3 ms·
The more popular your software is, the more likely you'll get bug reports from people with just bad hardware. I know a few applications now that perform a simp
by matja 1mo ago
The more popular your software is, the more likely you'll get bug reports from people with just bad hardware. I know a few applications now that perform a simple memory/CPU test when sending a bug report and reject those that are basically impossible.
E.g.: 10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252971
- ranger_danger 1mo agoFirefox was the only program that was crashing on my "Vmin Shift Instability" bugged CPU. Before I even knew what the culprit was, I filed a bug report with Firefox and the first question they asked me was if my CPU was a Raptor Lake (it was).
- exe34 1mo agoIt's mind blowing for me whenever the hardware abstraction leaks like this. You (ie Firefox) had to call the instructions in a specific order to cause the hardware to fail.
- ranger_danger 1mo agoIt does make sense that a browser, being the thing most people would be running all day, basically fuzzes CPUs for free... they generate their own CPU instructions at runtime from the JIT engine(s), and different styles of webpages could cause every possible combination of instructions to appear throughout the day on every machine.
- akoboldfrying 1mo agoThis is right. There's a reason people squat domain names that differ from well-known ones by a single bit flip. Think of how many old, shitty phones there are in the world, built using the cheapest available components and running in someone's crumb-filled, humid pocket right next to their magnetic key fob thing.