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Shortages or not, there's little demand for cool new motherboards and CPUs from the enthusiast corner of the market because hardware platforms themselves are stagnating performance-wise.

13-14gen Intel Cores are still more than enough for your average home gamer, Zen 5 shows only marginal improvement over Zen 4 except for a very narrow range of workloads, getting wider than 128bit memory bus is prohibitively expensive while relatively cheap consumer boxes like Mac Mini run circles around dual-channel DDR5 setups, so on, so forth.

Sure, presenting this as a consequence of AI boom is convenient for a news outlet, but even before the craze both Intel and AMD were dragging their feet.

I'm not buying it. Both the premise and the new motherboard, that is.


I wanted to build a Threadripper 9965WX and the math worked out until DDR5 prices come in to play. Instead I got a used Lenovo P620 5975WX and still had to buy DDR4 from Shenzhen to get anything remotely affordable. The IPC of the Zen5 is a meaningful uplift especially for single thread but it is out of reach.


Where/how did you buy your DDR4 from SZ? Interested in doing the same, but want reputable source/supplier.


The seller was Focus Memory on Newegg, DIMMs are Rimlance. It arrived quickly via DHL. I'd be a little sketched out to do this if it wasn't registered ECC. The dies appear to be Micron, register IDT, but there is some possibility of soft fraud where they die printed over something. The registers look a little scratched so I wonder if they found some way of recycling DIMMs or even dies. The SPD is their own.

# dmidecode 3.7 # SMBIOS entry point at 0xba970000 Found SMBIOS entry point in EFI, reading table from /dev/mem. SMBIOS 3.3.0 present.

Handle 0x0023, DMI type 16, 23 bytes Physical Memory Array Location: System Board Or Motherboard Use: System Memory Error Correction Type: Multi-bit ECC Maximum Capacity: 1 TiB Error Information Handle: 0x0022 Number Of Devices: 8

Handle 0x0027, DMI type 17, 92 bytes Memory Device Array Handle: 0x0023 Error Information Handle: 0x0026 Total Width: 72 bits Data Width: 64 bits Size: 32 GiB Form Factor: DIMM Set: None Locator: DIMM5 Bank Locator: BANK4 Type: DDR4 Type Detail: Synchronous Registered (Buffered) Speed: 3200 MT/s Manufacturer: Unknown Serial Number: 05A23401 Asset Tag: Not Specified Part Number: RRD25600D4C8K256 Rank: 2 Configured Memory Speed: 3200 MT/s Minimum Voltage: 1.2 V Maximum Voltage: 1.2 V Configured Voltage: 1.2 V Memory Technology: DRAM Memory Operating Mode Capability: Volatile memory Firmware Version: Unknown Module Manufacturer ID: Bank 1, Hex 0x80 Module Product ID: Unknown Memory Subsystem Controller Manufacturer ID: Unknown Memory Subsystem Controller Product ID: Unknown Non-Volatile Size: None Volatile Size: 32 GiB Cache Size: None Logical Size: None ...


Super info, thanks!


You'd like Emmet notation. Just look at the cheat sheet: https://docs.emmet.io/cheat-sheet/


What's wrong with Desktop mode?


Having to switch to desktop mode and back.

It's not exactly rocket science to add a "browser app" to the Steam system to use certain web sites in an appliance-ish mode, but it's not great for general purpose browsing.

A slightly more advanced browser frontend that offered an experience comparable to Edge on Xbox would be very nice.


Decky warns that the Steam's built in browser is outdated and may have security vulnerability. I suppose properly maintaining a browser is a burden.


The article says:

> According to The Cybersec Guru, this is an unpatchable problem for Sony, because these keys cannot be changed and are burned directly in the APU.

I'm just speculating at this point, but what could prevent Sony from anticipating this exact situation and burning several keys in the APU? I mean, eFuse is not exactly a new technology. That way, once a key is leaked, Sony could push a firmware update switching the APU to a new key which hasn't been leaked yet.


