Quoting: scaineApart from someone trying to use Twitter to explain such a technical subject, I completely agree with you. BUT, while that design decision was made as long ago as 1995 when security was 99th on a list 100 priorities, this is 2018 now and Intel (and AMD and probably to a certain extent ARM) can only be described as wilfully negligent in overlooking this behaviour in the modern day.

As I said earlier, I suspect that Intel knew about this much earlier than June, probably for years and kept a lid on it. Their pushing KASLR so hard (for unrelated attacks, such as KRACKS and the whole Intel ME cock up) was probably done in the hope that a software remedy would be found and accepted early, so that they wouldn't have to acknowledge the extent, reach and scope of this hardware design flaw.

Again, you're assuming that Intel, AMD, and ARM knew about the risk/flaw before they were notified of it. I can tell you now that in most cases they don't know until someone notifies them. There are specific procedures for reporting bugs/flaws that lead to vulns/exploits. To the point where the MSSP I work for has explicity told me that the one thing I cannot do when contributing back upstream is open an issue/ticket on a public issue tracker if the issue is security related. It must be researched, evaluated, and sent to the project/organization/company directly until the risk of the issue is known and can be safely released to the public.

Are there other things Intel should have done related to how the PR was handled regarding the Meltdown and Spectre exploits - absolutely. But don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of how this works. I'm in the InfoSec field and even I don't know everything.

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Quoting: HoriThe Meltdown vulnerability was the final straw. I completely lost hope in Intel. It's too late to bring me back (and many others).

I understand your feelings, but if that's how you feel, then you shouldn't use computers. There's always a bug/vuln/exploit in your hardware and/or software. You can definitely get upset with Intel's leadership on aspects of the Meltdown issue, but more often than not (Developer AND Systems Engineer here) it simply hadn't been found until last June/July. There's a lot that goes into looking into what needs to be done to fix an issue once it's found without breaking too many things on a system.

Another HUGE thing to note when it comes to Security issues is that there is a difference between potential risk and actual risk. The potential risk of both Meltdown and Spectre are pretty scary and can be huge issues, but as was discussed at work the other day (I work at a Managed Security Services Provider), the chances of Meltdown and Spectre being successfully exploited is going to entirely be based on a couple of key points:

• How secure external facing systems are - this will be where the new patches MUST be installed, without exception


• Are firewalls blocking certain types of return traffic - this one depends on several factors, but making sure that any unexpected types of network traffic flowing from your home or work network are blocked by default.


• Are users' browsers up to day - really important one, probably more so than the firmware mitigations and the kernel updates since many of the risks associated with the exploits (specifically Spectre) are through browsers


• Are you/have you been susceptible to Social Engineering/Phishing in the past? - Ties back to the firewall comment a bit. These exploits are only going to be easy to execute against people and businesses where their security at the edge (Firewall, Modem, Router) is lax OR they are extremely susceptible to Social Engineering/Phishing. Attackers have to get access to your machine before they can exploit it, which is much harder to do if the network devices are secure and users are being smart with their email.

Of course the above doesn't account for everything, nor does it mean you shouldn't patch your system (I'm definitely NOT advocating for that). That said, as someone working in the InfoSec arena, I can tell you that there is a business behind making these things seem scarier than they practically are (not to mention it makes for good news stories). I can also tell you that the Spectre exploit is far more scary than Meltdown due to the fact that it's a bit more complicated to fix and has multiple attack entrance points. Spectre is also the one that DOES affect AMD as well as Intel and ARM. The performance issues from Meltdown on Intel are going to be entirely workflow dependent and probably affect businesses (like my job) where there is extremely high amounts of data and/or processing being done on the systems.

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Quoting: Alm888And I can as I'm a backer and my money is no worse than money of Windows users.

Quoting: Alm888Natural for you -- maybe. But not for me. If you can not do the job properly, then don't attempt to do it! Come to think of it, they already offered 50% discount before the Linux version saw the light of the day. This means I could just wait for the sale instead of backing the project for nothing (so far, at least). This whole "small user base" argument is pure rationalization and you probably know it, just can not accept the pain of being "second-class citizen" and persuading yourself into thinking that all of this is normal.

