Techquickie and Misinformation

[Sniperfox47]

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

NAT (or more specifically, NAT overload aka PAT) does not use MAC addresses, at all. It works entirely based on IP and port numbers.

 

Here is an example of what a NAT table might look like inside a router:

 

I wasn't getting the impression from that video that they were talking PAT at all though. They were talking about how IP addresses are assigned. And the DHCP server set up to create your NAT is setting the IP assignments or "NAT Rules" of what device needs to be what IP via mac address.

 

At the end of the day your average consumer neither needs to know nor care about PAT. I think this is another case of certain people looking at what are very non-technical mass audience education from a very technical perspective.

 

P.S. Layer 2 is all about communication within a network, is where MAC is used, and ultimately ends at your NAT, so still not sure how that's not an appropriate way to refer to the assignments from a mass consumer perspective.

[LAwLz]

27 minutes ago, Taja said:

1) I dont think that fits their bottom line, so I dont see that happening.

I don't think it is ethical to profit from misinformation, but I can see how LMG would be OK with that.

 

27 minutes ago, Taja said:

3) Dont agree with that one. Many quality educational videos are made by people that didnt understood something, but did research and provided amazing content. Vsauce is the best example of that I can think of.

Yes, but Vsauce spends weeks or months researching things before posting a video. LMG spends what, a day or two? Quite the difference.

 

27 minutes ago, Taja said:

I quite like techquickie, but for the more complicated subjects... Yeah, maybe the videos are not good. I could not judge that, as im no expert, but for more basic concepts I think this format is really good.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of Techquickie is good, and the format seems to attract a lot of people. My problem is with the actual content of the videos. They need to do a better job ensuring that the information in the videos are correct.

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

I wasn't getting the impression from that video that they were talking PAT at all though. They were talking about how IP addresses are assigned. And the DHCP server set up to create your NAT is setting the IP assignments or "NAT Rules" of what device needs to be what IP via mac address.

 

At the end of the day your average consumer neither needs to know nor care about PAT. I think this is another case of certain people looking at what are very non-technical mass audience education from a very technical perspective.

From 1:45 in the video: 

Quote

Your router keeps track of outbound requests such as when you click on a link. So when the data you want arrives at your router, it attaches the right private IP address to the data packets. ensuring that it goes to your computer or device since all those private IPs correspond to the correct MAC address.

They were definitely talking about NAT. If you ask me, I don't even get why they brought up all that stuff about routing at all in the video. They start talking about connecting to other servers and so on, and that is completely irrelevant to MAC addresses which operate at layer 2. 

It shows a clear lack of understanding of the ISO model.

 

10 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

At the end of the day your average consumer neither needs to know nor care about PAT. I think this is another case of certain people looking at what are very non-technical mass audience education from a very technical perspective.

If you ask me, I think you need to be extra careful when making education videos appealing to the non-technical mass audience. Technical people can spot these inaccuracies and ignore them. A non-technical person interested in this subject might find this video and then stop doing research because they think they have the information they were looking for. It might also completely undermine any further information they learn which builds upon it.

[Sniperfox47]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

From 1:45 in the video: 

They were definitely talking about NAT. If you ask me, I don't even get why they brought up all that stuff about routing at all in the video. They start talking about connecting to other servers and so on, and that is completely irrelevant to MAC addresses which operate at layer 2. 

It shows a clear lack of understanding of the ISO model.

Quote

since all those private IPs correspond to the correct MAC address.

Which they do. The Private IPs are linked to MAC addresses which the Router uses to communicate with the devices, since ethernet is Layer 2... What there is incorrect?

 

They talk about connecting to other servers because it's relatable to end users and allows them to establish a narrative... Your average user neither knows nor cares about the ISO model. Your average user doesn't care how their router talks to their NIC. This helps to establish MAC to something they do care about, by building off relevance.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Imagine if someone published a school text book and it was full of incorrect information.

 

As someone with multiple professions now, when I read school texts I sometimes cringe.  It gets worse when my son comes home and tries to educate me because "teacher" said.

 

It really is scary just how much bad information is out there.

[r2724r16]

If I had to be honest, the average techquickie viewer would forget what he/she heard a minute after watching the video (especially if it's about a topic he/she doesn't know much about). If someone was serious about learning about a topic, they would watch the video and do their own research aside. But one thing I can agree with you about is that misinformation shouldn't be spread. I'd rather watch a minute of true information over two minutes of false information. 

