tl;dr: Used a burner email signing up for Comcast Xfinity and have been constantly receiving phishing emails on that address. (Last one was this morning.)
I signed up for Comcast Xfinity using a brand new “hide my email” address and three months later I started receiving phishing emails at that address. (I’ve gotten over half a dozen so far). Made me realize that either Comcast was hacked (without disclosing it) or they’re selling people’s emails.
I’ve experienced the same with comcast and have contacted their support. They claim there was no data breach or they aren’t selling emails, but that obviously isn’t the case.
Well, it could also be the case that everything is working as designed, and that they gave your address to someone else who did have a data breach or is themselves sending the phishing emails.
Additionally, they spend a ton of money lobbying and otherwise unfairly impeding competition, so in many places in the US, they are the only option, so it's give up your civil rights to lawsuits, or stay offline (or pay a wireless carrier who does the same anticompetitive scumbag shit a heinous price per gigabyte).
The state of both wireless and wireline broadband in the US is totally broken, and it's not getting fixed because it's broken by design, as part of the general attitude by large corporate interests and cooperative legislatures and regulatory bodies to treat the US population as a sort of natural resource like a flock of sheep to be fleeced rather than as legitimate customers to be serviced (or a legitimate market to be participated in on merits).
They do this by ensuring that there is no meaningful competition, and ensuring that if you do "willingly" engage in service with them, you have no meaningful legal recourse if they abuse you.
"We're the phone company. We don't have to care."
You have no real power against them because the people who control the system have decided that you should not have any real power against them.
I’m no lawyer, but I wonder if this is more of a “go away” clause and if it would survive a real courtroom. Your lawyer would undoubtedly say “don’t waste your time and money”, but I question how many of our rights we can really, actually give up in a contract.
> but I question how many of our rights we can really, actually give up in a contract.
Theoretically, probably none. Otherwise, you'd be able to hire a hitman on yourself, have slaves, or restrict a person's free speech because they're an employee.
Arbitration costs companies far more than lawsuits do. There was a guy that used to make tons of money off Arbitration clauses. Basically, the company is on the hook for hotel stays, transportation, food, etc. for the arbiter as well as anyone else that may not be local to the venue in question.
The reason companies went with this approach was to stop class action lawsuits from happening, which is where the real damage happens. One enterprising law firm started doing pooled Arbitrations (filing for hundreds or thousands at a time), which costs the company more than a class action would. Some companies have removed such clauses because of this.
Knowing how they're hijacking my bandwidth for their Xfinity hotspot service, the dark patterns to enable it, and the hiddenness of disabling it - it doesn't seem implausible.
I do that the old fashioned way with a catchall mail address and forward them. If they start smelling weird, I filter the address and change the mail address with the service provider.
I have a blog hosted on GH Pages generated with Jekyll. I got this email from the researcher:
> To Whom It May Concern:
>
> My name is Tom Harris, and I am a resident of Sacramento, California. I have a few questions about your process for responding to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) data access requests:
>
> Would you process a GDPR data access request from me even though I am not a resident of the European Union?
> Do you process GDPR data access requests via email, a website, or telephone? If via a website, what is the URL I should go to?
> What personal information do I have to submit for you to verify and process a GDPR data access request?
> What information do you provide in response to a GDPR data access request?
> To be clear, I am not submitting a data access request at this time. My questions are about your process for when I do submit a request.
>
> Thank you in advance for your answers to these questions. If there is a better contact for processing GDPR requests regarding yifan.lu, I kindly ask that you forward my request to them.
>
> I look forward to your reply without undue delay and at most within one month of this email, as required by Article 12 of GDPR.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Tom Harris
I honestly thought it was one of those legal trolls who sent the same email to everyone hoping to find someone to sue but I responded anyways explaining how statically generated sites worked and that I’m willing to provide the information, being that the information is that I have none…
The last paragraph in particular made it sound like a veiled legal threat (or that they’re hinting that they’re willing to go down that road). I felt that I had to respond just to establish some record.
It was specifically crafted to sound like there will be legal consequence - this internet tough-guy goes into the same bucket as deceptive 'microsoft technicians' asking you to buy gift cards - not as scammy or nefarious, but in a similar vein nevertheless.
