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Please stop defending (if implicitly) Intel's irresponsible disclosure. We at Joyent are (1) a public cloud, (2) have our own operating system (SmartOS), (3) h

Please stop defending (if implicitly) Intel's irresponsible disclosure. We at Joyent are (1) a public cloud, (2) have our own operating system (SmartOS), (3) have always respected embargoes and (4) have a close relationship with Intel (!!) -- and we weren't notified either. OpenBSD was not excluded -- rather they (and we and every other system that isn't Windows, MacOS and Linux) were not included. What Intel did here was hugely irresponsible, leaving many in a vulnerable position for an extended period of time; there is nothing that OpenBSD (or anyone else) did to deserve such shabby treatment.

cthalupa 9y ago
This is fair. If it wasn't a matter of conscious exclusion based on past actions, then I would agree it's poorly handled, and for FreeBSD, Illumos, et al., I can't disagree with you.
runlevel1 9y ago
They dropped the ball all around. Even with 6 months lead time, they were startlingly unprepared in all but their works-as-designed press release.
- gcb0 9y ago
  and that was sadly the right thing to do. why? because they will have zero consequences. not even the inside (pun intended) trading thing will stick.
- ymse 9y ago
  I think HN user pinewurst nailed it back in 2016: "[Intel] are basically a PR firm with a good fab in the basement". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820078 Their handling of recent events has really cemented this view in my mind.
  - jrockway 9y ago
    I think that was a typo, though, and he meant to refer to IBM. You have to remember that IBM's PR is stuff like "Watson is sitting here curing cancer right now while his best friend Deep Blue beats people at chess!!11!" Intel doesn't do any of that.
    - ymse 9y ago
      No, it really was in reference to Intel (the thread was about Intel obtaining and developing a dinosaur-era distributed file system called Lustre).
      - bayindirh 9y ago
        Lustre may be old, but it's hardly useless. Some of its capabilities cannot be replaced by any modern storage systems object and file alike. CEPH comes close, but cannot completely replace it. When you connect a thousand nodes to a single storage pool with high throughput and low latency requirements, not everything can cut it.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Paraphrasing Linus, "talk is cheap, show me the silicon" While it's fair to criticize them, sometimes it comes across as "those hardware bozos don't know what they're doing" and hardware design, at the speeds and features Intel does is hard (just look at the number of competitors)
benchaney 9y ago
This defense of intel is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they chose to exclude the BSDs before the KRACK controversy happened.
binthere 9y ago
Not defending Intel, just trying to understand their position other than just being negligent. Wouldn't it undermine most users if the security flaw had leaked before major OS fixed it? The more you share, the easier it is for a leak to happen. So they could have decided to share only with the major OS first and then later, once fixes have been implemented, expand this to other interested parties?
ksec 9y ago
Well In a perfect world, a lot of these users will revolt and at least buy more AMD EPIC, which is very price competitive. But Intel is going to do what they do best, give you lots of discount in upcoming chips order to keep you happy. And in Business it is really hard to say no to that. Then there are other segments including Gamers and Casual users, who really believe in Intel's brand and could careless about what Intel did. Basically we dont see any damages being done to Intel. And when their PR spin how good their 10nm is and Intel being the underdog with Qualcomm in Modem race, everyone would have forgotten about Meltdown and Spectre.

cthalupa 9y ago

This is fair. If it wasn't a matter of conscious exclusion based on past actions, then I would agree it's poorly handled, and for FreeBSD, Illumos, et al., I can't disagree with you.

runlevel1 9y ago

They dropped the ball all around. Even with 6 months lead time, they were startlingly unprepared in all but their works-as-designed press release.

gcb0 9y ago
and that was sadly the right thing to do. why? because they will have zero consequences. not even the inside (pun intended) trading thing will stick.
ymse 9y ago
I think HN user pinewurst nailed it back in 2016: "[Intel] are basically a PR firm with a good fab in the basement". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820078 Their handling of recent events has really cemented this view in my mind.
- jrockway 9y ago
  I think that was a typo, though, and he meant to refer to IBM. You have to remember that IBM's PR is stuff like "Watson is sitting here curing cancer right now while his best friend Deep Blue beats people at chess!!11!" Intel doesn't do any of that.
  - ymse 9y ago
    No, it really was in reference to Intel (the thread was about Intel obtaining and developing a dinosaur-era distributed file system called Lustre).
    - bayindirh 9y ago
      Lustre may be old, but it's hardly useless. Some of its capabilities cannot be replaced by any modern storage systems object and file alike. CEPH comes close, but cannot completely replace it. When you connect a thousand nodes to a single storage pool with high throughput and low latency requirements, not everything can cut it.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Paraphrasing Linus, "talk is cheap, show me the silicon" While it's fair to criticize them, sometimes it comes across as "those hardware bozos don't know what they're doing" and hardware design, at the speeds and features Intel does is hard (just look at the number of competitors)

benchaney 9y ago

This defense of intel is made even more ridiculous by the fact that they chose to exclude the BSDs before the KRACK controversy happened.

binthere 9y ago

Not defending Intel, just trying to understand their position other than just being negligent. Wouldn't it undermine most users if the security flaw had leaked before major OS fixed it? The more you share, the easier it is for a leak to happen. So they could have decided to share only with the major OS first and then later, once fixes have been implemented, expand this to other interested parties?

ksec 9y ago

Well In a perfect world, a lot of these users will revolt and at least buy more AMD EPIC, which is very price competitive. But Intel is going to do what they do best, give you lots of discount in upcoming chips order to keep you happy. And in Business it is really hard to say no to that. Then there are other segments including Gamers and Casual users, who really believe in Intel's brand and could careless about what Intel did. Basically we dont see any damages being done to Intel. And when their PR spin how good their 10nm is and Intel being the underdog with Qualcomm in Modem race, everyone would have forgotten about Meltdown and Spectre.