[LAwLz]

19 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Which they do. The Private IPs are linked to MAC addresses which the Router uses to communicate with the devices, since ethernet is Layer 2... What there is incorrect?

What is incorrect is the assumption that NAT operates with MAC addresses, which is what the video says (or attempts to say? I find it confusing and all over the place).

NAT is a completely separate technology which is unrelated to MAC addresses. Why bring it up at all? The only reason why it is even slightly relevant is because at some point in the ISO stack you will probably attach a MAC address to the frame if you are on a home network and use NAT. But to bring up routing in a video about MAC addresses is kind of like bringing up fiber cables and how they work in a video about Photoshop. Chances are the packets which makes up Photoshop on your computer were at some point carried over fiber cables, but why bring that up in the video?

 

If they wanted to talk about NAT then they should have talked about ports, not MAC addresses.

 

Besides, you don't necessarily need a MAC address to use NAT. As some user said in the superuser thread, NAT operates at a higher OSI layer and therefore it doesn't really matter what layer 2 protocol you use.

My protocol knowledge is a little rusty, but I believe PPPoA does not have MAC address fields (there is no need for it), and I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to do NAT over PPPoA links.

 

 

In any case, it's just one example. My other example was the VPN video where it seems like they are saying the VPN tunnel has control over routing decisions, which it doesn't. The tunneling protocol does not "avoid compromised paths" or whatever they said it did. I most likely find more examples if misinformation in their videos if you want, but quite frankly I don't want to give them the views.

[Yoinkerman]

Dear lawlz,

 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Coaxialgamer]

yeah , i've actually spread wrong information , especially when it comes to some more complex CS and architecture .They're likely unintentional , and some of them might be because of oversimplification .

My "favorite" one is the RAM amounts accessible to processors , where linus claims 32 bit  cpus can address 2^32 B of ram and 64 bit cpus can access 2^64B , when in reality no such limitation exists and there is no correlation between processor word size ( "bits" of cpu ) and memory addressability  .

I mean the pentium 3 could theoretically access 64GB , the 8 bit z80 could access 64K and the 8700k can do ~16TB, so why you keeping this hoax alive linus?

the only reason it exists is because MS was segmenting it's OS by disabling PAE outright on consumer versions of an OS

Edit: after doing some reading on PAE support in windows , it appears i was only partially right . Although PAE is actually supported by basic versions of 32 bit windows , there are still memory capacity limitations depending on the version (W7 basic only gets 8GB max for example ). PAE also needs to be specifically enabled by the user , so it's mostly blocked behind a skill wall for most users . PAE increases physical addressing capability , but per process it's still limited to 4GB (though i'm not sure if it's a SW or HW limitation). Point still stands

[Godlygamer23]

18 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

yeah , i've actually spread wrong information , especially when it comes to some more complex CS and architecture .They're likely unintentional , and some of them might be because of oversimplification .

My "favorite" one is the RAM amounts accessible to processors , where linus claims 32 bit  cpus can address 2^32 B of ram and 64 bit cpus can access 2^64B , when in reality no such limitation exists and there is no correlation between processor word size ( "bits" of cpu ) and memory addressability  .

I mean the pentium 3 could theoretically access 64GB , the 8 bit z80 could access 64K and the 8700k can do ~16TB, so why you keeping this hoax alive linus?

the only reason it exists is because MS was segmenting it's OS by disabling PAE outright on consumer versions of an OS

What you're speaking of Linus claiming to say is actually coming from an Anandtech article in the video:

Spoiler

The snapshot was taken with Snipping Tool, hence the extra stuff on the side. 

[Coaxialgamer]

4 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

What you're speaking of Linus claiming to say is actually coming from an Anandtech article in the video:

  Hide contents

The snapshot was taken with Snipping Tool, hence the extra stuff on the side. 

it's just plain wrong . the X64 extension only allows for a max address space of 52 bits ( in practice it's 44-48 bits ) . Not 64 . Memory addresses are 64 bits long for compatibility , but the upper bits are all marked NX and not accessible.

[Godlygamer23]

13 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

that's just plain wrong . the X64 extension only allows for a max address space of 52 bits ( in practice it's 44-48 bits ) . Not 64 . Memory addresses are 64 bit long for compatibility , but the upper bits are all marked NX and not accessible.

