I get you. I have many similar stories. Where things should have been simple, a 4 steps process. And yet.

Last time was the printer no longer working from my mom’s iPhone. It’s supposed to detect the printer automatically when on the same network, it no longer did. And the stored/“remembered” entry did not work either.

After many troubleshoting steps, I gave up, sent the document to another computer and printed from there. So, clearly, the printer worked (for once) and accepted commands from the LAN.

My guess would be to force a hierarchy as to distribute load. DNS is distributed in a sens. There are the root name servers that know about all TLD and then each TLD has its own server (in practice there is multiple TLD a single entity controls and it allocates as many server as needed to answer all DNS request for those). And those “TLD servers” know about the second level. And either they also know about the lower levels or those are further delegated.

So fewer TLD means that the “root” DNS servers do not have to keep a huge “phonebook” (TLD to IP address of the DNS responsible for them) and can therefore be efficient, which means that fewer of them are required. And fewer root server means its easier to update them and keep them consistent. And if nearly everyone can only register second level domains, then the root name servers do not need to be updated nearly as often.

I don’t think that’s the issue. As said in the article, the researchers found the flaw by reading the architecture documentation. So the flaw is in the design of the API the operating system uses to configure the CPU and related resources. This API is public (though not open source) as to allow operating system vendors to do their job. It usually comes with examples and pseudo code on how some operations work. Here is an example (PDF).

Knowing how this feature is actually implemented in hardware (if the hardware was open source) would not have helped much. I would argue you are one level too low to properly understand the consequences of the implementation.

By the vague description in the article it actually looks like a meltdown or specter like issue where some code gets executed with the inappropriate privileges. Such issues are inherent to complex designs and no amount of open-source will save you there. We need a cultural and maybe a paradigm shift on how we design CPU to fully address those issues.

It would tend towards centralisation just because of the popularity of certain posters/instances and how scale-free networks behave when they’re not handled another way.

Ah, I get you. That’s true.

making the place less equal, more of a broadcast medium, and less accessible to unconnected individuals and small groups.

I do not think it is a very good analogy. I do not see how this would turn into a broadcast medium. Though I do agree it can feel less accessible and there is a risk of building echo chambers.

How does an instance get into one of these archipelagos if they use allowlists?

By reaching out, I would say. It’s most likely a death sentence for one-persone instances. Which is not ideal. On the other hand, I’ve seen people managing their own instance give up on the idea when they realized how little control they have over what gets replicated on their instance and how much work is required to moderate replies and such. In short, the tooling is not quite there.

I think the current technical limitations push us toward this archipelago model.

The thing is, bigotry and racism, to name only two, will exist on any social media, any platform where anyone is free to post something. And since those are societal issue, I don’t think it is up to the fediverse to solve. Not all by itself by any means.

What the fediverse can solve however, is to allow instances to protect themselves and their members from such phenomenon. And my limited understanding, as a simple user, is that’s it’s not possible right now. Not on lemmy nor on Mastodon, if I trust the recent communications around moderation and instance blocking. Not without resorting to allow list.

This is annoying to admit because it goes against the spirit of the fediverse. But the archipelago model is the only sane solution short term IMO. And it will stay that way until the moderation tools make a leap and allow some way to share the load between instances and even between users.

What a shit show. And if it is confirmed that laptop CPU are also affected, even if to a lower extent, AMD will be the only option on consumer hardware in the coming couple of years. Thankfully, Qualcomm entered the scene recently which should stir up the competition and prevent AMD from resting on its laurels.

I would not have expected anyone to go to ASUS’ office to press the issue. So, good on GN and hopefully will see some long-term results. But seeing how the company has a hard time acknowledging some issues such as the ROG Ally SD card one, I would not hold my breadth.