Hacker News: l1k

New comment by l1k in "Copy Fail"

l1k — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:34:54 +0000

As Eric has correctly stated above, we believe iwd (Intel Wireless Daemon), or rather the ell library it relies on (Embedded Linux Library) is the only relatively widespread user space application relying on it.

New comment by l1k in "Copy Fail"

l1k — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:30:40 +0000

> the kernel's implementation of RSA isn't hardened against timing attacks

Cloudflare is using custom BoringSSL-based crypto code in the kernel:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CALrw=nEyTeP=6QcdEvaeMLZEq_pYB9W...

New comment by l1k in "Copy Fail"

l1k — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 03:27:00 +0000

It does enable address space separation of secret keys from user space, which some people love:

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-linux-kernel-key-retention-s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7djRRjxaCKk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZaDE578yc

So it's not as simple as "should not exist". I agree though that there doesn't seem to be a valid need to expose authencesn to user space.

Disclosure: I'm co-maintaining crypto/asymmetric_keys/ in the kernel and the author/presenter in the first two links is another co-maintainer.

Ada and Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream

l1k — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 17:13:22 +0000

Article URL: https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann/movie.en.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42341724

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by l1k in "Goodbye from a Linux Community Volunteer"

l1k — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 06:23:03 +0000

NTB = Non-Transparent Bridge

DW = DesignWare

New comment by l1k in "What the internet looked like in 1994"

l1k — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 19:35:55 +0000

Some of the sites that went online around 1994 are still there:

https://north.pole.org/

https://town.hall.org/

I believe Carl Malamud (Internet Multicasting Service) was behind these.

The audio files are in Sun Audio format, which all browsers supported natively back then. Chromium apparently no longer does, requires saving and opening in VLC.

New comment by l1k in "100 Years of IBM"

l1k — Sat, 11 May 2024 06:48:05 +0000

"They Were There"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmVCePfMXAU

Linux Plumbers Conference 2023

l1k — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:12:13 +0000

Article URL: https://lpc.events/event/17/timetable/#all

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38253197

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by l1k in "Even a laptop can run RAM externally thanks to CXL"

l1k — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:54:27 +0000

If you need a lot of RAM, usually you need to buy servers with multiple CPUs to which you can attach the memory. Because the amount of DRAM you can attach to one CPU is limited.

If you don't have the need for all the extra CPUs, just being able to attach more memory to a single CPU through CXL may be cheaper.

New comment by l1k in "Bookworm – the new version of Raspberry Pi OS"

l1k — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:10:40 +0000

The original Raspberry Pi SoC (BCM2835) is ARMv6 with VFP2 Hard Float support.

Debian's "arm" architecture is ARMv7 with VFP3. It doesn't support BCM2835.

Debian's "armel" architecture is ARMv4. It doesn't use BCM2835 to its full potential.

So the BCM2835 is awkwardly positioned in-between Debian's two stock ARM 32-bit architectures, which motivated the decision to recompile all packages for a BCM2835-specific "armhf" distribution.

In a sense, it's a historic artifact.

New comment by l1k in "Raspberry Pi 5"

l1k — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 12:26:04 +0000

The point here is likely to pull the rug out from under scalpers' feet.

With the Raspberry Pi 5 out in two weeks, all the held-back inventory of older models will be dumped, prices will plummet, availability will become a non-issue.

In that sense it's a wise move.

New comment by l1k in "iAPX432: Gordon Moore, Risk and Intel’s Super-CISC Failure"

l1k — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 18:40:14 +0000

A lot of RISC CPU arches which were popular in the 1990's declined because their promulgators stopped investments and bet on switching to IA64 instead. Around the year 2000, VLIW was seen as the future and all the CISC and RISC architectures were considered obsolete.

That strategic failure by competitors allowed x86 to grow market share at the high end, which benefited Intel more than the money lost on Itanium.