You have a right to be upset if you paid money, sure. I'll give you that. But, as a Developer, you should be fully aware of setbacks that can easily happen due to unforeseen problems.

Additionally, as there had already been significant delays to the release of the game and delaying it yet again for smaller platforms would've been a bad business move. Delay too much/too many times and customers stop caring. Sure, it's not fair to you, but there is absolutely no fair solution here. Either the smaller customer base waits or all of the customers wait (which would be unfair and potentially damaging to the developer).

As for your money no being "no worse" than Windows users' money. Objectively that is true. Money is money.... when taken at individual customer value, but businesses (even indie ones) don't have that luxury. A single customer's payment doesn't pay the bills or make them profitable. So, subjectively, from the Business' viewpoint, our money is worth less as our customer base provides less profit potential than the larger user base.

Quoting: Alm888That "tool" is called Unity3D which replaced "Microsoft XNA" from their previous works (they explained this in one of Kickstarter updates). And we know Unity works (more or less ;) ). The recent tweet is a clear indicatior of that: the guy installed Ubuntu for the first time, launched his game and it worked right out of the box! So, apparently, Linux (and probably, MacOS) release was delayed for no objective reason (other than "we are just two guys and have a lot of things on our hands right now, our fingers are too hurt from all those paperwork signing for release on Steam").

Sure, it probably works mostly fine on Ubuntu, but Zeboyd probably takes the same stance that some of the FOSS communities I'm in do:

"We don't support it on a system until we test it on that system."

Quoting: Alm888That does not make you an honor. I develop for Windows on Linux (Windows XP included! Because he who pays, chooses the music) and damn I be if I not test my program on several versions of Windows (GTK2 and dynamic loading are a pain, especially not the most recent builds).

And testing on multiple versions of the same Operating System is a LOT easier then testing on multiple versions of multiple platforms AND Operating Systems.

I do this too and sometimes it's a real big pain to try and figure out why the tests are failing/not working (Actually dealing with this now. Have automated tests running as I write this). That said, because it's automated, we can find issues on a specific OS really fast, fix it and move on to a release. Usually in less than a day.

Also, if there's one thing I've noticed from the outside looking in.... Game Development practices seem have significantly drifted away from how a lot of modern Software Development is performed. Outside of a few development studios, it seems most of game dev has NOT adopted modern software development practices such as Automated testing, Automated Deployments, Agile workflows (and deployments), etc. Meaning that game devs may not have the tools in place for fast and stable deployments/releases of their games to multiple platforms.

Quoting: Alm888With all of this said, I must clarify my position: I am not against Zeboyd or their projects. In fact, I'm very hyped to see the game (finally!) but the spoon is most precious at dinnertime. And we (will?) get our "spoon" when Windows users are washing dishes. I will watch for Zeboyd's future products, but no more money from me till the release day.

This, I can totally get behind and agree with. No argument here.

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Quoting: Alm888So, they basically ran Kickstarter campaign several years ago, developed the entire game exclusively on Windows, not even checking Linux compatibility once, released the game and only after 3 months he (the "coder-guy" ) finally graces us with his first Linux install of the life.

They seem to be professionals of the highest caliber! "Promise now, deal with it later" at its best! Keep your fingers crossed that they didn't use some Windows-only plugins, like… you know… Obsidian (hello capes!) or Antagonist (Through the Woods.

I actually asked him about the Linux progress a few weeks ago on twitter. It seems like Zeboyd is a 1-2 man "studio" and with delays to ALL the supported platforms they were working on, I can't blame such a small team for deciding to release each platform independently of each other. We're the smallest potential customer base of all the platforms, so it's natural that we'd get work done last.... especially since it is much, much harder for small developers to make back their money on Mac/Linux ports than it is for AAA developers.

Also, I was pretty sure that they were using platform independent tools to build the game. Unfortunately, I have no source for where I thought I read that and don't really have time to go look it up right now.

Quoting: Alm888So yeah! A developer testing declared Linux version after release… it tells something about their skills.

