5 ms·

There's a whole attack paper on how excessive writes can be harmful, so I suspect trying to reduce them is better than nothing: https://www.usenix.org/system/f

There's a whole attack paper on how excessive writes can be harmful, so I suspect trying to reduce them is better than nothing: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotsec12/hotsec12-final4.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotsec12/hots... (I'm not an EE expert by any stretch, but that paper cites several peer reviewed wear leveling techniques.) The REAL issue, based on my (amateur) reading, is that the components that handle wear leveling are not open source: >In all cases commercially available flash controllers provide no details of the internal mechanisms that are used to extend life, as such details remain the competitive advantage in a crowded market space We are sitting around trying to make inferences about proprietary, unpublished algorithms that have very real effects on people, not just property, when what we probably want is for industry to collaborate on figuring out which techniques work best rather than hoarding that knowledge and forcing folks to get burned once or twice or pay exorbitant amounts of money for research grants to infer what purchasing decisions to make.

ChrisLomont 4y ago
Conversely, to pay for researchers to invent new techniques, companies need to get that money back by selling capabilities their competitors do not have. For an example of the difference, compare the quality and capability of Photoshop versus GIMP (or any open source photo editor) to see the difference. After all, photo editing is older than open source, yet open source still cannot make the technologically leading photo editor. The same is true across a massive range of software, from CAD to scientific software to audio compositing to movie editing to ......
- blagie 4y ago
  That's not really fair. Except for support for color models / spaces, gimp was basically on-par with Photoshop when it came out. Toss in 16 bit color, LAB color, and CMYK, and the two were nearly identical. gimp had better scripting too. The key difference is Photoshop has continuously improved, in part due to competitive pressure from tools like gimp. In the meantime, gimp development slowed sometime around 2000, and basically stopped by around 2008, at least from a user-facing perspective. Today, gimp is still very competitive with late-nineties Photoshop (even a bit ahead).
  - 323 4y ago
    You speak like a programmer. When people say Photoshop is better than Gimp they mean the user experience. Where Gimp is light years behind Photoshop. > Today, gimp is still very competitive with late-nineties Photoshop (even a bit ahead). Absolutely not, in fact I would say the opposite. 1999 Photoshop (which I used) is still way ahead of today's Gimp user experience. The technical features of Gimp are irrelevant (for Photoshop kind of users) if Gimp's interface is atrocious.
    - blagie 4y ago
      Huh. Are you sure it's not just familiarity? I used both about the same in the late nineties, and they felt similar to me in usability. To me, gimp 2022 doesn't feel better or worse than gimp 2000 for usability, and both are about the same as Photoshop 2000.
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      Photoshop is not better, because paying in perpetuity is unacceptable. I've learned to use GIMP, OS specific tools, or CLI ones, and focused on taking photos well enough I don't need to fuck with HDR or whatever to make them pretty.
      - ChrisLomont 4y ago
        >Photoshop is not better, because paying in perpetuity is unacceptable. If your time is worth zero, then yes, you can use slower tools. Professionals learn that getting things done quickly and well has lots of value. Paying for a tool that costs you an hour of labor in income but saves you weeks or gains you vastly more in earnings makes such tools a terrific value for such people. If you don't value your time, or cannot use the tool to pay for itself, then don't buy the tool. Many people are not you. >and focused on taking photos well enough I don't need to fuck with HDR or whatever to make them pretty Those using Photoshop are not merely color touching single, simple photos. They use it for a lot more than that. All digital cameras do a lot of in-camera digital processing. Those algorithms are inferior, run on slower hardware, and have many other limitations that a PC does not. And there's a significant amount of work beyond "taking photos well enough." Not many clients want that - they can do what you do too. Compositing, touchups, creative work based on photos is just the tip of the iceberg for professionals. Don't like photoshop? Don't buy it. But don't assume you're doing what those who do see value in it are doing.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >For an example of the difference, compare the quality and capability of Photoshop versus GIMP (or any open source photo editor) to see the difference. Photo editing has changed, a lot of basic things like crop and export are able to be done in OS specific tools like preview, you used to need full on photoshop. Conversely GIMP on MacOS is an absolute disaster that doesn't even use the same UI as the rest of the OS. These more utilitarian tools are ridding with usability bugs and probably security vulns as well.
slaymaker1907 4y ago
It's also really hard to even get access to directly addressable flash (which would make it much easier for researchers to study). This seems to be because the algorithms for wear leveling and virtual addressing are actually huge differentiating factors between manufacturers and the actual flash storage is all very similar.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  Hiding flash behind an FTL allows companies to use it to use imperfect flash (flash with bad blocks) make things cheaper. Remember when hard drives had block defect table labels on them, and then those went away when EIDE took over?

