4 ms·

So, let me get this straight. You're saying Google should have foreseen spectre et al 20 years ago and therefore should have used DEC mainframes as it's infras

• goatinaboat 7y ago
  I think he or she is drawing an analogy between Intel and Google both "cutting corners" to save costs, which worked well for them in the short term but had unforeseen consequences for everyone else over the longer term. This could be an instance of the famous "tragedy of the commons".
  • bb88 7y ago
    If DEC had won, would we have the same issue? "In some cases there’s non-privileged access to suitable timers. For example, in the essentially obsolete Digital/Compaq Alpha processors the architecture includes a processor cycle counter that is readable with a non-privileged instruction. That makes attacks based on timing relatively easy to implement if you can execute appropriate code." I still call bullshit on his entire hypothesis. https://hackaday.com/2018/01/10/spectre-and-meltdown-attackers-always-have-the-advantage/ https://hackaday.com/2018/01/10/spectre-and-meltdown-attacke...
• benj111 7y ago
  No I said its not about 'fuck Google', its about identifying the root cause of a problem. I didn't forsee this, and I don't recall anyone else predicting it, so no I don't think Google should have foreseen it either, but nevertheless it has happened, so we should endeavour to understand why, so it doesn't happen again. It isn't about blame, it isn't about pointing fingers. Now we've identified an issue, then the next time an industry moves from big iron the commodity X86 PCs we can ask the question, is this going to be a problem?