That means absolutely nothing. I develop Puppet Modules, some Rails apps, and Ruby libraries. I couldn't tell you how I would make anything I've worked on work in a Windows Environment..... does that mean my skills suck? That's not how software development works and I this hostility that some of the vocal parts of our community throw indiscriminately at developers needs to stop until you can prove that you have experience working with such complex products and tooling. It's NEVER as simple as some make it out to be.

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As much as I really, really hate the long waits for a port, I have to say the of the "bigger" games ported to Linux Rocket League and Divinity: Original Sin EE have a polish and stability that I simply haven't seen in many AAA ports to Linux.

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This is not surprising at all. As someone working for a Medium-sized Tech company with over 30 Business Units doing their own thing, I rarely know what each individual Business Unit is doing..... and my team supports the Linux Infrastructure for most of them.

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Quoting: mulletdeathI'm getting so tired of getting games years after everyone else stopped caring. "Valve time" is not adequate for games releasing on Linux after they've already been released on everything else in existence.

I think everyone is, however we only have a few choices at this time:

1. Wait and get them after everyone else to show developers there is interest/money in Linux.
2. Refuse to get them if they take too long, which would ultimately hurt Linux gaming more as Publishers/Developers would assume that there is little to no interest/money in Linux-based gaming.
3. Give up on Linux Gaming altogether.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Nel

Quoting: Mountain Man"Personally, I think these sorts of contracts do no good, and I am not a fan of them. I am surprised such a contract is even legal!"

Why should they be illegal? If an employer says, "Here are the terms you must agree to before we'll hire you," and the employee signs on the dotted line anyway then that's on them. Trendy Entertainment is perfectly within its right to enforce a contract that both parties willingly agreed to.

ROFL

Just one sentence from Noam Chomsky:
The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

Unless someone is holding a gun to his head, a prospective employee is under no compulsion to sign a contract he doesn't agree with. To claim that the employee in this instance was "starving" and had no choice but to accept an unfair deal is absurd. And "potentate"? Really? It's not as if Trendy Entertainment was the only company in the whole of the United States that would have been willing to hire him.

Chomsky is a brilliant linguist, but his view on politics are, to be polite, a bit out there.

Say what you want, a Non-Compete cannot Legally prevent you from earning a living in your profession. That info comes directly from a lawyer. The ONLY way Trendy's Non-compete clause can prevent someone from working in gaming is if that Non-Compete states that they can't work in gaming within 200 miles (or someother limited distance) of Trendy. ANY Non-Compete that prevents an employee from working in their profession and earning a living at all is considered "unenforceable". Basically a Non-Compete that prevents you from working in your chosen profession/specialty would be akin to signing yourself into servitude as no one would ever be able to leave their company without leaving their career, giving many companies absolutely no reason to treat their employees well.

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I'm not sure if someone already stated this or not, but I spoke with a Gamer friend of mine (who plays ARK) that happens to be a Lawyer. Simply put, he said non-competes CANNOT prevent someone from making a living, regardless of what state that person lives in. The closest a NC can get to preventing someone from working in a specific industry (such as gaming or technology) is to say that person cannot work in game development within 200 miles of current employer.

He also stated that it doesn't matter what Jeremy Stieglitz's wife did and that it is quite common for someone to file for a business with an alias or maiden name.

More or less, the accusations brought forth by Trendy seem to be very, very thin on actual evidence of breach of contract, and what little they do looks pretty close to falling into the "unenforceable" category.

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Quoting: NelI'm currently playing Saints Row 4 and I also had missing textures with 364.12. But above all, this driver has a huge performance drop on this game, so I reverted back to 355.11.

I played some other games with 364.12: Sky Force Anniversary, Outland and Little Racers Street, but didn't notice anything wrong. Performance wise, these games are not very demanding for my 660gtx to experience any fps drop.

From what I gather, it sounds like this is an application bug rather than a driver bug. NVidia has been removing features that allowed developers to take shortcuts with OpenGL (IIRC) and this has been breaking games that used those shortcuts. While I'm sure this is partially NVidia's fault for allowing this in the first place, I hope we can all realize that a vast majority of issues (at least what I've seen) with the new drivers are, in fact, application bugs that the new driver triggers/makes apparent.

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