Yes, because we have users from multiple departments, including physics, economics/finance, medical, engineering. Some of those users are working on HIPPA or ITAR data, and we have to apply the patch to ensure that other users can't snoop anything that doesn't belong to them.

> I mean, I have a doctorate in computational physics. We had a half million dollar grant for our own HPC cluster. I had many thousands of hours of jobs run on other university systems

And yet you're still wrong. Since you're throwing credentials around, I have two graduate degrees (theoretical physics and MBA), our cluster is about 10 times bigger judging by price, and I have 15 years experience here in the "real world", and another 5 years in grad school writing parallel Fortran code on a DEC Alpha cluster.

Speaking as someone who handles security at our site, we are enabling KPTI on our compute clusters because they exist in a shared cluster, and we don't want our non-HIPPA/non-ITAR users to be able to snag credentials from HIPPA/ITAR users.

> Why in the world would you patch a HPC cluster? The security issue described is completely not applicable in this case -- these aren't processing TLS connections, dealing with sensitive data or whatnot

No offense, but you seriously *do not* have any idea what you're talking about. Our cluster is used by departments across the university, including some under HIPPA, ITAR, or similar regulations.

And yes, a great many of our jobs are opening TLD connections and dealing with sensitive data.

You're trying to extrapolate the entirety of HPC from your personal experience, and that's wrong.

There have been suggestions that pure compute jobs may indeed be relatively unaffected. But high-IO (GPFS, Luster, similar filesystems, as well as 100 Gb networking) may be seriously impacted.

The bug primarily affects large cloud vendors like Google, Facebook (who have entire buildings filled with lawyers) and HPC clusters (many of which have law *schools*).

Without the patch, the computers are vulnerable, and large data centers *must* upgrade given the size and value of the target they are. However, the loss in performance may be substantial. I help manage a ~2000 server HPC cluster. If the patch causes us to lose 5% of our performance, that's like throwing 100 computers away. Which is completely and utterly unacceptable, and we as well as others have the resources to make that crystal clear to Intel.

Don't conflate the body of knowledge itself, with the stereotypical people who chase the credentials. I have a MBA, and you can be an economics geek or strategy geek just like you can be an IT geek or science geek.

That said, yeah, there are a lot of preening greedy narcissists who are attracted to the degree like moths to a flame.

I got my MBA a few years ago from the local Really Expensive Private University, when 40 was just around the corner and I wanted to add another leg to my stool before I became "old" by tech-world standards. I very much value the body of knowledge that I learned, but there are several serious problems with the people chasing and offering it today.

A MBA is like a can of car wax. If you put it on a Corvette, you'll make something great. If you put it on a turd, all you'll have is a shiny turd. I have a STEM degree + 15 years in HPC, and I think the MBA definitely helped me make better, wiser decisions.

By contrast, there were several "MBA's" (in the Dilbertesque sense) in the MBA program right out of central casting. They couldn't write a line of code, couldn't turn a wrench, couldn't do anything useful, but they had executive hair, wore fancy suits, and constantly "networked" and looked for "synergy". They wanted a MBA strictly as a gateway to wealth and power.

They're aided and abetted by universities who are fighting to break into the game. Why shouldn't they? It's relatively low cost (doesn't require expensive labs or facilities like STEM does), people will throw mortgage-size checks at you for the privilege of attending, and you might luck up and get a rich alumni who donates back someday. And they kept raising tuition every year, faster than inflation, faster than salaries grew.

My cousin graduated with a law degree right when the law market crashed, and I recognized similar signs of doom creeping into the MBA field. Just like the bloom in law schools, there was a bloom in MBA schools, from tiny never-heard-of-them-before private universities and on-line schools, taking cash from every marginal MBA student-wanna-be out there.

I don't regret getting my MBA, even though I haven't seen much more than cost-of-living increases since graduation. I learned a tremendous amount and enjoyed it a lot (there can be economic geeks just as much as science geeks or IT geeks). And I made a substantial chunk of change on the stock market using what I knew. But with a MBA from a good school costing $100k nowadays, you're much better off just taking $300 to the local used book store and reading them.

The MBA wasn't a "gateway to wealth" because of the degree itself, but because of the caliber of student trying to attain it. I'm sure the same type of people who chase an IT degree for wealth in the 90's and chased a JD/MBA for wealth in the 00's will find another degree to chase and run into the ground soon enough. My bet is on "data science". I already see a few junior varsity universities in our area offering a degree to any comer who can code in BASIC, and I'm sure DeVry's and University of Phoenix will be offering a degree soon enough.

I strongly suspect this will, at best, make it *slightly* healthier. I mean, Coke Zero is probably technically healthier than Coke Classic, but neither are remotely as healthy for you as water.

Prof. David Nutt's work on a "synthetic alcohol" he calls alcosynth is likely to be vastly more healthy, because a) you are consuming the active ingredient in mg doses instead of gram doses, b) it doesn't release acetaldehyde, which is itself a deadly poison, and c) it "tops out", ie if it's designed to top out a 6 drinks, then 10 drinks won't make you any drunker than 6.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...

Science already invented a liver-safe "alcohol" millions of years ago. It's called "weed".