Yeah it’s 2021 and Chinese manufactured are more reliable and higher quality than anything American made. As an anecdote I build PCBs for a hobby and I’ve purchased PCBs and chips from both cheap Chinese fabs and suppliers as well as Americans ones. The only issues I’ve ever had were with American ones (which were many times more expensive) and I’ve stopped using them completely.
I would be curious if librem will ever release data regarding failure rates of their American made phones versus non-American made ones. But considering how they’re branding this and the kind of person who will spend the premium to buy it, I doubt they will ever say anything.
Also after the Snowden revelations, I laugh at the idea that American made products are somehow more “secure”. Sure we (as in US intelligence community) think China puts back doors in things but from the Snowden revelations we KNOW that American companies like Cisco puts backdoor into things.
It crushed me last year when we ordered extrusion/machine work samples (a lot of 10 pieces) from a major American brand and some from "Ricky" a Chinese machine shop connect one of the guys here heard of through doing other parts sourcing in China.
The Chinese ones were better machined, had no issues, and were 1/3 the price. I weep for American manufacturing.
Even assuming that all hardware is backdoored, it can still make sense to use hardware from your own country, since your own government probably doesn’t want to harm its own economic interests.
I’m more worried about the other state understanding the topology of my state in higher resolution than my own state does. The ramifications are endless, and I believe that to be the more grave threat (aka undermine society at its cultural fabric while stealing/undermining the economy and crippling the military).
> Also after the Snowden revelations, I laugh at the idea that American made products are somehow more “secure”.
Be that may, but as a US person I’d rather have US intelligence snooping on me than a foreign hostile entity. There are no ifs and buts about it. For folks in other countries, I leave it to them if they are more comfortable with a democracy, with relatively good relations with most countries in the world, snooping on them or a communist regime, which has issues with each and every one of its neighbors.
The error here is the assumption that only foreign entities are hostile. A "foreign hostile entity" may have lots of information and malicious intent, but they lack legal jurisdiction and the ability to take open, direct action where I live. The most worrisome threat is that they manage to uncover a common interest with some domestic entity and share what they learned—and from that perspective domestic snooping just cuts out the middleman. I'd rather keep the entities doing the snooping and the ones with influence over me as widely separated as possible.
If you had actually looked back through my comment history you would have seen that I never defended China or claimed that the USA was worse. I am not a fan of governments in general but I will freely acknowledge that the US government is far from the worst example. My comment was purely about domestic snooping vs. foreign from the perspective of the one being spied upon—if one lives in China the roles will obviously be reversed, and in that case one should prefer a foreign entity like the USA gathering intel over the domestic Chinese equivalents. Either could wish you ill but the domestic power will almost always be the more immediate threat. (Not being spied upon at all would be ideal, of course.)
Which of the two countries has more invasions, coups and occupations in its history? Which one is still occupying several countries and has military bases in many others?
It’s the US the rest of us fear, with good reason.
Smells fishy. High tech product at a super low price. $1 reservation. “1337 people have reserved.” Creator name is “Stone” Li. Uses some website called “viralmarketing”.
My guess is this is gonna turn out to be some research paper on viral marketing or something.
Jeez as a Chinese person who lives in USA I find this comment very condescending and offensive.
> But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on.
I don’t want to get into a whataboutism debate about all the human rights violations the USA has engaged in (yes Trump but Obama as well and W before him and etc). But really I’ll just focus on “proper civil society”. Jfc is the sinophobia getting overt around here.
Even if I take the good faith argument that “it’s commentary about CCP not Chinese people” as I often hear after racist remarks, I’ll just point out I’ve been hearing comments like this all my life in all sorts condescending ways. Most of the time in bad faith. So I don’t give a shit about how you “intend” it to be.
Looks good to exibit tolerancy between like minded friends about accepted topics, abortion, sexual orientation, skin color and the like... But about a different political system other than western liberal democracy? No way!
And it's not like Chinas Communist Party (from Deng Xiaopin on) has not good credentials. It might be the more succesfull regime in the history of humanity if we talk about taking people out of poverty. Which system has improved the life of millions like the party?
