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Counter point is that Google, like Intel, puts profits ahead of doing the right thing, selling out its users to advertisers with virtual impunity because those

Counter point is that Google, like Intel, puts profits ahead of doing the right thing, selling out its users to advertisers with virtual impunity because those same users are addicted to the "free" stuff that Google gives them. So maybe we need more prominent people like Torvalds calling bullshit on them too. Finally we are starting to get such voices re Facebook, but even those not as honest as Torvalds. See the bashcoder thread for a more hardnose analysis of this article, Torvalds and Intel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539

cromwellian 9y ago
Even if I agreed with your sell-out criticism, what makes you think that hurling obscenities and insults at the executives would change that, vs a well written argument that the behavior is wrong and will have consequences that could harm the company? Simply calling something garbage doesn't elicit change, our political system is the perfect example of that. It creates polarization which, due to human nature, makes can make people less motivated to work with you. There's no even any evidence Intel did anything wrong. For decades, the market demanded performance, and VM based cloud computing was created long after speculative execution became an industry wide (not just Intel) optimization. The way we use CPUs has changed, our OSes have changed, the threat model has changed, and the sophistication of attacks has changed. Future CPUs need to be designed from the ground up with modern cloud computing in mind and that's going to take 2 years at least given industry cycles. What do we do in the meantime with our current silicon is the question. Intel seems like they're trying to do the right think by handling failures in retpoline to offer full protection. But maybe the conspiracies are right, but when has an accusation of some conspiratorial behavior ever been solved by people yelling and screaming moron and garbage? It's just not the right way to perform an investigation IMHO.
- he0001 9y ago
  Like most things we only see one part of these discussions. It might be so that this have built up under several weeks/conversations etc and when nothing happens something needs to be done. In a non-cooperative there’s no boss you can turn to when you are unhappy with the situation, in linux’s case few other actual platforms to “turn” to. What do you do when, online, mostly only have your reputation to influence people. I’m not defending Linus per se, but he do have a really unique position and it’s probably not easy to be in that position and AFAIKT it works. Maybe if it would have been someone else the world would look, most probably, rather different. It’s really easy to criticize, but frankly none of us knows how it is to be in his situation and I guess he has to deal with his fair share of trolls, morons and energy thieves.

cromwellian 9y ago

Even if I agreed with your sell-out criticism, what makes you think that hurling obscenities and insults at the executives would change that, vs a well written argument that the behavior is wrong and will have consequences that could harm the company? Simply calling something garbage doesn't elicit change, our political system is the perfect example of that. It creates polarization which, due to human nature, makes can make people less motivated to work with you. There's no even any evidence Intel did anything wrong. For decades, the market demanded performance, and VM based cloud computing was created long after speculative execution became an industry wide (not just Intel) optimization. The way we use CPUs has changed, our OSes have changed, the threat model has changed, and the sophistication of attacks has changed. Future CPUs need to be designed from the ground up with modern cloud computing in mind and that's going to take 2 years at least given industry cycles. What do we do in the meantime with our current silicon is the question. Intel seems like they're trying to do the right think by handling failures in retpoline to offer full protection. But maybe the conspiracies are right, but when has an accusation of some conspiratorial behavior ever been solved by people yelling and screaming moron and garbage? It's just not the right way to perform an investigation IMHO.

he0001 9y ago
Like most things we only see one part of these discussions. It might be so that this have built up under several weeks/conversations etc and when nothing happens something needs to be done. In a non-cooperative there’s no boss you can turn to when you are unhappy with the situation, in linux’s case few other actual platforms to “turn” to. What do you do when, online, mostly only have your reputation to influence people. I’m not defending Linus per se, but he do have a really unique position and it’s probably not easy to be in that position and AFAIKT it works. Maybe if it would have been someone else the world would look, most probably, rather different. It’s really easy to criticize, but frankly none of us knows how it is to be in his situation and I guess he has to deal with his fair share of trolls, morons and energy thieves.