wonder how it will play on consoles with a game controller, when it will be released.
Yet, you know that there are important differentces in way it works.
Monitoring an airplane autopilot is a very passive activity which does not requires a lot of alertness (except in an autoland situation, which does not last so long).
However, an airplane autopilot can disconnect if it encounters a situation it cannot cope with - and at that time, the pilot has to become very active. However, the analogy between the Tesla autopilot and the airplane autopilot ends here:
- There are visual and audible warnings when the autopilot encounters a situation it cannot cope with in an airplane, and it will automatically disconnect
- When something goes wrong, you only have seconds to react in a car. On an aircraft, the reaction time required is tens of seconds (even minutes sometimes).
- As a consequence, a Tesla you need to keep the hands on the controls at all times. Not so in an aircraft.
- Finally, both systems will "happily" drive/fly into an undetected obstacle - with the important difference that an airplane autopilot is supplemented in most of the cases by a GPWS/TAWS terrain avoidance warning system.
Please, you know that what you are saying is not true.
Of course, youâ(TM)re right. The satellites we are talking of are not running on x86, and are certainly not using Windows 95. In fact, on a lot of them, there isnâ(TM)t any ÂÂoperating systemÂÂ layer. And on the others, youâ(TM)re more likely to find an RTOS running on PPC or SPARC. As you said, the article writer probably mistook the operating systems running on the ground support equipement and command/control stations rather than the satellite itself. Nevertheless, if the command/control station can be hacked, it still raises security related questions...
Yet the environment in which an airplane autopilot operates is very different from the environment in which a car "autopilot" operates. When monitoring an aircraft autopilot and something goes wrong, you have dozens of second (if not minutes) to react. For instance, after AF447 autopilot disengaged, the fall of the aircraft lasted for about 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and the situation could have been recovered during most of them. In a car, the problem is very different - you only have a few seconds to react before you run into a wall or drive over someone. This is why comparisons with airplanes are not so much relevant.
Yes, but there's also the autoland feature on aircraft - which is arguably more refined than just keeping an altitude. As all things in aircraft, it still requires supervision.
There is no minimum time enforced during yellow flags.
Except that there is a flaw in the article summary:
While the VSC was active on Sunday, second-placed Vettel ducked into the pit lane, where the virtual car's speed rules did not apply, picked up fresh tires, and emerged ahead of Hamilton to take first place.
When he pitted, Vettel was not in second place, but in first place because he hadn't stopped yet. By pitting under VSC, he just lost less time than Hamilton who had stopped a few laps before. Gaining time during a pit stop during a VSC period, or even worse, during a real safety car period, is nothing new. It just turns out that this time, Mercedes miscalculated the time difference between a regular pit stop and a pit stop under VSC.
There is more to it than just dynamic range (which is quite difficult to measure on the eye anyway). The eye is a log-scale sensor, whereas most of the image sensors we are using are linear scale. In such low-light situations with bright elements, this improves a lot the clarity of the scene.
Except that they are paid to do precisely that and not to drive. It's far from being something impossible to do if they are not careless, however I wonder how long their shifts actually are. It could get tiring quite quickly.
It's more than a concept : such railway signalling systems have already been designed and have been in use for a long time ! See for instance KVB, which was introduced in the 90's, or the many other equivalent systems. They prevent trains from exceeding the speed limit or from entering blocks of the tracks already used by other trains.
Newer systems such as ETCS are more advanced and flexible, but the basic functionality you are describing has been here for a long time.
There have been automatic speed control systems in subways since at least the 60's.
There has been fully automatic subways lines operating since at least the 80's.
It's not a technology problem.
It is surprising that slashdot makes no reference to the Advanced Mobile Location system, given that it already wrote about it in an article. Because we would like to compare the pros and cons of those different systems.
Tinder is free. Every one can access it. We are talking here about extra services.
You have really never waited for ages while the AI was trying to get a turn done in Civilization ? Of course, you could also say that the AI logic is ill-programmed, but the bottleneck is clearly in the game logic.