But it doesn't matter. The aglosphere keeps with its cultural war against the new enemy. What are the signs that the Chinese want to export their way of life? Any recent war launched by China? Any attempt to force a Western goverment to accept their condicions? They are not the ones messing with other countries democracies.
Anyway, there are plenty of things not to like about the Communist Party, but seriously, the propaganda is out of control.
> What are the signs that the Chinese want to export their way of life? Any recent war launched by China? Any attempt to force a Western goverment to accept their condicions?
There are two distinct reasons I see:
1. Some people read recent actions like "investing in a deepwater navy", "setting up economic relations with Africa", and "forcing trading partners to not recognize Taiwan" as doing exactly those things.
2. Even if you ignore those things, if you believe the western powers have done these things already in the 20th century like "investing in a huge carrier fleet and naval bases around the world", "setting up colonies and promoting democracy around the world, sometimes through force", and "forcing trading partners into labor standards including pay and hours, bundled into a package we call human rights", then it's probably easier to assume others are capable of doing similar.
1. I agree that "proper civil society" is rather questionable as criticism of China goes, but do the others not apply? I think they clearly seem to be points of commentary on the Chinese political system, which isn't a reflection of a race/ethnicity. I have no trouble believing that comments that you have received throughout your life were in bad faith. I've heard similar (at least in sentiment) comments about the society in my parents' country of origin. However, I think the majority of those comments (as with the ones in question here) fit into the bucket of clearly criticizing a social structure that applies to but does not immutably define the people living in it, and certainly doesn't apply to you if you live outside of it.
2. On a slightly different note, I think that while whataboutism is generally neither productive nor relevant, in this case a small amount could be relevant because the implication is that some other countries have developed to a state of "proper civil society, [...] democracy, and so on" while China has not. If the claim relates China to some base standard in the author's mind, then pointing out failings in those places seems like an attack on the point itself, but I don't know whether the US was at the top of their mind when crafting that sentence.
It's not sinophobia. I've got _zero_ issue with Chinese Americans as long as their English is good enough that their primary news sources still don't still sit in China (for example second generation or greater Chinese Americans). It's the legitimate concern about China pushing remote spying into its software and hardware that is sold overseas as well as the manipulation of people through companies like TikTok aka ByteDance.
There’s no way defend against your accusations. It essentially boils down to “you’ve been brainwashed.” You’ve already decided your viewpoint is right and anything against it has read too much Chinese language news (whether true or not).
The “manipulation” you speak of is more hypothetical. If anything Facebook has done more manipulative harm thus far.
One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok have to do to satisfy your accusations of them “manipulating” people? How does Huawei stop spying on Americans? If there is no answer then you can see not only how it is pointless to argue, but that your primary motivation is actually to prevent the shift of power, rather than based on any actual infractions by Huawei or TikTok. So should the Chinese just sit out of global economics because they could threaten US dominance and potentially spy on or manipulate US people? The current dialogue is centers on future power, not on any actual abuse of power by these companies. Not like the US actually spying on Angela Merkel.
> One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok have to do to satisfy your accusations of them “manipulating” people?
Set up a subsidiary that's subject to US law and rather than Chinese law and also has majority ownership in America. It's what the China enforces on foreign companies, so fair is fair.
> So should the Chinese just sit out of global economics because they could threaten US dominance and potentially spy on or manipulate US people?
I have no problem with Chinese companies participating in global economics as long as they're not based on stolen technology. Also it's not "potential", this has already happened extensively. China rose to prominence by extensive state funded industrial espionage and US companies were too blinded by greed to counter it. The US needs more laws in place to prevent this type of behavior and more retaliatory action when it's committed.
So many Chinese people I see online seem to think that the US is scared of China becoming more powerful economical or some other nonsense. The US created current Chinese economic prosperity through extensive work by Nixon and others in that era. That was all a massive mistake based on the mistaken idea that if China became more economically powerful they would become more democratic and more freedom oriented. That has failed to be the case and it's time to rethink how the US has handled China historically.
Chinese Americans are cool because they can read English, which is real news. I won't bother reading anything in Chinese or learn Chinese values, but I can judge them according to my beliefs because the English one is far superior.
