Top all-time · #483
devever
Personal blog · devever.net · on HN as hlandauprogrammingsystemssecurity
devever is a personal blog at devever.net about programming, systems and security. Since 2015, 119 different Hacker News readers have linked it 235 times, most often “The PowerPC as Tagged Memory Extensions”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite these posts as background on firmware and reverse engineering, IBM i and POWER memory tagging, XML misuse, and Windows and cloud security, usually to back their own points.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called 'mostly correct' on XML, 'a great explanation' of USB, and 'really fleshes out' a thread; one commenter says to read it alongside its companion post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The PowerPC as Tagged Memory Extensions10 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2020-01-09
- The Culture War, Part I: The Rise of Newchurch8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-06-24
- How to mitigate the Hetzner/Linode XMPP.ru MitM interception incident8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-10-20
- Web-based cryptography is always snake oil6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-06-25
- The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-05-02
- Why I don't like smartcards, HSMs, YubiKeys, etc.5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-01-15
- Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-04-17
- Cloudflare’s service’s questionable practices5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-23
- XML is almost always misused5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-29
- Memoirs from the old web: IE's crazy content rating system5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-05-06
What Hacker News says?
https://www.devever.net/~hl/windowsdefeat seems very relevant. Question to my mind is, are they going to manage to limit this to development and advanced users, or will whole applications that target windows start depending on the linux emulation to work?
Comment linking /~hl/windowsdefeat
on “Ubuntu on Windows”Submitted There are no secure smartphones as a story · 374 points
HN discussionIt is a new religion. The religion of Newchurch: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
Comment linking /~hl/newchurch
on “Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes”Submitted Why I don't like smartphones as a story · 289 points
HN discussionNope. https://www.devever.net/~hl/agplunenforceable
Comment linking /~hl/agplunenforceable
on “Citus Unforks from PostgreSQL, Goes Open Source”Submitted Freenode commits suicide, is no longer a serious IRC network as a story · 272 points
HN discussionCloudflare considered harmful: https://www.devever.net/~hl/cloudflare
Comment linking /~hl/cloudflare
on “Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records”Submitted The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022) as a story · 268 points
HN discussion>Now if we can just start by getting Amd PSP and Intel ME removed! The first CPU manufacturer to do this is going to gain huge marketshare. (hint hint AMD!) This is impossible. The ME/PSP are instrumental in the boot process; modern multi-core CPUs are complicated to initialise and these chips generally need substantial initialisation before the main cores are ready to execute instructions. This role is not somethin…
Comment linking /~hl/intelme
on “Thelio – System76”Submitted I hacked a train toilet as a story · 267 points
HN discussionThis article really fleshes out what this thread is discussing: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
Comment linking /~hl/newchurch
on “Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission”Submitted Freenode IRC operators now engaging in routine abuses of power as a story · 245 points
HN discussionGood. The desire to support the unreasonable demands of the film industry here has led to the perversion of the x86 architecture to add all sorts of peculiar DRM functionalities, and has precluded firmware components from being made open source; as I have previously written about here [1], which links to forum posts by an AMD engineer: I'm sure I don't have to explain to you that the essense of DRM requirements in t…
Comment linking /~hl/intelme
on “Why can’t I play Ultra HD Blu-ray movies on my new Intel CPU platform?”Submitted Why Intel will never let owners control the ME as a story · 212 points
HN discussionThe thing with cloud and with anything related to it, anything that connects to the internet somehow... is that, unless it's open source and the servers decentralized, you are always trusting SOMEONE. Sure, Apple might make their best to ensure nobody – but them – have access to your data... but Apple controls all the end points. It controls the updates your iPhone receives, it controls the servers where this happen…
Comment linking /~hl/webcrypto
on “Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud”Submitted XML is almost always misused as a story · 201 points
HN discussionOne interesting thing about the Raptor devices is this reverse-engineering and reimplementation project for the NIC firmware: https://www.devever.net/~hl/ortega https://github.com/hlandau/ortega https://github.com/meklort/bcm5719-fw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19679640
Comment linking /~hl/ortega
on “Open source firmware is important for security”Submitted Why I don't like smartcards, HSMs, YubiKeys, etc. as a story · 194 points
HN discussionI always wondered how secure AS/400 actually is. The original implementation might have checked tag bits in hardware (I don't know), but the current (PowerPC) implementation relies on the compiler generating a "check tag bits" every time a pointer is dereferenced [1]. So it seems that any arbitrary code execution vulnerability would be absolutely devastating. And the "SLIC" is not a small microkernel -- it also cont…
Comment linking /~hl/ppcas
on “Fil's Unbelievable Garbage Collector”Submitted The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2 as a story · 179 points
HN discussionDDR4 memory training (Synopsis phy) and HDMI. It is basically the same problem librem5 has: https://www.devever.net/~hl/imx8 . See also: https://mntre.com/reform-irc-logs/2019-04-17.log.html
Comment linking /~hl/imx8
on “Asahi Linux for Apple M1 progress report, August 2021”Submitted Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware as a story · 168 points
HN discussionYeah, the security part wasn't baked into the hardware. It relied on the OS (it ran a virtualization layer of sorts) to enforce it via traps if it set those traps. From https://www.devever.net/~hl/ppcas > As such, they can principally be viewed as providing a performance enhancement for the IBM i operating system, which uses these instructions to keep track of pointer validity. It is the IBM i OS which enforces secu…
Comment linking /~hl/ppcas
on “Memory Integrity Enforcement”Submitted Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015) as a story · 161 points
HN discussion1988 called and wants it memory tagging back https://www.devever.net/~hl/ppcas ! But yeah this was support for a the longest time by IBM basically. It's nice to see it's getting more widespread.
Comment linking /~hl/ppcas
on “Memory Integrity Enforcement”Submitted Computers are an oppressive technology as a story · 155 points
HN discussionNo, the problem with attributes is that people consistently misuse them. So many things about XML break down when you make everything a self closing tag with 50 attributes. So many programmers just seem to say, "oh, it's shorter text so it must be inherently better" or "oh it's one-to-one so I should strictly avoid anything resembling a heirarchy." Like I think this guy is mostly correct in identifying bad XML: http…
Comment linking /~hl/xml
on “Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust”Submitted Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware as a story · 136 points
HN discussionThe scale-up chips (used in the E950 and E980 only) aren't the only SMT8 chips. The scale-out chips (Sforza, Monza, LaGrange) can be fused as SMT4 or SMT8, but IBM doesn't appear to sell SMT8-fused chips for other parties. If a given IBM server runs PowerVM, it's SMT8. You may find this table of mine helpful (assembled from various sources and partially inferred, so accuracy not guaranteed, but it represents my unde…
Comment linking /~hl/f/SERVERS
on “Next-Generation IBM POWER10 Processor”Submitted The Demise of the Mildly Dynamic Website as a story · 128 points
HN discussion
