Design flaw in intel processors...

[Cody]

... and the upcoming OS fixes may slow your machine down. Article (at El Reg) here.

Naughty intel... very naughty!

[phkb]

Oh, joy. Can’t wait to explain to my CEO why all the computers are running slow.

[spud42]

yeah read that last night on another forum.... oops!!

but not really... it affects intel processors from the last 10 years! so flaw has been around for a while .

allowing speculative reads into protected kernal space without checking permissions? big oops...

[Cody]

Apparently, Meltdown is the intel-specific CPU flaw - but Spectre has raised its ugly head too:

Spectre potentially has a wider reach. It affects some chips in smartphones, tablets and computers powered by Intel, ARM and AMD.
It is thought to be much harder to patch and no fix for it has yet been made widely available.

Is Ernst Stavro at it again?

[Getafix]

Thanks for sharing, Cody.

[Astrobe]

yeah read that last night on another forum.... oops!!

but not really... it affects intel processors from the last 10 years! so flaw has been around for a while .

allowing speculative reads into protected kernal space without checking permissions? big oops...

Nope. Specter and/or Meltdown also affect AMD and ARM (i.e. your phone).

The real joke is: "It affects cloud providers mainly because they run untrusted code; I, as a desktop user, am not affected as long as I am careful on the Internet".

Then Javascript says hello.

That's code (it is compiled to machine code because of JIT) which is so NOT trusted that more and more people disable it via adblockers. Well if Javascript (that is, the Javascript abuse that has infected the Web) could take some collateral damage from this, that would be a good thing. Maybe I won't be one of those lunatics who disable Javascript by default anymore.

That said, from what I've read Specter has been known for a long time... Because it cannot be fixed by software means. So there might be some over-reaction there.

[spud42]

what cody said... meltdown is intel cpu specific and spectre affects all.

[UK_Eliter]

Yes, it's grim. That said: I've installed patches from the Linux kernel and from Windows (Windows and the speed slow-down is that bad. Indeed, I'm unsure I've noticed one in Linux, though I do seem to have noticed one in Windows. I imagine that this vulnerability will slow down the Internet - at least unless or until companies upgrade their servers or buy more of them.

I'll be buying AMD in future. If I can wean myself off second-hand ex-business Dell computers . .

[Cody]

The ever-affable Linus Torvalds ain't too happy with intel's approach... article here.

[UK_Eliter]

The ever-affable Linus Torvalds ain't too happy with intel's approach... article here.

Yes, I heard about that. The following claim - about Linus - seems plausible, though. He's affable most of the time; it's just that when he's not, it gets publicised. Affable Linus ain't news.

EDIT: But, actually, I quite like it that someone can get away with talking to huge, at-the-least-fairly-far-from-perfect corporations, in that manner.