Wtf is wrong with everything electronic?

Seriously, I read about this: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/technology/intel-chip-flaws-response-future-bugs/index.html

and now, today, every %#*ing electronic piece in the house needs an update, all Streaming services need re-logged in, all Amazon orders need payment reconfirmed, all apps need restarted, and the router has slowed to a f’king halt. All in one god damn day! Are the machines turning on us already?

(would’ve placed this in minor rant thread, but felt I need an answer too..)

It's a bit of a train wreck.

The long and short of it is that processors have memory imbedded in them. The way the architecture was setup to share that memory from the chips allows an attacker to access the kernel (root) functions of an operating system. For the home user it means some security issues like normal malware just on a hardware level.

For businesses, especially those with any type of cloud presence or one that uses virtual environments, this is really bad news because it means that the attackers can view the supposedly shielded information on the server or other sessions outside of their virtual environments.

The problem is really tough to fix because you have a slew of processors plus the memory handlers on the motherboards. There's literally thousands of combinations that would need to be patched to fix the problem. That's why you're seeing various companies say that they're not fixing it beyond a certain manufacture date.

The flaw will probably exist for another decade because of that.

Any significantly advanced technology is effectively indistinguishable from magic.

I say call a witch doctor.

In reply to aircooled :

Or someone who can tune shock absorbers, which is the same person.

This is the part right before the robots take over, right?

Most modern electronics problems are really software problems. The only problems they all seem to share these days is that they all send our private info into "the cloud" and are controlled by proprietary apps through "the cloud."

Spectre/Meltdown is an actual electronics problem, and it won't be completely solved until everyone upgrades their CPUs.

As things get more complex there's more potential for mistakes, or for independent systems that work properly by themselves to interact in undesirable ways.

EastCoastMojo said:

This is the part right before the robots take over, right?

God willing. 

EastCoastMojo said:

This is the part right before the robots take over, right?

This is the part where they try and then find out that people made so many errors building them that what they've actually taken over is a Denny's at a turnpike rest area and every time they try to leave to really take over, they end up turning around in the parking lot and walking right back in and ordering another Moons over My Hammy before realizing their error and trying again. The robots serving them keep bringing the sandwiches and before long all resources available in the world are redirected into making breakfast sandwiches for robots that can't eat them and that are ordering them by mistake due to a glitch in their microcode.

dculberson said:

EastCoastMojo said:

This is the part right before the robots take over, right?

This is the part where they try and then find out that people made so many errors building them that what they've actually taken over is a Denny's at a turnpike rest area and every time they try to leave to really take over, they end up turning around in the parking lot and walking right back in and ordering another Moons over My Hammy before realizing their error and trying again. The robots serving them keep bringing the sandwiches and before long all resources available in the world are redirected into making breakfast sandwiches for robots that can't eat them and that are ordering them by mistake due to a glitch in their microcode.

Sounds like the robot apocalypse via sandwich maximizer. This one being particularly gruesome with "long pork" sandwiches...

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Yeah! I also blame Philip K Dick's Autofac for it. I read that a long time ago but it really stuck with me.