New comment by l1k in "A Linux Evening"

l1k — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 18:34:57 +0000

The PCI resource allocation code is fairly intricate and everyone is scared that changing it may cause regressions. Sergei's patch set is quite intrusive and it would be necessary to somehow break it up into smaller pieces that are slowly fed into mainline over several release cycles, always watching out for regression reports. So, the problem is known, but the engineers working on PCI code in the kernel are given higher priority stuff to work on by their employers, hence the issue hasn't gotten the attention it deserves.

Actually I forgot to mention there's another solution: A PCIe feature called Flattening Portal Bridge (PCIe Base Spec r6.0 section 6.26). That was introduced with PCIe 5.0. It's more likely that FPB support is added in mainline than the pause/unpause feature. It's supported by recent Thunderbolt chips and it's an official feature of the PCIe standard, so companies will prefer dedicating resources to it rather than some non-standard approach.

New comment by l1k in "A Linux Evening"

l1k — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 12:33:43 +0000

You'd be surprised. Here's an article I wrote on the modernization of PCIe hotplug in Linux:

https://lwn.net/Articles/767885/

New comment by l1k in "A Linux Evening"

l1k — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 12:30:49 +0000

Thunderbolt devices appear in the OS as a PCIe switch, so you need two additional bus numbers (one for the Switch Upstream Port and one for the Switch Downstream Port). If the device is hotplugged to a port which has run out of bus numbers, you'll get this error message.

Mika Westerberg is constantly fine-tuning the allocation of PCI resources in the Linux kernel to avoid such scenarios. Some recent patches:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20220905080232.36087-1-mik...

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20221130112221.66612-1-mik...

On macOS, it's possible to pause the PCI bus, reallocate resources and unpause the bus:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ha... (search for "Supporting PCIe Pause")

We don't have that on Linux unfortunately, so we depend on getting the initial resource allocation right.

Sergei Miroshnichenko has worked on such a reallocation feature for Linux but it hasn't been accepted into mainline yet and he hasn't posted a new version of his patches for almost two years, so the effort seems stalled:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20201218174011.340514-1-s....

New comment by l1k in "The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy VII in 1996"

l1k — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 18:52:20 +0000

Filed chapter 11 twice.

Bad management made the wrong bet, thought Itanium and Windows would take over the world.

But what really broke all UNIX workstation manufacturers' backs was the unwillingness to cannibalize their products with affordable machines. SGI workstations were not affordable to students, so they got x86 machines instead and installed Linux. Google was built with x86-based Linux boxes because that's what the founders were using and could afford. UNIX workstation manufacturers lost an entire generation of young engineers that way. Apple eventually offered what they should have: Sleek, affordable machines with a rock-solid UNIX underneath a polished UI.

New comment by l1k in "Intel acquires Linutronix"

l1k — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 19:29:22 +0000

There's a series currently under discussion which failed CI:

https://lore.kernel.org/intel-gfx/20211214140301.520464-1-bi...

Plus 13 patches over the past years (not counting merges and SPDX commits):

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

Unfortunately, a lot of the PREEMPT_RT patches follow the "disable stuff for now, fix up for real later" anti-pattern. :-(

Case in point:

https://lore.kernel.org/intel-gfx/YgqmfKhwU5spS069@linutroni...

New comment by l1k in "Apple 2001"

l1k — Sun, 04 Apr 2021 09:08:21 +0000

> This was the first time that I was aware of Apple had shipped a little Endian processor.

FWIW, the LaserWriter 16/600 PS (introduced 1994) uses an Intel 80168 as I/O processor for AppleTalk serving etc.

So Apple did develop for and ship little endian CPUs way before the iPod.

New comment by l1k in "The end of TenFourFox and what I've learned from it"

l1k — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 06:56:15 +0000

A heartfelt thank you Cameron, TenFourFox has kept my Pismo 7410/550 alive and useful for another ten years after Camino's sad demise. I've gotten so used to the regular TenFourFox updates that I already feel withdrawal symptoms now. It's always been mindboggling to me that you've done all this almost single-handedly.

New comment by l1k in "The man who produced Steve Jobs’ keynotes for 20 years (2018)"

l1k — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 07:27:50 +0000

Wayne Goodrich was fired by Apple shortly after Steve's death and subsequently sued the company:

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2012-aug-21-la-fi-tn...