I have seen some manufacturers enroll multiple manufacturer keys, probably with this notion, but this isn’t useful against almost any threat model.

If keys are recovered using some form of low level hardware attack, as was almost surely the case here, the attacker can usually recover the unused key sets too.

If the chip manufacturing provisioning supply chain is leaky the new keys will probably be disclosed anyway, and if the key custody chain is broken (ie, keys are shared with OEMs or third parties) they will definitely be disclosed anyway.


Wouldn't the other reason to have multiple manufacturer keys, be to guard against them losing the private key for one in a way that means they can't sign anything any more?


I mean, sure, but to what end does that madness lead? Who backs up the backups?

Usually this is to allow different departments / divisions / customers (in the case of an OEM model) to all sign code or encrypt binaries, although this is likewise a bit off as each enrolled key increases the amount of material which is available to leak in the leak model. Or to allow model line differentiation with crossover.


Nothing. But if the keys weren't stored in an HSM (seems likely), attackers getting one of them implies they could get the others as well.


HSM or TPM?


A TPM is a form of HSM (Hardware Security Module).

HSMs come in all sizes, from a chip in your phone (secure element) or even a dedicated part of a SoC chip, to a big box in a datacenter that can handle tons of requests per second.

The idea is having dedicated hardware to protect the private key material. This hardware can execute signing operations, so it can use the key but it can't share the key material itself. It is usually also physically hardened with techniques to extract said keys, like sidechannel attacks based on power draw, X-ray inspection, decapping etc.


Thanks - I know the difference

This also sounds very AI-like


I'm not AI and I didn't use it for that, I just thought it was a genuine question and tried to explain it clearly :)

I don't really get why anyone would let an AI put random comments on discussions anyway but that's another story.


If you knew the difference why ask such a question that makes it seem as though you didn't?


Fair enough. I was asking more about which class of hardware Sony was likely relying on, not the definition. Thanks.


The story implies that these are signing keys, so there is no reason for the private halves to be present in the product's silicon in any form. If these were encryption keys stored in a TPM, they'd have been extracted not leaked.


Hypothetically Secure Memory

(I guess)


Would that not break every other firmware release that relied on that older key?


Yes, but console vendors generally prefer not to allow downgrades.

So if v1 is signed by key A, v2 is signed by key B and invalidates key A; a console that installs v2 wouldn't be able to install v1 after, but that's not a problem for Sony.

But, I'm not sure how many companies would be able to manage their keys properly to ensure that someone with access to key A doesn't have access to key B.

If these are asymmetric key pairs and the device side key was extracted from the device... Switching keys wouldn't help, and it's not a huge deal by itself --- having the device side key doesn't allow you to make a firmware image the device would accept.


Fun fact, the Nintendo Switch blows fuses [0] when they do a patch that’s for security/jailbreaking. If I recall there’s something like 12 or 16 fuses they can employ over the life of the product to ensure you can’t rollback updates that prevent piracy. Nvidia builds these fuses into the board.

So if you’ve blown 4 fuses you can’t do a patch that requires only 2 fuses to have blown, it’s a pretty wild solution.

Edit: it’s actually 22 fuses

[0] https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Fuses


It isn't that wild; the typical name for it is anti-rollback, and you probably have at least one device that implements it. Most Android devices have anti-rollback efuses to prevent installing older versions of the bootchain\bootloader; they might still allow you to downgrade the OS (depends on the vendor, if memory serves). Instead of using efuse counters, anti-rollback counters can also be implemented by Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB), which is implemented by many flash storage (eMMC often supports RPMB, but other storage types can as well). It is possible to implement anti-rollback mechanisms on x86_64 by utilizing a TPM [0], but as far as I know, only Chrome OS does this.

[0]: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/tpm-usa...


Wouldn't it be great if companies spent the time and effort needed for all these wonderful things that prevent the owner from using the hardware they own how they see fit and instead invested the resources into making the product better ?

