Re:Apple Confirms 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre' Vulnerabilities I...
by mikestew on Thursday January 04, 2018 @08:40PM
(#16075800)
They are both types of side-channel info leak attacks against CPUs.
You must know some hella smart five year olds. (Which is why I wish that meme would die already, because the correct answer to the question is, "no".)
But I'm not here just to make smart ass remarks, I think it ties into my experience reading the comments on a NYT story on the subject. 48 comments, and I think only one didn't demonstrate a severe lack of understanding.
<smug>That's why I don't use cloud stuff! Told ya so!</smug>
Yeah, well, looks to me like you go to the wrong web page and you're pwnd.
<outrage>They just want to sell you new hardware!</outrage>
Yup, twenty years all major chip makers have been sitting on this bug in the hopes they can sell you a new chip in 2018. Cyrix is getting the last laugh now!
And so on. But you've probably got about 300 chars to explain it before your average non-technical reader glazes over. And you don't get to use words like "side-channel". Good luck! Buffer overflows were easy to explain in comparison: "when ya try to put ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag, bad things happen. Developers aren't checking the size of their bag before they start shoveling." But this one? Hell, we've got Hacker News readers asking for a simplified explanation. And not to pick on you, jrullman, because that's a helpful summary, but that's the simplified explanation? And the reality is, yes, that's probably as simple an explanation as you're going to get.
You must know some hella smart five year olds. (Which is why I wish that meme would die already, because the correct answer to the question is, "no".)
But I'm not here just to make smart ass remarks, I think it ties into my experience reading the comments on a NYT story on the subject. 48 comments, and I think only one didn't demonstrate a severe lack of understanding.
<smug>That's why I don't use cloud stuff! Told ya so!</smug> Yeah, well, looks to me like you go to the wrong web page and you're pwnd.
<outrage>They just want to sell you new hardware!</outrage> Yup, twenty years all major chip makers have been sitting on this bug in the hopes they can sell you a new chip in 2018. Cyrix is getting the last laugh now!
And so on. But you've probably got about 300 chars to explain it before your average non-technical reader glazes over. And you don't get to use words like "side-channel". Good luck! Buffer overflows were easy to explain in comparison: "when ya try to put ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag, bad things happen. Developers aren't checking the size of their bag before they start shoveling." But this one? Hell, we've got Hacker News readers asking for a simplified explanation. And not to pick on you, jrullman, because that's a helpful summary, but that's the simplified explanation? And the reality is, yes, that's probably as simple an explanation as you're going to get.