I'll be happy to create one job if you give me $26 million. I will be sitting at home awaiting the check arrival so I can start. Thanks.

Replying to my own comment since this seems to have blown up.

Gender equality involves three interlinked questions:

1. As individuals, are women with a given level of education/experience/productivity *hired* at the same rate as men.

The answer is *no*, though economic forces alone will solve the problem even in the absence of regulation. Any business that can hire a woman who is just as effective as a man but will work for 80% of the salary will quickly find themselves making a lot of money. This leads to the next quesiton:

2. Are women with similar education/experience/productivity as a man *paid* the same?

The answer here is still "no", and we definitely need to change that. There are many reasons why, including "unfairness", "women arbitraging between salary and free time or other desirables", and everything in-between. Given the number of reasons, there likely isn't a single simple and fair solution. Google is big on gender equality, and it is just for them to do so. But gender inequality (ie, being able to hire a woman at 80% the salary of a similar man) has also likely made them lots of money. I'm not Google HR expert. Perhaps this is a non-issue there, but it is an issue elsewhere.

When the magical day happens and women are rewarded the same as men, there is still a third question:

3. As a *group*, are women (and men) allowed to reach their "equilibrium" in the workplace, or is it still dominated by men (or women)?

Even if women are hired fairly and compensated fairly, that doesn't mean there will be a 50/50 gender split in the workplace. Men and women *are* different. Yes, there are women who love welding, and there are men who love babysitting, but they are outliers.

No one knows what that equilibrium is, for IT or for any other field either. I don't *know* that 20% women in IT is equilibrium. It could be 50/50, or 90/10 for all I know. But it *could be* 20% too.

There's no good way to find that equilibrium via regulation. All you can do is set the conditions for fairness and inequality, and let the market find it's own balance. If there's a better way, I'd honestly love to know.

How ironic, because the right has itself become an ideological echo chamber. I used to be a Republican, back before moderates were "RINO's". The GOP of that era knew that climate change was real, and debated carbon tax vs cap-and-trade as a solution. The modern GOP either thinks that climate change isn't real, or that it's caused by gay marriage.

Gender equality is a complex issue, and is full of people talking past each other, so I expect little progress to be made anytime soon. Women should feel completely free to join male-dominated fields like programming and science, just as men should feel free to join female-dominated fields like nursing and teaching.

Yes, there is often enough male misogynists, weirdos, and "those guys" in IT that it would make women uncomfortable, and that needs to be nipped in the bud, both for the sake of women and for the sake of business. There are women like that too. People who are jerks in one way are often jerks in other ways too, and those malignant personalities often have deleterious effects on their co-workers irrespective of gender.

But I don't see people fretting about why women aren't working construction jobs, or hauling garbage. That's because even the men working those jobs largely don't *want* to do them. IT isn't hauling the garbage, but it involves long hours, an often stressful work environment, and a relentless grind. Maybe those characteristics aren't as attractive to women as to men. Having worked in IT for 15+ years, it's not attractive to me as a man either. Or maybe women simply have better options.

Maybe 20% women in programming *is* the natural equilibrium. I don't *think* so, but it's possible. Men and women are different, and desire different things. Men desire income (to attract a wife and support a family), while women often prefer jobs that allow them more free time (again to support their family). If you're a woman who desires income, or a man who wants more free time, that's completely fine (I'd definitely prefer more free time over a pay raise), but it's not the average response.

TL;DR: People are all different. Be kind to one another. Don't be a dick.

It's not physically possible for someone to injest a lethal dose of THC from marijuana. Marijuana has higher hospital admissions than mushrooms, partly due to the influx of people trying it for the first time (it's easier to both acquire and show up at a hospital if it's legal), or due to not understanding you need to wait 1-2 hours for an edible to kick in, or because someone spiked a unsuspecting person's food/drink with cannabis.

AT&T and Comcast have both had 20 years, *two* decades, an *entire generation* to roll out their own fiber, but they didn't, because they're a monopoly and fark you, you miserable customer. And during that 20 years, the only thing they had to worry about was making sure our state lawmakers were given enough bribes, whiskey, hookers, and blow to tow the company line.

Then Google Fiber comes to town, and now that they're doing AT&T/Comcast's job better than AT&T/Comcast ever did, suddenly it's DerpCon 1. They know that as a natural monopoly, there is only going to be *one* broadband utility when the dust settles. And they're doing everything in their power (short of actually getting off their ass and running their own fiber) to stop Google.

If you look in the dictionary under "regulatory capture", it has a photograph of Tennessee's legislature. Our elected fuckwits used their usual Underpants Gnomes logic:

1) Block cities/co-ops from competing with AT&T/Comcast
2) ???
3) Vigorous competition and fiber everywhere!

By a complete coincidence, campaign contributions from ISP's increased by a factor of 100x (not 100%, 100 *TIMES*) that year.

If any of the crew from /r/nashville is here, please share our warm feelings about Comcast and Marsha Blackburn...

Any AI in the foreseeable future will be under control of human beings, either due to laws or financial ownership. I'm not the least worried about AI, but having watched this election, the humans in my country scare the shit out of me.

I had a hard time understanding how 40% of my fellow countrymen could still vote for Trump, until I realized it explained why we have warning labels telling us not to eat soap...