According to the Wikipedia article on 64-bit computing, 64-bit CPUs can directly access 2^64 bytes of memory. 

Spoiler

A 64-bit register can store 2⁶⁴ (over 18 quintillion or 1.8×10¹⁹) different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 64 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (2⁶⁴ − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (−2⁶³) through 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (2⁶³ − 1) for representation as two's complement. Hence, a processor with 64-bit memory addresses can directly access 2⁶⁴ bytes (=16 exabytes) of byte-addressable memory.

Where are you getting the information that it stops at 52 or 44-48 bits? 

 

This is the article:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing

 

I even found an article from IBM where they stated this:

Spoiler

As of z/OS® Release 2, the address space begins at address 0 and ends at 16 exabytes. The architecture that creates this address space provides 64-bit addresses. The address space structure below the 2 gigabyte address has not changed; all programs in AMODE 24 and AMODE 31 continue to run without change. In some fundamental ways, the address space is much the same as the XA address space.

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.1.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r1.ieaa500/ieaa500109.htm

[Ithanul]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

In the MAC video they talk about how MAC addresses are used to keep track of NAT rules, which is also completely wrong.

Ok, I just going to do the customary face palm.

 

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/network-address-translation-nat/26704-nat-faq-00.html

Network terminology light (at least to me).  But should give a bit of the idea of what NAT is to folks.

 

Another one, probably some more nice reading about NAT.

https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3145/what-layer-of-the-osi-model-does-nat-work

 

[Coaxialgamer]

16 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

According to the Wikipedia article on 64-bit computing, 64-bit CPUs can directly access 2^64 bytes of memory. 

  Reveal hidden contents

A 64-bit register can store 2⁶⁴ (over 18 quintillion or 1.8×10¹⁹) different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 64 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (2⁶⁴ − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (−2⁶³) through 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (2⁶³ − 1) for representation as two's complement. Hence, a processor with 64-bit memory addresses can directly access 2⁶⁴ bytes (=16 exabytes) of byte-addressable memory.

Where are you getting the information that it stops at 52 or 44-48 bits? 

It's fairly hard to get documentation on this but, from intel's own website on x64 assembly 

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to-x64-assembly

Quote

Operating Systems

64-bit systems allow addressing 2 to the 64th power bytes of data in theory, but no current chips allow accessing all 16 exabytes (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes). For example, AMD architecture uses only the lower 48 bits of an address, and bits 48 through 63 must be a copy of bit 47 or the processor raises an exception. Thus addresses are 0 through 00007FFF`FFFFFFFF, and from FFFF8000`00000000 through FFFFFFFF`FFFFFFFF, for a total of 256 TB (281,474,976,710,656 bytes) of usable virtual address space.

From wikpedia:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing

 

Quote

In principle, a 64-bit microprocessor can address 16 EiBs(16 × 1024⁶ = 2⁶⁴ = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes, or about 18.4 exabytes) of memory. However, not all instruction sets, and not all processors implementing those instruction sets, support a full 64-bit virtual or physical address space.

The x86-64 architecture (as of 2016) allows 48 bits for virtual memory and, for any given processor, up to 52 bits for physical memory.^[8][9] These limits allow memory sizes of 256 TiB (256 × 1024⁴ bytes) and 4 PiB(4 × 1024⁵ bytes), respectively. A PC cannot currently contain 4 pebibytes of memory (due to the physical size of the memory chips), but AMD envisioned large servers, shared memory clusters, and other uses of physical address space that might approach this in the foreseeable future. Thus the 52-bit physical address provides ample room for expansion while not incurring the cost of implementing full 64-bit physical addresses. Similarly, the 48-bit virtual address space was designed to provide more than 65,000 (2¹⁶) times the 32-bit limit of 4 GiB (4 × 1024³ bytes), allowing room for later expansion and incurring no overhead of translating full 64-bit addresses

 

The x64 extension has support for a 64 bit flat memory model. This is why addresses are 64 bits long. However, it turns out that the isa itself doesn't support these large adress spaces. Everything past bit 47 of an address is a copy of bit 47, and marked No eXecute by the processor. 

But even from the perspective of physical memory, it's worth remembering that the word size (64 bit in x64 and 32 bit in x86) actually has no bearing on the address space. As long as you can store those addresses in memory/registers and can express them with instructions, it can be as large or as small as needed. Early 8 bit processors with 16 bit addressing are a great example of that. 

