Meltdown & Spectre Information and Discussion

[trinidad]

I heard you on the wireless back in fifty two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through

They took the credit for your second symphony
Rewritten by machine and new technology
And now I understand the problems you can see

Oh-a oh
I met your children
Oh-a oh
What did you tell them?

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

Pictures came and broke your heart
Oh-a-a-a oh

And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go

Oh-a oh
You were the first one
Oh-a oh
You were the last one

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind we've gone too far

Oh-a-aho oh
Oh-a-aho oh

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind we've gone to far
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VTR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ

Don't look back. You're not going that way.
TC

[newtusmaximus]

Hey T what are you on   All this blown your circuits?? 

[rokytnji]

Hey T what are you on   All this blown your circuits?? 

My take  and sense of humor is his clever way on how video killed my the function of my IBM T23 laptop.

Only way I can watch watch youtube on a Pentium 3 is with livestreamer tied into streamlight-antix

Livestreamer is a Command Line Interface that extracts video
streams from various services and hands them to a video player,
such as VLC. The main purpose of Livestreamer is to allow the
user to avoid buggy and CPU heavy flash plugins but still
be able to enjoy various streamed content.

Currently most of the big streaming services are supported
(e.g. Dailymotion, Livestream, Justin.tv, Twitch, YouTube Live
and UStream) and more specialized content providers can be
added easily using Livestreamer’s plugin system.

streamlight-antix

An easy way to play or download antiX help videos from Youtube without using a modern, heavyweight, web browser.

Hope I guessed right.  Kinda off topic. But I don't care. 

[trinidad]

Acutally if we consider the fundamental ethical business model of the proprietary computer industry we can derive the creedo: "Don't look back. You're not going that way." though Roks take is perfectly funny too. Rush to development is what this mess is all about. I believe a cautionary approach is better, given that this flaw involves proprietary code that has such a cross platform impact and scope. The best approach would be for Intel to release open source CPU code, not expect software modification. Some say Linux in general would be better off to drag its feet a little with this issue and consider a little more in depth what the suggested mitigations might open a door to. Could be a bad moon rising.

TC

[Valtam]

FYI - Ubuntu making some head way here:

[newtusmaximus]

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/...78994854=1

[trinidad]

Nasty little side effects. With the meltdown mitigations on both kernels .109 in Ubuntu LTS base system, and .110 in LL running in Qemu I'm running a right around a 38% increase in RAM usage with heavy IO (noted while updating from .109 to .110 in LL running in Qemu) CPU bouncing between 70% and 90%. RAM usage never exceeded 50% before.

Settled back a bit after rebooting both. Only about 15% higher that before running Firefox in both systems simultaneously.

TC

[Valtam]

View from DW - https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180115#qa

[trinidad]

I've read them both before Jerry. Glad Distrowatch has made the info easy to access. Spectre is a threat to high end propietary security meaures like AV and anti-malware deployments that use CPU sandboxing, and is also able to produce DOS exploits via bit flipping exploits akin to the rowhammer concept. Every existing CPU protection/monitoring gadget is open to exploit this way. It is the ultimate back door. I am avoiding being technical until I'm ready with my own conclusions.

TC 

[newtusmaximus]

https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/128053 -  Its relevance to LL or  Debian distros is beyond me I am afraid.  May be of help to our "knowledgeable ones" though