It’s a highly technical problem that doesn’t have much practical use. Essentially it says that a weak (polynomial time) classical computer (called the “verifier”) with the ability to query (polynomial number of times) a small number of all-powerful computers (called the “provers”) with unknown/unbounded computing power is able to be convinced that the prover is indeed all powerful (convinces the verifier that it knows the answer to some problem that is known to be difficult). These specific provers can not communicate with each other (collude) but can share some entangled bits (the quantum part). The result here is (basically) that the verifier can be convinced that the prover knows the answer to the halting problem.
The result is more interesting with some context though. One of the biggest discoveries of the 21st century is that PSPACE=IP. That’s where a single all powerful prover can convince a weak verifier of any solution in PSPACE (an extension of P that we believe to be more powerful than P). Then more recently we found MIP=NEXP which is a bunch of classic all powerful provers (with no collusion) can convince a single weak verifier of any problem in NEXP (which is like NP but with much larger proof sizes, thought to be more powerful than NP). The surprising fact is that multiple all-powerful provers can convince a verifier of harder problems. Intuitively this doesn’t make sense because we know each provers are all powerful and are permitted to do anything, even physically impossible tasks, so the fact that a single prover cannot convince a verifier of any problems harder than PSPACE is surprising. More surprising is that multiple all powerful provers can somehow prove harder problems when it feels like we’re not adding any extra power (they’re already “all powerful”).
So in that context we find the also surprising fact that if we weaken the “no collusion” requirement to “only quantum entanglement” and suddenly they can solve the halting problem (but still no more!).
This line of proving both upper and lower bounds about complexity classes is exactly what we want to see in the P vs NP world (which is in many ways less “powerful” of classes but more “practical”). But we don’t even know if P ?= NEXP.
NEXP is nondeterministic exponential time, right? In that case we know that P /= EXPTIME by the time hierarchy theorem and EXPTIME is contained in NEXP. We also have a direct result that NP /= NEXP (reference given in https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Complexity_Zoo:N#nexp).
> Yet another reason to be excited about this result—one that somehow hadn’t occurred to me—is that, as far as I know, it’s the first-ever fully convincing example of a non-relativizing computability result.
This is one of the three known barriers any proof of P vs NP must overcome. Not saying any of this applies to P vs NP but the proof technique demonstrated is important for such a proof.
Assuming both Intel and AMD implement performance monitors the same (i.e. same notion of instructions executed, which may be hard to measure with speculative execution), the comparison is still flawed because it doesn’t matter if Intel can do more instruction per cycle if AMD can produce more cycles in a span of wall time.
> However, it is not clear whether these reports are genuinely based on measures of instruction per cycle. Rather it appears that they are measures of the amount of work done per unit of time normalized by processor frequency.
That’s precisely why nobody really uses IPC as a way to compare processors. “How much work done per unit of time” is a much better measurement and I guess for historical reasons, people conflate it with IPC.
I think it would have been useful if the author benchmarked the actual time taken to parse a large json file, and did a sanity check to make sure the time difference made sense with ipc/clock factored in.
It's really not useful for gauging potential. There are tradeoffs in how deeply you pipeline your architectures that'll tend to result in higher clock rates for shorter pipeline stages but higher IPC for longer pipeline stages, for instance. It's pretty easy to make a design with an IPC that'll blow everything else out of the water if it only needs to hit 100 MHz. For instance the slower a clock cycle is the larger you can make your caches and the less clock cycles it takes to read from them.
Also, on real world benchmarks that don't fit neatly in cache, for a given chip IPC will tend to increase as you underclock it because that will cause memory latency to go down.
Note that the chip with the higher specific frequency in this test, and the higher max frequency across the product line (Skylake+), gets a higher IPC here, so this kind of tradeoff isn't the obvious cause of the results here.
IPC is _usually_ a good measure for the last phase of optimization. But it is only the local Δ that is meaningful, comparing IPC across different vendors is only useful as a gross measure.
It's not even useful as a gross measure, unfortunately. Too many moving parts in the way.
Say, if you used IPC only then you'd probably pick the latest Apple ARM CPU. Except it cannot go as high clock in any of the subunits as top AMD and Intel, cache is slower, and memory bandwidth abysmal in comparison.
Performance in seconds or performance per watt (unit is 1/(W*s)) in the workload you want to run is useful.
