We talk about the sonic boom as something that happens when we travel faster than the speed of sound. We don’t specify “in the same medium you’re traveling in”, and noone reasonable thinks “it’s really hard to travel faster than the sound in carbon”.
You’ve added “speed of light” in your reading and concluded that’s what the OP wanted to imply.
I think that was unfair, and distracted from the rest of your comment.
I, for one, didn’t know what the cherenkov radiation is, and when reading the title thought “oh, so it’s a sonic boom for light? That’s so cool!”
Nothing can travel faster than light through vacuum, so that bit is implied as well.
I disagree with their quibble about the title being intentionally misleading but, meh, I've picked stranger technically correct hills to die on, the rest of their comment is interesting, it's fine.
Arguably there's a lot of people who don't know nothing is faster than light in a vacuum.
Because of science fiction, and lack of education in much of the world (looking at you USA), the title can easily make certain people think we discovered new science that allows us to travel faster than light. Especially for folks who only look at headlines.
The whole thing is a silly quibble. But sensationalized headlines get better engagement, which we can all see here.
What I find wild is the presumption that with a prompt as simple as “I want to wash my car. My car is 50m away. Should I walk or drive?”, everyone here seems to assume “washing your car” means “taking your car to the car wash”, while what I pictured was “my car is in the driveway, 50m away from me, next to a water hose”, in which case I 100% need to drive.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to reduce the article to a single sentence that's in parenthesis and links to a widely shared publication about an a MIT report. Especially when said article continues with "Don’t get me wrong: I am not denying the extraordinary potential of AI to change aspects of our world, nor that savvy entrepreneurs, companies and investors will win very big. It will — and they will."
One doesn't have to agree with the original report, but one can't in good faith deny that the whole thing smells of a financial scheme with circular contracts, massive investments for an industry that's currently losing money by the billion and unclear financial upside for most other companies out there.
I'm not saying AI is useless or that it will never be useful, I'm just saying that there are some legitimate reasons to worry about the amounts of money that are being poured into it and its potential impact on the economy at large. I believe the article is simply taking a similart stance
I didn't create an account because it's asking for my email address when using my google account. Don't want more spam.
Also, some decisions seem more politically charged than necessary, like using "Donal Trump" as an example of an "Easy" debate opponent.
Finally, I don't know the SMS-style abbreviations are much appreciated on HN (u for you is the most annoying example in your introduction). I'm not sure why it's bothering me enough to tell you about it...
Some could argue that the transistor wasn’t an invention but a discovery: the physical behavior of the semiconductors has existed for millennia, and we discovered that behavior, but we had already invented vacuum tubes before which did the same thing, just a lot less efficiently. Notice that I said “invented” vacuum tubes because the behavior comes from careful engineering and manufacture which didn’t exist in the known universe before that.
But here too, arguing on invention vs discover is pointless because there’s no common truth…
From Wikipedia: "After the war, Shockley decided to attempt the building of a triode-like semiconductor device." If attempting (and succeeding) in using one's knowledge to produce a specific thing that does not currently exist is not invention, what is?
More generally, if there's no common truth then that itself cannot be a common truth...
> Notice that I said “invented” vacuum tubes because the behavior comes from careful engineering and manufacture which didn’t exist in the known universe before that.
That would mean an invention can become a discovery, potentially millennia later, if we discover (no pun intended) that the thing already existed in some form. I think few people would agree with that.
Also, the same ”discover or invent?” question is frequently asked about mathematics, where “exist in the known universe” is very much open for interpretation. Euclidean geometry ‘existed’ in the known universe for centuries, for example, until Einstein found out that it didn’t.
I'm not sure if the linked pages was updated recently, if I'm completely misreading it or if you're trolling. There's only one processor family (matisse) that's documented as "no fix planned). All datacenter products already have a fix published, and all non-matisse chips will have a new firmware available by october 2024
The Ryzen 3000 series ("matisse") is less than 5 years old, with the models coming out in late 2019 and 2020. To not issue a fix for those is very disappointing.