All this is basically a fragile anti-user timebomb that will only generate more avoidable e-waste eventually.


For some users, preventing downgrades to an insecure version is a better product since it protects against evil maid attacks.

(Although ideally they would itself trap that functionality behind a fuse, so you have to opt-in but can't be opted out.)


You can get a similar level of protection against evil maids by requiring a wipe to downgrade.


I’m not following. Why would it be helpful to check how many fuses had been blown? And how could you have more blown fuses than you’re supposed to?


Firmware v1 requires a switch with zero fuses blown.

Firmware v2 requires a switch with no more than one fuse blown and blows the first fuse.

If you install v2, you can't install v1.

Nintendo can make 22 firmware releases that disallow rollback.


Got it. Thanks. For some reason I was imagining a new firmware that some people couldn’t install because they had blown too many fuses.


Yeah, that shouldn't happen (although I think I've seen reports of eFuses blowing spontaneously as well as eFuses self-repairing)

If your console blows a fuse before Nintendo intends to, you won't be able to install firmware until a firmware is released that will run with that number of fuses blown. And, depending on how things are implemented, you might not be able to run the firmware that you have either.


Here's an excerpt about the anti-rollback feature from Nvidia's docs on how the Tegra X1 SoC in the switch 1 boots [0] (called Tegra210 in the document)

> By default, the boot ROM will only consider bootloader entries with a version field that matches the version field of the first entry, and will stop iterating through the entries is a mismatch is found. The intent is to ensure that if some subset of the bootloader entries are upgraded, and hence the version field of their entries is modified, then the boot ROM will only boot the most recent version of the bootloader. This prevents an accidental rollback to an earlier version of the bootloader in the face of boot memory read errors, corruption, or tampering. Observe that this relies on upgraded bootloader entries being placed contiguously at the start of the array.

[0] https://http.download.nvidia.com/tegra-public-appnotes/tegra...


They're on the die. efuses existed on the ps3 and 360 too. The 360 used them to prevent downgrades, but the ps3 used all of theirs to store bluray drive keys.


Even if trivial it could be manufacturing savings.


Top five are 18". Are you sure?


I've tried several different mics but eventually settled on a wired headset and Revelator io44 audio interface. The latter one is a goofy brick but it has a TRRS audio jack and built-in DSP so I don't have to fiddle with loopbacks, DAWs and VSTs.

And if I'm not able to lug that brick I can just plug the headset directly into my laptop.


Thanks, ChatGPT.


ChatGPT wouldn't have mismatched the singular/plural of "observations" and "this"


Dang, I hate being authenticated by a grammatical error.


Bruh, that's all me.


Seems like it doesn't properly handle mouse events on Safari in macOS and only shows "frames with no pointer events". I assume it's because "pointerrawupdate" event is not supported there.

Also it's interesting that with ProMotion enabled it reports 16.67ms per frame (indicating 60Hz redraw rate) in Safari, but in Chrome it's 8.33.


Yes, I rely on pointerrawupdate. Thanks for letting me know! Unfortunately pointermove is typically synced with graphics in my limited experience, and I think I'd rather not show anything than provide wildly inaccurate numbers.


Oh and you also might be interested in this one too: https://github.com/cakama3a/Polling

Although it's for gamepads, it's pretty much indispensable in debugging gamepad-related latency issues. For example, I found that my presumably 1000Hz controller can do only 500Hz in ideal conditions and it starts to drop at a much lower distance from the computer than advertised. Neat stuff.


Not all of his translations were nowhere near the original. For example, his translation of Guy Ritchie's Snatch was excellent (in my opinion of course) and is still quoted to this day. I'd say it's the only one that absolutely nails it and then some.

On the other hand, his Lord of The Rings was an "alternative" dub as you described. Didn't watch that one though.


This is better than BFI, although 120Hz demo on my screen looks like it's just alternating two or three parts of the image. Maybe there is a way to use fake interlacing to make it look convincing.

240Hz demo in 144Hz mode looks flickery but much more realistic.


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