You cannot even estimate anything using microbenchmarks anymore easily since they expanded per unit local clocking in x86... (AMD in Zen+ and expanded in Zen 2, most ARM mobile CPUS, Intel since Broadwell E, expanded in Skylake.)
You get traps such as going for AVX and locally overheating the CPU where SSE2 equivalent would go faster in real life. It's all funny business.
IPC also heavily favors RISC instead of SIMD, likewise is biased against multicore. (Though not as much.)
What counts as an instruction anyway?
There's no "gauging potential". Would you suddenly go with OICC if it has extremely high IPC?
How about old Core instead of new Skylake? Oh shoot, there is no potential in Core if it's not being made!
Even different Zen 2 CPUs have varied performance properties not just due to cores, but due to CCX count.
The exactly one use for such microbenchmark and that's optimizing the compilers.
Even if there were multiple implementations?
Also remember that x86-64 unlike x86 is not closed, and unlike POWER, RISC-V, ARM or MIPS is not actually well defined.
If AMD suddenly adds a new but useful instruction set like they did with 3DNOW in ancient times, or accelerate something reasonably common that way, say add a special SIMD conditional, where do you even start in comparison?
What if Intel actually does add a useful FPGA programmable computing capability as promised or enhanced DMA?
I don’t see how it is flawed. The article doesn’t discuss whether the AMD CPU is faster than the Intel CPU, it discusses the claim "that the most recent AMD processors surpass Intel in terms of instructions per cycle” (https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_7_3800x_revi...)
And IPC, IMO, is a better measurement for a chip’s design than pure speed, as it removes the “but how good a process do you have access to” from the equation.
The article gives 2 benchmarks, I am pretty sure it is easy to mash up another benchmark with totally opposite results (e.g subset of specint). I found author's inclusion of an obviously skewed example as proof a little bit disingenuous as well.
Having said that in general Intel still holds a slight edge on pure Ipc. However, considering the terrible track record of security issues and abysmal price performance ratio, a slight edge on ipc can be ignored and I would not consider Intel for most workloads at the moment. Above all, actual application benchmark trumps any ipc microbencmark.
I'm this case the frequencies are similar and so wall clock time reflects the IPC difference (also, the two CPUs take the same code path, so the I is the same in this case, which isn't always true).
That only really happens on laptops, which can't dissipate as much heat as desktop systems due to size constraints. On a desktop, if you're using even AMD's stock cooler, you won't thermal throttle. That is, if you don't overclock.
Modern processors with boost configurations are rather complicated about "thermally throttling". These days with AMD's stock coolers you will be able to at least get the sticker speed on the CPU even at 100% load for a sustained time. Chances are, you'll actually get some % more speed than the sticker as it will usually continue to boost as long as power delivery and temperatures are stable. So even with an entirely stock configuration, a better motherboard and cooling system will overall net you more performance. This is without doing any traditional "overclocking" and just going with the settings designated with the CPU and motherboard. This same idea also applies to most of Intel's parts as well.
That's the same thing. Intel calls their stuff a dynamic boost so that some of their measurements like TDW are for lower clocks. Both CPUs end up scaling their clocks to a wide range.
"the comparison is still flawed because it doesn’t matter if Intel can do more instruction per cycle if AMD can produce more cycles in a span of wall time."
The reason Intel had the "per core" superiority crown for years is that it had a better IPC performance due to design efficiency. Both manufacturers are pushing against the same frequency ceiling, so if you went AMD you had to significantly increase the core count to catch up, and could never match the still important single-thread performance.
We know from large scale, comprehensive benchmarks that AMD has massively picked up the pace and is neck and neck with Intel. At the same processor speed it matches the best Intel processors.
But yeah, this article is just terrible. Not just tiny, minuscule, extremely myopic benchmarks, but then a gross over-reach with conclusions. And in the way that ignorance begets ignorance, the fact that it's trending on a couple of social news sites means that now Google is surfacing it as canonical information when it's just a junk, extremely lazy analysis.
"So AMD runs at 2/3 the IPC of an old Intel processor. That is quite poor!"
That is most certainly an overreach. An extraordinary overreach. Worse, it's absurdly using an AVX2 codebase, optimized for Westmere, as the baseline for "IPC" testing? The premise itself borders of gross negligence.