I just built a gaming PC with a Ryzen 3600. It is more than sufficient to run modern games with demanding graphics and performance. I now need to learn about this exploit. Yes, if someone gets the level of access required to exploit it I was pwned anyway, but now if I get pwned I need to open up my computer and throw away a perfectly powerful CPU, then put it back together with a new one.
That's pretty damn frustrating. It will definitely push me away from AMD when I am making future hardware decision.
EDIT: As pointed out by sqeaky and others, there shouldn't be a method for persistence that lives on the processor, instead it would likely be on the motherboard, or in the bootloader on a storage device.
We need more details before claiming that the sky is falling. Many exploits that are theoretically possible have so many pre-requisites in practice that they don't matter. We need to see if that's the case here.
Intel CPUs have been self-destructing, so you need to throw away CPUs even if they aren't pwned. They have also had far more security vulnerabilities than AMD, some of them cannot be patched, and operating systems had to work around them. Heck, the Sinkclose name came from 'Sinkhole', which was an Intel vulnerability.
Yes, fair enough. My hasty anger was emotionally driven because I just built a fairly powerful gaming computer with a Ryzen 3600, and because I am perpetually chafed by the hardware treadmill. I still think "no fix planned" for their CPUs that are widely used and <5 years old is ridiculous.
> As a matter of fact, the researchers say that the code would likely survive a complete reinstallation of the operating system. The best option for infected computers would be a one-way ticket to the trash heap.
> In fact, for any machine with one of the vulnerable AMD chips, the IOActive researchers warn that an attacker could infect the computer with malware known as a “bootkit” that evades antivirus tools and is potentially invisible to the operating system, while offering a hacker full access to tamper with the machine and surveil its activity. For systems with certain faulty configurations in how a computer maker implemented AMD's security feature known as Platform Secure Boot—which the researchers warn encompasses the large majority of the systems they tested—a malware infection installed via Sinkclose could be harder yet to detect or remediate, they say, surviving even a reinstallation of the operating system.
> Only opening a computer's case, physically connecting directly to a certain portion of its memory chips with a hardware-based programming tool known as SPI Flash programmer and meticulously scouring the memory would allow the malware to be removed, Okupski says. Nissim sums up that worst-case scenario in more practical terms: “You basically have to throw your computer away.”
I have no information that conflicts with what you posted but none of that indicates that the CPU gets written to.
Consider that even things like CPU microcode don't get stored on the CPU, it's simply doesn't have persistent storage. CPU microcode is often applied early during OS boots and loaded into memory or CPU cache.
What you have quoted indicates something similar, perhaps the main board or other device with storage of some kind is being written to or perhaps an attacker could write a payload that lived entirely in the bootloader on the main storage.
Not 100% true - a microcode-based CPU without microcode isn't able to execute anything, so CPUs will ship with an early version of the microcode that's then (as you say) updated during boot.
They could potentially do that to motherboards, but they could do that anyway (physical access would give you as much access to flash as this vulnerability does). But yes, CPUs should be fine in that respect.
Appreciate the clarification, that makes sense. Maybe we'll get more details on potential persistence methods from the talk they'll give tomorrow: https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54863
That just sounds like they can install a rogue bootloader, bypass secureboot, or hide from the operating system by operating on a higher privilege level than it. I don't see how it can infect the CPU itself, or how the infection can persist after swapping out the hard drives.
If you get code execution in SMM you can flash the BIOS on the motherboard. You'd be junking the mobo (unless it has one of those "BIOS Flashback" setups), not the CPU.
I’m going to rebound on that and explain why it doesn’t make sense to hold on to RSUs.
Disclaimer: I’m an IC myself.
I worked for my 1st company for 15 years. Held to their RSUs most of the time. Then moved to another (public) company and stayed there for a year before leaving. Now in a startup with a lower salary and no immediate liquidity on my stock options.
When you work at a public company, you have multiple exposures to the company’s growth: the RSUs that have already vested, the RSUs that haven’t vested yet and through your own career growth and salary increase that goes with a successful company. If you were early enough, you also get market cred for having made the company successful. If the companies goes under (or shrinks, or lays people off), all those assets are at risk.
Usually, one has more in granted stocks than in vested stocks. If your company just went public, you might have a lote more sellable than in your pipeline, but even that is unusual. Usually, you’ll still have more in the pipeline than you’ve already vested.
