Hacker News Reader

I didn't ignore it. My point is, the kind of people who truly need this kind of performance are already translating hotspots to assembler and so on, a kernel module is plenty practical for them. For nearly all computer users there is no excuse for turning off these mitigations.

View on HN

I don't know. If I'm running an application server with only my own code on a dedicated server, and I can flip some switches to make it go faster, then that's pretty nice, no? Might save me from upgrading to a bigger (pricier) server. What am I missing?

I mean, sure, that site is nuts, it sorely needs documentation. But not every scenario needs Spectre protection.

The problem with the scenario you describe is: how will you ensure that no one ever forgets that this server is vulnerable and can never be used for certain things? And everyone on here advocating turning off the mitigations is assuming the only exploits are the ones we know about. But when has that ever been the case. If more people turn off the mitigations black hats will be invested in finding ways to exploit it we haven't realised before.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com