[Coaxialgamer]

19 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

A 64-bit register can store 2⁶⁴ (over 18 quintillion or 1.8×10¹⁹) different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 64 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (2⁶⁴ − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (−2⁶³) through 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (2⁶³ − 1) for representation as two's complement. Hence, a processor with 64-bit memory addresses can directly access 2⁶⁴ bytes (=16 exabytes) of byte-addressable memory.

 

I even found an article from IBM where they stated this:

  Hide contents

As of z/OS® Release 2, the address space begins at address 0 and ends at 16 exabytes. The architecture that creates this address space provides 64-bit addresses. The address space structure below the 2 gigabyte address has not changed; all programs in AMODE 24 and AMODE 31 continue to run without change. In some fundamental ways, the address space is much the same as the XA address space.

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.1.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r1.ieaa500/ieaa500109.htm

That's IBM's system/z ISA, it's not x86-64. Limitations are entirely different. Some of those addresses might not be accessible either. 

The 48/52 bit limitation is one of x64 exclusively 

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, Coaxialgamer said:

It's fairly hard to get documentation on this but, from intel's own website on x64 assembly 

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to-x64-assembly

From wikpedia:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing

 

 

The x64 extension has support for a 64 bit flat memory model. This is why addresses are 64 bits long. However, it turns out that the isa itself doesn't support these large adress spaces. Everything past bit 47 of an address is a copy of bit 47 is marked No eXecute by the processor. 

But even from the perspective of physical memory, it's worth remembering that the word size (64 bit in x64 and 32 bit in x86) actually has no bearing on the address space. As long as you can store those addresses in memory/registers and can express them with instructions, it can be as large or as small as needed. Early 8 bit processors with 16 bit addressing are a great example of that. 

I did actually see that information after my post, but I don't know if I would fault Linus for that because Anandtech is considered an authority on these kinds of things, because even though x86-64 doesn't currently utilize 64-bit address spaces, it certainly can. There's just no reason for it, so maybe it's wrong, but it's technically right.

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, Coaxialgamer said:

That's IBM's system/z ISA, it's not x86-64. Limitations are entirely different. Some of those addresses might not be accessible either. 

The 48/52 bit limitation is one of x64 exclusively 

But now, we're splitting hairs. Linus may have been talking about 32-bit versus 64-bit processors, not really the x86-64 extension, which I do not think ARM processors use, even though Apple's SoCs support 64-bit.

[Coaxialgamer]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I did actually see that information after my post, but I don't know if I would fault Linus for that because Anandtech is considered an authority on these kinds of things, because even though x86-64 doesn't currently utilize 64-bit address spaces, it certainly can. There's just no reason for it, so maybe it's wrong, but it's technically right.

The Isa simply does not support it. It's not even a technical limitation. Even if amd wanted to have that full 64 bits, they couldn't without an extension. It's simply by design 

But it's true that i can't necessarily fault linus if he got his info from anand. 

 

Also, Armv8

Quote

The prime motivation for a 64-bit architecture is access to a larger virtual address space. The AArch64 memory 
translation system supports a 49-bit virtual address (48 bits per translation table). Virtual addresses are sign-
extended from 49 bits, and stored within a 64-bit pointer. 

 

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

But now, we're splitting hairs. Linus may have been talking about 32-bit versus 64-bit processors, not really the x86-64 extension, which I do not think ARM processors use, even though Apple's SoCs support 64-bit.

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on that.

You have to make reasonable assumptions when making generalizations like this, and to assume that Linus was talking about something like let's say POWER rather than x86 or ARM is just silly.

 

Anyway, it's a pretty complicated subject and a lot of misinformation exists surrounding it. Maybe someone should make a video series explaining these things in simple and easy to digest terms? They could call it "TechFast" or something along those lines. Such a series would require quite a lot of research for each episode though, because it would be very bad if rather than inform viewers it just spread more misinformation surrounding the subject, right?

[Sniperfox47]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

What is incorrect is the assumption that NAT operates with MAC addresses, which is what the video says (or attempts to say? I find it confusing and all over the place).

NAT is a completely separate technology which is unrelated to MAC addresses. Why bring it up at all? The only reason why it is even slightly relevant is because at some point in the ISO stack you will probably attach a MAC address to the frame if you are on a home network and use NAT. But to bring up routing in a video about MAC addresses is kind of like bringing up fiber cables and how they work in a video about Photoshop. Chances are the packets which makes up Photoshop on your computer were at some point carried over fiber cables, but why bring that up in the video?