If your company has been public for a while, you should get frequent refreshes, which means you still have a significant numbers of unvested shares.
Regardless, you should sell as soon as you can, because of the remaining exposure through unvested equity. Use the proceeds to place in an ETF, or in a high-yield savings account, or some more aggressive investment strategy. Or use it for the downpayment on your house, or fund your kid’s college funds, whatever floats your boat.
Anyways, keep in mind that you still have a significant exposure to the growth of the company through your unvested equities. If you’re worried about short-term cap gain, don’t be. If you sell immediately, there’s no growth between cost basis and selling price, so no cap gain. Another upside to selling is that you’re not bound by the blackout periods, so your assets are much more liquid. And remember you still have exposure
That's the incorrect belief that causes so many people to hold their RSUs. The day you vest the RSU is the day someone decided to:
(1) give you the amount in cash (as regular income)
(2) take that cash and buy that stock on your behalf
(3) turn around and give you the stock
and somehow you decide to let (2) and (3) happen without returning to the cash position in (1) and buying whatever else you would prefer to hold. The LTCG clock starts on that day, and all you're doing by holding your vested RSU is let someone else decide to buy stuff on your behalf and make the decision for you.
(that's assuming that there's an ability to liquidate the RSU on the vest date)
At vesting time you are taxed (immediately) at ordinary income rates on the fair market value the day that it vests, and that's what the cost basis is set to. If you sell on that day, your capital gains from the sale will be (near) $0.
The only reason to wait for LTCG on RSUs is if you decided to hold it for some non-zero amount of time after vesting and then the stock price shot up. But then you're also taking on the risk that the stock price will drop again before the year has passed, and end up with less post-tax money than if you'd sold at short-term tax rates.
Some companies might make you hold for a few months until the next earnings report and trading window. After that it depends on your tolerance for risk and your attitude about the IRS.
Earnings reports happen once a quarter between the company and the public. A couple of business days after that, employees (without material nonpublic info) may trade company shares for the next month or so. Maybe you can't sell April shares until mid-July, and then you have to decide whether to wait until next July to minimize tax on gain.
Sometimes you can elect to sell every released share in a quarter, or file a 10b5-1 plan with a schedule, but you have to do that during a trading window.
Most (all?) public tech companies have policies that prohibit employees from trading the company's stock outside designated windows following a quarterly earnings release.
It might not be such a bad thing to increase cost of trans-oceanic transportation. Right now we’re shipping stuff that makes little sense no to produce locally simply because (cost of overseas labor + cost of transportation) < (cost of domestic labor). I would suggest this is absurd both from an ecological and from a humane standpoint. Increasing the cost of transoceanic shipping might help flip the scales a little bit
Alternatively, I’d suggest that the premiums might not increase that much.
Cost of insurance would be (cost of a claimable event)*(probability of such event). I’d hope the latter tends towards zero, significantly reducing the product of the 2.
We can also look at the potential impact of such a “new” policy on total insurance costs. Apparently, the Dali is able to transport 10k containers. And current shipping prices of $4,000 per container, that means that the cost of the trip alone is in the $40M range. If we take the lowest possible value of the goods, that’d be $40M and the arrival location. I’d argue that the probability of losing the vessel and its cargo is higher than that of hitting a bridge, especially if ports start deploying tugboats around their facilities
I think this can be applied more generally as:
Everything should be priced in. Lots of big problems seem to occure because externalities are passed down to future tax payers. Pollution, climate change, garbage etc.
Really nothing disingenuous here. “Trusted by top companies with learning budget” is pretty damn clear and accurate. All in the same font, so there’s no “fine print” argument to be had either.
We talk about the sonic boom as something that happens when we travel faster than the speed of sound. We don’t specify “in the same medium you’re traveling in”, and noone reasonable thinks “it’s really hard to travel faster than the sound in carbon”.
You’ve added “speed of light” in your reading and concluded that’s what the OP wanted to imply.
I think that was unfair, and distracted from the rest of your comment.
I, for one, didn’t know what the cherenkov radiation is, and when reading the title thought “oh, so it’s a sonic boom for light? That’s so cool!”
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