Intel PCs to be reduced in speed by up to 30%

Now if you're a 24/7 web based business server, I can see exploits being a big issue

Most servers are.... Linux I believe

That’s an interesting comment as about 20 years ago they would have said Unix.

“Intriguing to watch society being manipulated by semi-truths and wild exaggeration...”

Yes that’s familiar - just like the Trump administration! 🤔😋😳

That's a brilliant book. I read it years ago and always wanted to revisit, then one day I looked in the books at the tip recycling shop and there it was!

No idea why a copy was out here in regional NSW but my gain.

They're a difficult couple of bugs to explain and I guess no media organisation wants to open themselves up to "you said it was a storm in a teacup".

I think said media organisations are enjoying having a sky is falling story to report on, especially in a slow early January. They haven't had it this good since Y2K.

I'm annoyed about how much extra power the fix is going to cost though. Given all the other ways people have found to get into our computers, and the generally insecure state of OSs and application software, exploiting these bugs looks like doing things the hard way.

well that's better than Boris, total lies and wild exaggeration. I bet this gets deleted!

I'm not sure about that. Lot's of ill informed reporting in the non-technical press but that's probably lack of understanding rather than manipulation.

Russell

How much power?

If the fix consumes say few% more power and a PC consumes from 100 to 500 watts what will the world power bill be for this fix. Microsoft states that they support 1.25 billion currently running PC's (Add to that all the other devices that contain the faulty chips)

**LINK**

How much power?
I guess it depends on the use. Server farms alone in the US used 75 billion KWH (In 2014)
**LINK**

For PC office and home users who knows.

On thing is certain the cost to the community of fixing this problem will not be trifling. In fact it will be huge.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 08/01/2018 14:24:52

I've just updated Firefox to v. 57.0.4 which contains a "partial, short-term, mitigation" to avoid Spectre attacks via JavaScript on web pages. The change involves reducing the precision of some timers from 5 µS to 20 µS to prevent malicious code using precise timing for the attack.

I haven't observed any noticeable degradation of performance.

Russell

Russell Eberhardt:

I am using the same version of Firefox (57.0.4) and, whilst I have experienced one or two crashes, it is good to know about the mitigation.

Have you any idea what the reference to "euballot" on the About Firefox page means?

ega,

I have Firefox running on both Windows 10 and Linux Mint and I don't see that on the About Firefox display.

I suspect it is something to do with the requirement for Windows to tell first time users that other browsers are available.

Russell

Russell

I am running Win7. I just did what I should have done before and found:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Support/EUBallot

We are all too Brexit-sensitised!

All,

Received from the Model Engine Maker site, for your info:

Hello all,

Unless you live under a rock ld: (or switch off totally at anything more technical than wiring a plug for your lathe :ROFL, you will have no doubt heard :stickpoke: some news about a thing called "Meltdown" (which affects all Intel chips manufactured since either 1995 or 2005 or 2011 - depending on who you believe), and the unrelated but equally nasty "Spectre". These so-called "exploits" are causing much panic in the computer world, especially "Meltdown", as it turns out the only software fix available will slow your computer down by around 1/3rd. Which is a lot...

The first thing is, there's no need to worry, about the forum at least! This server is pretty well secured, and despite hundreds of thousands of attempts since it was started (about 1000 attacks per day, just on one entry point), no-one has yet got in. For "Meltdown" to work, the hacker has to run stuff on the actual machine he's hacking, and on a machine like this, that means someone gaining control of it.

Second - we are likely to experience some unscheduled downtime over the next few days & weeks, as our hosting company update their infrastructure. Any downtime should be short (5-mins or so, no more), but as with anything computery, things don't always come back from a reboot in good working order, so I'll try to keep a close eye on the forum for the next few days, at least until the virtual host tells me they're done with any rebooting. If I do get any advance notice of a reboot, I'll try to post it here, to keep you all up to date.

In the meantime, anyone with a CNC lathe is probably best sending it to me for evaluation, just to be on the safe side :Jester:

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck "Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email." in your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

**LINK**

Regards,

The Model Engine Maker Team.

Didn't know people still did ROFL in da hood any more!

Merry

Unfortunately not that difficult with Java, hence the latest Firefox update to stop Spectre attacks via that route.

Russell