 

If they wanted to talk about NAT then they should have talked about ports, not MAC addresses.

 

Besides, you don't necessarily need a MAC address to use NAT. As some user said in the superuser thread, NAT operates at a higher OSI layer and therefore it doesn't really matter what layer 2 protocol you use.

My protocol knowledge is a little rusty, but I believe PPPoA does not have MAC address fields (there is no need for it), and I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to do NAT over PPPoA links.

 

 

In any case, it's just one example. My other example was the VPN video where it seems like they are saying the VPN tunnel has control over routing decisions, which it doesn't. The tunneling protocol does not "avoid compromised paths" or whatever they said it did. I most likely find more examples if misinformation in their videos if you want, but quite frankly I don't want to give them the views.

Yeah but again you're getting into details that are not relevant to 99% of their userbase. Their userbase neither needs to know about nor cares about most of this stuff.

 

Techquickie is not a definitive source on technical info. It's a quicky for the tech. A very general overview that the average person should be able to understand. The kind of person who needs to ask "what is a 64 bit OS" or "why are progress bars so often wrong" isn't the person who cares in any way about OSI Layers.

 

And none of what they said is even technically wrong. Private IPs are linked to MAC addresses and are used at that point in the chain. What they said isn't even misleading, since the point where they talk about MAC in that chain is where you're resolving Layer 4 into layer 2/3 (i.e. where your router is resolving the TCP frame, finding the relevant private IP, and then translating that to the MAC address to send to over Ethernet), they just attached it to a more relevant process.

 

They talked about NAT because it's a modern complication that's relevant to people and which allows them to link into a different video for those their explanation isn't simple enough for. NAT may be a complex acronym, but where it's needed is ultimately something easy to explain to users. And it shows the need for MAC addresses.

 

Did they use the word NAT in a way that's technically correct? Maybe not. Did they use it in a way that your average consumer understands it and where it's digestible to them? Yeah, yeah they did. And ultimately if there was no NAT (i.e. no network) and you only had a point-to-point link in your modem Layers 2 and 3 where MAC is used would be entirely pointless... (From a consumer perspective)

[LAwLz]

22 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Yeah but again you're getting into details that are not relevant to 99% of their userbase. Their userbase neither needs to know about nor cares about most of this stuff.

 

Techquickie is not a definitive source on technical info. It's a quicky for the tech. A very general overview that the average person should be able to understand. The kind of person who needs to ask "what is a 64 bit OS" or "why are progress bars so often wrong" isn't the person who cares in any way about OSI Layers.

By that logic, the video about MAC addresses shouldn't exist to begin with, because their username neither need to know, nor care about it.

If you make a video specifically to inform people what MAC addresses are and what they are used for, then you should actually provide them with that information.

 

23 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

And none of what they said is even technically wrong. Private IPs are linked to MAC addresses and are used at that point in the chain. What they said isn't even misleading, since the point where they talk about MAC in that chain is where you're resolving Layer 4 into layer 2/3 (i.e. where your router is resolving the TCP frame, finding the relevant private IP, and then translating that to the MAC address to send to over Ethernet), they just attached it to a more relevant process.

I disagree. The way I think most people will interpret that video is that NAT relies on MAC addresses, which it doesn't. Even you had that misconception. Saying that it is relevant because it is used at some point in the chain is:

1) Wrong, because MAC addresses are not always used when NAT is used, and vice versa.

2) Confusing to the viewers because they are bringing up things that are not directly related.

Or if you want an analogy, this is like making a video about Photoshop, and then dedicating 1/3 of the video to explaining how light travels inside fiber cables, and then talk about how Photoshop relies on fiber connections to work. Would you excuse that with "well they are not technically wrong because at some point the Photoshop copy you downloaded probably traveled through a fiber cable"? It makes no sense from a logical or structural point of view, and on top of that it has a very high chance of making people misinterpret what is going on. "You need fiber cables to use Photoshop!?"

 

30 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

They talked about NAT because it's a modern complication that's relevant to people and which allows them to link into a different video for those their explanation isn't simple enough for. NAT may be a complex acronym, but where it's needed is ultimately something easy to explain to users. And it shows the need for MAC addresses.

