Valmar

Here, on Arch, Firefox updates don't cause me any grief. Only time I've ever need to reboot is after a kernel or DKMS module update.

For systemd updates, I can just reload it. For the likes of core components like bash, and major DE updates, I can just lazily use loginctl to terminate all of my sessions, and start fresh.

I'm not sure why Firefox would be causing instability until you restart (reboot?), though.

Intel has had literally months upon months to test and stabilize their microcode and kernel-side patches for Meltdown/Spectre... but it seems like Intel just doesn't give half a shit, if they're having major issues now.

Intel's actions seem to shout that they have cared far more about releasing Kaby/Skylake X and Coffee Lake in short order, as a response to Ryzen/ThreadRipper, than actually really digging into fixing their major security flaws. Their actions speak of them preferring to keep their market and mindshare over actually fixing any security issues.

Intel is still so deeply entrenched that they likely believe that they can get away with their lazy approach. They make millions upon millions, if not billions of dollars ~ why should they give a shit, when their monopoly and half-hearted attempt at a solution will get them by? Intel is being strangled by their shitty management, seemingly...

He is a "normal" human being, lol.

What a ridiculous comment.

Good to know. :)

Management can seriously make or break a company in various ways. It sucks... :/

Crazy black magic which is insane and completely unnecessary, according to Linus.

Seems like Intel just wants to half-arse a solution.

Retpoline and PTI patches are fine.

IBRS and IBPB patches are what will be delayed and maybe never merged. Linus reckons that the Retpoline code will be quite sufficient.

Said current patches haven't been merged. Just posted to the mailing list for review.

Retpolines for Spectre, and PTI for Meltdown, are still in the kernel. Linus doesn't have too much disagreement with them. It's the IBRS / IBPB code for Intel's CPUs that Linus has a problem with.

Also, not everything can be mitigated in microcode, for many reasons, not all of which I understand myself. Sometimes, only a fundamental hardware-redesign can fix the issues proper.

The numbers are almost pure marketing, these days.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer#7_nm_process_nodes

> The naming of process nodes by different major manufacturers (TSMC, Intel, Samsung, GlobalFoundries) is partially marketing driven and not directly related to any measurable distance on a chip – for example TSMC's 7 nm node is similar in some key dimensions to Intel's 10 nm node.

Behind a login-wall, but an interesting critique of the mirror test nevertheless:

https://www.academia.edu/2525451/A_Critical_Analysis_of_the_...

I look at the common elements that living beings have, compared to plain matter.

Animals have consciousness and can feel pain. Animal and plant bodies are both comprised of many differentiated cells. Both have DNA. Bacteria are singular cells, and have DNA...

Plants have been demonstrated to have short-term memory, recognize family and neighbouring plants, and so on. So... it is extremely likely that plants, bacteria, fungi, and perhaps even amoebas, also have consciousness, feel emotions and feel pain. Maybe not in the way we think about emotions and pain, but in whatever way they do, which is entirely mysterious to us, being animals with animal-consciousness and instincts. We cannot understand what it is like to be a plant, bacterium, fungus or amoeba... it is far too alien to our animal-mind.

You may find these articles of interest:

http://www.naturaltherapycenter.com/the-secret-life-of-plant...

https://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/junk-food-is-bad-for-p...

Don't try to equate living beings with non-living things. Doesn't work.

My argument is that all living things can feel pain, regardless of how it manifests for them.

Problem with the US is the fast food industry. Eliminate that, educate people properly, and you need far less meat to sate the ridiculous demand.

Living beings are not mere machines, so the comparison makes little sense. All living beings have some form of consciousness, and so, are able to feel some form of discomfort, of which pain is the most extreme.

> Rapid withdrawal of a limb from a hot object happens before we feel pain.

I always feel pain in that instant. I feel the pain before I can even consciously react to it, because of the shock from it. Unless of course the nerves are shocked enough to prevent the pain from being felt immediately.

On what basis do we have to deny them being able to feel pain without having truly proven it or not?

Then we just need to feed the animals their natural diets instead of the abnormal, unnatural diet of grains and soyabeans that most factory-farmed animals are currently fattened on.

Solution doesn't seem that difficult to me.

I'm certain a system could be devised to allow enough pasture-raised cattle, chickens and pigs to be raised in happy, healthy conditions until slaughtered for food. It would take more resources, but it would be worth it. It might also support the plant ecosystems more, because soyabean and grain monocultures won't be needed.

However, the current Capitalist system's greed will ensure that this doesn't happen, because of the junk/fast food industry and their advertizing.

Without junk/fast food's demands, the amount of meat required to sate the global population may actually shrink, because with proper education, food addiction may vanish, meaning we'll only need to eat what we actually need for nutrition and not for addiction's sake.

> Animals like pigs (or rather, their very very recent wild ancestors) have needs and behaviours that simply aren't useful to agriculture, and they can't possibly life fulfilling lives (not to mention that they should also be living for about 15 years rather than under a year).

Why does it have to be about usefulness? They can live happy lives close enough to how they might live in the wild, at least until they're killed, if for food, no?

Is there a provable way to know that other animals don't experience pain to begin with?

Can it be proven that they don't feel pain?

Not true ~ these qualities are part of life, but are not the whole of life.

Food is also nourishing, existence is also pleasurable, life is also about happiness and well-being.

This is why it is far more ethical to eat animals who have been raised in conditions that allow them to thrive happily and wholesomely.

Factory farms are more-or-less a result of corporate capitalism and the greed for money.

> The suffering you cause is proportional to how much meat you eat.

Oh really? Sounds like ideology more than fact.

Are you really insinuating that plants don't feel pain? Because they certainly do. Look up Cleve Backster's research on plants.

And neither do we absolutely need to eat plants to live a long, healthy life. Case in point? The traditional Eskimo diet that consisted majorly of fats, offal and meat. They lived long healthy lives only shortened due to the extreme coldness of their environment.

This sums up the whole debate debate in a nutshell.

To a colour-blind person who cannot perceive a difference between green and red, there is no distinction.

There is no difference between identifying the colour "red" and the qualia of it, because we must directly know the latter to do the former. It cannot be described, understood nor appreciated without first having the direct experience.

Is a nervous system explicitly necessary to feel physical sensations? Why should we presume that a nervous system is necessary? They may have pain receptors that we haven't identified yet. Plants have consciousness... but it is quite different to animal consciousness, because their bodies are vastly different to our.

I feel that we should presume consciousness, pain, emotions, etc, in all living beings, until most rigorously proven otherwise, because just because we may not understand non-human, non-mammalian or non-animal living beings as well as ourselves does not mean that they cannot experience whatever equivalents their consciousness, bodies or minds allow them to.

> Negative stimulus reaction and pain are different things.

How are they different? Pain is a negative stimulus response that allows us to know whether something is causing damage to our body.

> We know we feel pain. We can guess that organisms with similar brain architectures are feeling pain.

How does feeling pain have anything to do with a brain's architecture? It has more to do with nerves... block a nerve's functioning, and you don't feel pain. Also, pain can be psychosomatic.

> Ants keep doing their job even after fatal damage. If they feel something, it is not anything like our pain.

Have you seen ants writhe around after being crushed or dismembered? They definitely feel pain.

> So it is not obvious that our feeling of pain is universal.

Depends on your definition of pain, doesn't it?

Page Table Isolation has been backported to 4.14.12, so no need to test with the rc.