ChrisLomont 4y ago

Conversely, to pay for researchers to invent new techniques, companies need to get that money back by selling capabilities their competitors do not have. For an example of the difference, compare the quality and capability of Photoshop versus GIMP (or any open source photo editor) to see the difference. After all, photo editing is older than open source, yet open source still cannot make the technologically leading photo editor. The same is true across a massive range of software, from CAD to scientific software to audio compositing to movie editing to ......

blagie 4y ago
That's not really fair. Except for support for color models / spaces, gimp was basically on-par with Photoshop when it came out. Toss in 16 bit color, LAB color, and CMYK, and the two were nearly identical. gimp had better scripting too. The key difference is Photoshop has continuously improved, in part due to competitive pressure from tools like gimp. In the meantime, gimp development slowed sometime around 2000, and basically stopped by around 2008, at least from a user-facing perspective. Today, gimp is still very competitive with late-nineties Photoshop (even a bit ahead).
- 323 4y ago
  You speak like a programmer. When people say Photoshop is better than Gimp they mean the user experience. Where Gimp is light years behind Photoshop. > Today, gimp is still very competitive with late-nineties Photoshop (even a bit ahead). Absolutely not, in fact I would say the opposite. 1999 Photoshop (which I used) is still way ahead of today's Gimp user experience. The technical features of Gimp are irrelevant (for Photoshop kind of users) if Gimp's interface is atrocious.
  - blagie 4y ago
    Huh. Are you sure it's not just familiarity? I used both about the same in the late nineties, and they felt similar to me in usability. To me, gimp 2022 doesn't feel better or worse than gimp 2000 for usability, and both are about the same as Photoshop 2000.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    Photoshop is not better, because paying in perpetuity is unacceptable. I've learned to use GIMP, OS specific tools, or CLI ones, and focused on taking photos well enough I don't need to fuck with HDR or whatever to make them pretty.
    - ChrisLomont 4y ago
      >Photoshop is not better, because paying in perpetuity is unacceptable. If your time is worth zero, then yes, you can use slower tools. Professionals learn that getting things done quickly and well has lots of value. Paying for a tool that costs you an hour of labor in income but saves you weeks or gains you vastly more in earnings makes such tools a terrific value for such people. If you don't value your time, or cannot use the tool to pay for itself, then don't buy the tool. Many people are not you. >and focused on taking photos well enough I don't need to fuck with HDR or whatever to make them pretty Those using Photoshop are not merely color touching single, simple photos. They use it for a lot more than that. All digital cameras do a lot of in-camera digital processing. Those algorithms are inferior, run on slower hardware, and have many other limitations that a PC does not. And there's a significant amount of work beyond "taking photos well enough." Not many clients want that - they can do what you do too. Compositing, touchups, creative work based on photos is just the tip of the iceberg for professionals. Don't like photoshop? Don't buy it. But don't assume you're doing what those who do see value in it are doing.
dontbenebby 4y ago
>For an example of the difference, compare the quality and capability of Photoshop versus GIMP (or any open source photo editor) to see the difference. Photo editing has changed, a lot of basic things like crop and export are able to be done in OS specific tools like preview, you used to need full on photoshop. Conversely GIMP on MacOS is an absolute disaster that doesn't even use the same UI as the rest of the OS. These more utilitarian tools are ridding with usability bugs and probably security vulns as well.

slaymaker1907 4y ago

It's also really hard to even get access to directly addressable flash (which would make it much easier for researchers to study). This seems to be because the algorithms for wear leveling and virtual addressing are actually huge differentiating factors between manufacturers and the actual flash storage is all very similar.

tenebrisalietum 4y ago
Hiding flash behind an FTL allows companies to use it to use imperfect flash (flash with bad blocks) make things cheaper. Remember when hard drives had block defect table labels on them, and then those went away when EIDE took over?