Meltdown and Spectre News
Yeah I know, daily stuff. I know some of you are sick of it but it is bigger than a big deal so hear we go…
Intel has the nads to release some benchmarks showing performance hits varying from +1 to -21%. (pdf) None of us are going to know what the heck hits us until we get some fracking firmware updates.
On my end, Gigabyte has been silent on the entire issue. I emailed both the Press and Tech Support teams with no reply. Questions on this topic have gone unanswered in their forums.
Dell on the other hand has been a pleasant surprise. They have a dedicated support page for this issue that even list when your model will get an update. My Alienware 15 R2 is scheduled to get an update on the 14th.
Lawsuits: I am now officially a part of a class action suit (well, after I sign the retainer). More news may follow. Or not.
CEO: No new word on Intel’s CEO that many think should be fired or worse.
Excellent read: iVerge – How the industry-breaking Spectre bug stayed secret for seven months
Linux: Spectre & Meltdown Checker “A simple shell script to tell if your Linux installation is vulnerable” I repeat myself, at the risk of being cruel, if you’ve got Intel you’re vulnerable. Apologies to Paul Simon.
Browsers: Online browser checker. “If the result is VULNERABLE, it is definitely true. However, if the result is NOT VULNERABLE, it doesn’t mean your browser is absolutely not vulnerable because there might be other unknown attacking methods. ”
VMware Workstation Player: 14.1.1 released “This update of VMware Workstation Player exposes hardware support for branch target injection mitigation to VMware guests.”
Why Are You Still On Social Media?
I’m constantly amazed at the utter gall displayed by the higher-ups at these social media companies. The gist of this article is that if you don’t think like they do you are “shitty people” and they will “shadow ban” you. I don’t care what your political views are, no freedom loving person can find this behavior acceptable. The only way to change this is not to buy the Bravo Sierra that they will try to “fix” things. The fix is to remove their power over you. The fix is to GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA.
The Beginning Of The End
Facebook developing ‘Portal’ gadget which will let it put microphones and cameras in people’s homes
Off Topic
Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer: 116.9 MPH
I don’t think I could even stay in the batters box.
Here’s the link to Intel microcode(uCode) update & guide if you don’t want to wait for motherboard makers. Might useful for tweakhound readers as well.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ucode-fix-for-spectre-ht-bug-fix-and-meltdown.806451/
Gigabyte has started to respond. I’ve still got an uneasy feeling about the Z77 boards I have, since they are working from 8th Gen back.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Press/News/1586
I recently built a system with ASUS Z270 board. The BIOS/microcode update was released yesterday. Installed with no problems. Win7 with all MS patches is running well.
I have a Vostro 400(Q6600) & 410(Q6600 and Inspiron 3847(i5-4440) (Desktop), none of those are on the list, Haswell and earlier
Let me see if I got this straight. Intel has to create a new microcode for their chips. They in turn put it on the motherboard manufacture to create the code in their BIOS for the ME(?) Then the user has to flash their BIOS and update MEI. Is this correct?
Yep