NAT does not show the need for MAC addresses, because NAT does not rely on MAC addresses, at all. Completely independent technologies used for different purposes.

 

32 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

And ultimately if there was no NAT (i.e. no network) and you only had a point-to-point link in your modem Layers 2 and 3 where MAC is used would be entirely pointless... (From a consumer perspective)

No, not at all... MAC addresses are necessary for layer 2 communication, while IPs are needed for layer 3.

Your home network uses MAC addresses for transporting packets all the time, but it does not use it for routing. The example they gave might be the only time in a regular home network where MAC addresses aren't used. When the packet travels from the inside to the outside. when that happens the MAC addresses are fairly irrelevant. AFTER the packet has been routed and NAT:ed however, then the MAC address matters.

 

I wonder how many people actually watched that video and got a correct understanding of what MAC addresses are and why they are needed. My guess is 0 people learned it from that video, because that video did not explain the real purpose at all. I don't think that is nitpicking either, when the entire point of the video is lost. This is less of an issue with the VPN video but it's still incorrect in how it works and it will 100% give people the wrong impressions.

 

 

At the end of the day, my point is, if you're going to make educational videos about specific subjects you should not make them full of misinformation. If the excuse is that "people watching his videos doesn't know any better and feeding them misinformation doesn't matter" then I would say don't make those videos to begin with. It's better to say nothing at all, than to spread misinformation.

[asus killer]

nowadays it's mostly the package that counts. And i'm of course guilty of this too like everyone else. No one wants to see a YT video from a guy with a nasal voice, a boring tone, slow paced, not images floating in the background of food in a 30 minute snooze fest explaining tech. But he could actually have a better video than the guy with food analogies, that speaks clearly in a nice toned voice.

Like no one wants to hear facts from PBS when they can get them from two dudes screaming words that catch your attention in FOX news, entertainment baby. 

 

That said I really think LTT should be able to defend themselves in this topic. Hearing the other side and all that, something that is a real issue today as well.

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

~snip~

I'm dropping this because you're misconstruing what I'm saying, and I don't know how to reword it in a way you'll understand.

 

At the end of the day my point was never that their argument was 100% technically correct, but that it is "correct enough" to tell an end-user basically all they need to know about it, because for an end-user the only place it's going to come up where you need to recognize the term is basic networking (like setting an IP reservation on your router), which as far as it matters to that same end-user is the same thing as NAT.

 

When you're talking about physics to someone who knows nothing about physics do you talk about special relativity because that's technically more "correct" or do you talk very generally in broad terms about Newtonian physics and maaaaaaaaybe some mass and velocity? Do you maybe say things like "Velocity is how fast something's going" because that's more understandable for a user without the background than "Velocity is a vector value representing both the speed and direction of an object"?

 

This is the last thing I'll say in this thread. Dropping it now.

[Mira Yurizaki]

13 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

yeah , i've actually spread wrong information , especially when it comes to some more complex CS and architecture .They're likely unintentional , and some of them might be because of oversimplification .

My "favorite" one is the RAM amounts accessible to processors , where linus claims 32 bit  cpus can address 2^32 B of ram and 64 bit cpus can access 2^64B , when in reality no such limitation exists and there is no correlation between processor word size ( "bits" of cpu ) and memory addressability  .

I mean the pentium 3 could theoretically access 64GB , the 8 bit z80 could access 64K and the 8700k can do ~16TB, so why you keeping this hoax alive linus?

the only reason it exists is because MS was segmenting it's OS by disabling PAE outright on consumer versions of an OS

Edit: after doing some reading on PAE support in windows , it appears i was only partially right . Although PAE is actually supported by basic versions of 32 bit windows , there are still memory capacity limitations depending on the version (W7 basic only gets 8GB max for example ). PAE also needs to be specifically enabled by the user , so it's mostly blocked behind a skill wall for most users . PAE increases physical addressing capability , but per process it's still limited to 4GB (though i'm not sure if it's a SW or HW limitation). Point still stands

If we really wanted to continue being pedantic about how much memory is supported, ultimately it depends on the motherboard. A Pentium III could support up to 64GB, but most motherboards would stop at say 512MB because the firmware stopped enumerating after that point.

[Mutoh]

What a hill to die on.

[Bouzoo]

19 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Imagine if someone published a school text book and it was full of incorrect information.

As someone who has experience with educational mathematics, as well whose soon to be wife is a math teacher, I can tell you you're in for a surprise.