IPC as a generalized concept is a broad, general purpose set of instructions, not an absurdly narrow test.
Saying "Intel is faster at AVX512" is going to surprise exactly no one, and also happens to be irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of users and uses.
The microbenchmarking thing has gone on for years, and at this point anyone who has paid any attention is rightly cautious when stomping their feet and making declarations, because usually they're just pouring noise into the mix. Lazily running a couple of tiny tests is not the rigour to avoid deserved criticism.
I'm not sure if you were implying it or just using it as example of another type of unhelpful claim, but this test does not involve AVX-512.
I agree using Westmere isn't necessarily the best approach, but there is no difference in this case with either -march=native or -march=znver1.
The loop is small and simple, with only 9 instructions and compiles more or less the same regardless of march setting (I observed some basically no-op changes such as a mov and blsr swapping places). Here's the assembly (for the second test, with the bigger IPC gap):
"I'm not sure if you were implying it or just using it as example of another type of unhelpful claim, but this test does not involve AVX-512."
Even worse! Is this a defense, because it's remarkably unhelpful as one.
The blog post was clearly a cry for attention for some project -- let's just use some clickbait IPC claims to gain it -- and continually alluded to a whole project -- an extreme niche project that still wouldn't have any relevance. But instead it's a meaningless, completely misrepresentative micro-loop.
I think Daniel uses those examples because they are actual examples from projects that he is or has been working on, and he's familiar with them and actually cares about them, and because it's at least a notch more realistic than something totally synthetic.
It seems like a very roundabout thing to use as a cry for attention for SIMDjson (the project I assume you are talking about), and I don't believe that's the purpose. I see no problem in linking the project.
Picking two random benchmarks and trying to extract any kind of more general IPC claim is not on solid ground, but I'm pretty sure Daniel will say he's not doing that: he's only sharing these two specific results. That's a style that reoccurs across several entries in that blog, however, so if it triggers (as it has me on occasion) you might want to look elsewhere.
A plain reading indicates that such is irrelevant, because these are the two tiny cases that he selectively chose to demonstrate the "IPC gap" of AMD. If some AMD booster posted hand-selected micro-benchmarks that gave AMD a lead, and boasted with exclamations and pejoratives how terrible the alternative is, we would rightly question it. This deserves no more.
And to the other defense of "Well there are AMD people claiming the same in reverse, so that legitimizes this", I've seen exactly zero of those posts on here. None. They would be laughed off the site.
What we do have is that traditionally at a given frequency, per core AMD has long trailed on major benchmarks of significant, user-realistic loads. This is the the first generation in a long time where it actually doesn't, and where you don't need additional cores to make up the gap.
I feel like you are intentionally being thick in order to get mad at me.
I am only talking specifically about the 2/3 claim at the bottom of the article, which for the avoidance of doubt, is simply a summary of the final measurement made in the article, i.e., the result of dividing 1.4 by 2.1. I know this because of its positioning in the article, because the numbers line up, because a different % IPC is given for the earlier measurement, and because an earlier version of post, with different results for the last experiment (with IPC of 2.8 and 1.4), showed a different ratio (50%).
How you are somehow interpreting the small clarification of the one line which was being discussion as wide-ranging defense of the article, I'm not sure. My broader thoughts are available here [1] and the comments on the article.
There's been a lot of debate in the enthusiasts community, but reviewers believe that user benchmarks don't have much value. There's so much variation in software, cooling, RAM speed, GPU speed, etc. Even misconfigurations like different running background apps can skew the results.
However, for a processor that's been in the market for a while, I think userbenchmarks is a good site to look at the aggregate data. Their rankings were recently updated to disfavor AMD chips, so don't take those too seriously. But for head-to-head comparisons of processors with a lot of users, you can get a good idea of how much faster a processor is.
However, I disagree that review sites should consider "user data" because 1) these are new processors and people who read these reviews are usually early adopters who want to make a buying decision and 2) the testing setup and methodology is a time consuming and scientific process and shouldn't be discounted by just asking random people to run an app.
tl;dr: Used a burner email signing up for Comcast Xfinity and have been constantly receiving phishing emails on that address. (Last one was this morning.)