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Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

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Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#191

Post by bassman9000 »

Roritharr wrote: post #25
mrmondo wrote: post #8

I think we should count ourselves lucky we have someone so good at spotting bullsh*t like this - and isn’t afraid to call it out as they sees it. Intel & friends have absolutely disgusted me lately, it could be all to easy to settle for less based on their standards, but let’s not let them set the standard - they’ve shown they can’t be trusted with quality and when they fail - they can’t be trusted to be transparent…

Not only spot, but also invests the energy in calling it out and explaining it. Many business failures i've witnessed happened ultimately because nobody had the energy to cut down the bullshit forest that constantly regrows around a company.

We should treasure it while it lasts, before PC culture silences him. And before downvoting, recall how many threads regarding Linus abusive behavior (sic) we've had.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#192

Post by aexaey »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #172
nolok wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence why Android phones are often trapped on old versions of Android when launched or shortly thereafter The reason why most android phones don't get upgrades (or only one) to newer android versions has absolutely nothing to do with qualcomm lack of care regarding their cpu's security.

It has been quoted by Google developers on why Nexus 5 fell off the support track so early, around the same time Nexus 4 did: it took a herculean effort to get the binary drivers to even remotely work right on Android 6 due to being unable to drag in newer kernels. This is partially why Treble is being worked on, to just completely disconnect the actual Linux-based HAL from "the OS", thus trying to negate a lot of th…

LineageOS (ex-CyanogenMod)'s flavour of Android 7 works just fine [1] on Nexus 5.

On the other hand - yes, hammerhead is stuck on Linux kernel 3.4, which is no longer maintained, and current best effort to forward-port to mainline kernel [2] is far from complete.

Among other things this means that there is no workaround for Meltdown on this hardware, which it is likely vulnerable to. [3]

[1] https://download.lineageos.org/hammerhead

[2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Google_Nexus_5_(lg-hammer...

[3] "11 stage integer pipeline with 3-way decode and 4-way out-of-order speculative issue superscalar execution" - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krait_(CPU)

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#193

Post by Fnoord »

icelancer wrote: post #155
txdv wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, if they stopped now, imagine the PR nightmare.

They won't, for so many more reasons beyond the PR nightmare. Linus yelling at a former rep of Intel isn't enough to cause them to do something that stupid.

The hypothesis of this happening reminds me of "OpenBSD loses funding due to anti-war statements" (2003) [1]

[1] http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/21/1050777197498.h...

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#194

Post by lloeki »

deckard1 wrote: post #102
roel_v wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably depends on how old you are. To me it was completely obvious and much, much clearer than most 'modern' user interfaces. Every person replying prefixes each line with > . Proper email clients do this automatically. This way you can tell from the number of >'s how far back on the 'stack' you have to go to know who wrote it. You start reading from the top, mentally associating an indent level (nr of >'s) with a…

People live in Slack and github today. The last time I had an actual conversation via email was probably 2 years ago. It's rather refreshing to see the Linux kernel keeping the tradition of using mailing lists. Every company I've worked at has felt the need to gather a bunch of people in a room (or teleconference) and "knock things out" in real-time. Then, everyone leaves and develops a severe case of amnesia. Never…

I find people to be completely befuddled when I use bottom posting, with interleaved posting faring only a tad better.

The worst part being Exchange/Outlook users whose quoting system is braindead and has the uncanny power to routinely throw off any form of automated top-posting quote folding detection, making for a terrible reading experience in MUAs that support threading properly, as well as said users making heavy use of a Word-afflicted form of interleaved posting that consists of using colors and sizes to reply inline within the quoted part. On the same line no less.

Please for the love of all that is holy could someone in vicinity of the Outlook team add support for "quote-this-selected-text" and "{in,de}crease-quote-level" as well as prefixing the full-quote with a proper marker instead of going full-on Z̭͕͕͘a͠l̛̬̮͇g̪̩͜o͏̹͚̯͖̜ͅ.

[0]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/top-post.html

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#195

Post by mrmondo »

I wish people in this thread would stop turning the discussion into a straw-man argument about Linus’s language and focus their attention to the technical and security problems at hand.

Some people are easily offended, some people easily offend, some people are direct, some people are indirect - get over it.

What matters here is the quality of the code / workarounds that are being presented, by whom and what alternatives they are.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#196

Post by MaxBarraclough »

ealexhudson wrote: post #175
icelancer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Being able to call out bullshit doesn't mean having to curse it out. Here we go. >> All Linus needs to do is say something like And all you need to do is be that nice and be as brilliant as Linus is. Oh, it's harder to be that smart than it is to be that nice? Maybe consider that for people as highly gifted as Linus, it actually isn't. What you take for granted as normal behavior isn't always normal to others, esp…

I think you're misreading my comment. The original post was "we need this brashness", my point is, we don't. If a specific individual is unable to communicate without that, that's a totally different matter - being able to accommodate a wide church of people is a crucial diversity matter. Would it have been clearer if I had said "All someone in a project leadership position needs to say ..." ? I'm arguing against tha…

I'm inclined to disagree on all points.

As sundvor already pointed out, Linus's cursing works. He uses it for emphasis, to bring attention to bear where it's needed. Being polite would likely be less effective.

> If a specific individual is unable to communicate without that, that's a totally different matter - being able to accommodate a wide church of people is a crucial diversity matter.

So shouldn't you be OK with Linus cursing?

I disagree here too, though. Cursing is a choice, not a disability.

If, say, a firm fires someone for failing to maintain a civil tongue, I'd hardly call that a diversity problem. It could be quite reasonable, depending on the firm.

> I'm arguing against that the notion that this approach is necessary, not that it shouldn't be accommodated

Define 'necessary'. Would the kernel implode if Linus were more polite? Of course not, but I still agree with sundvor that Linus uses it as an effective tool. He's not just an angry child with poor impulse control.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#197

Post by icelancer »

eru wrote: post #163
icelancer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all get X +/- N points to assign to various traits and skills. Linus maxed the intelligence and technical ability sliders and somewhat ignored the charisma and tact ones. I agree with you, and though I haven't evaluated your first statement, the fact that I have to think about whether or not you are right at all is good enough. We don't have to like Linus' communication... methods. I often don't. But no one is per…

> We all get X +/- N points to assign to various traits and skills. Linus maxed the intelligence and technical ability sliders and somewhat ignored the charisma and tact ones. That's an unhelpful model. It implies that hitting the gym or studying or putting on make-up will make harm you in equal measures as it helps you.

>> It implies that hitting the gym or studying or putting on make-up will make harm you in equal measures as it helps you.

No, it doesn't, not for anyone who played D&D which is where it is derived from.

Also, your statement is at least partially true, given that you have finite time and resources to pursue skill development in any given area.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#198

Post by mrmondo »

shakna wrote: post #115
beebmam wrote: post #77

Really abusive language. There are ways to communicate his objections to the patches with extremely strong language WITHOUT resorting to abusive language. I wouldn't tolerate anyone treating me like this. There are unseen consequences to a wild tongue.

I think you're hitting a cultural barrier. In my country, if someone brought me something terrible, in a professional environment, I would tell them it's bullshit, and go try again. And that would be fine and dandy, and expected. (I'd expect the same treatment of myself. And it has happened.) I get the feeling, that in the US, you can't criticise. You have to use some political language to say you like it, whilst mea…

As a Kiwi, living in Australia I totally agree and understand, during code review in ops if something crap - I’ll things like ‘hmm, this looks a bit crap, maybe refactor for improved readability?’ Or ‘this has code smell written all over it, we can’t accept this kind of quality into production’ - I could just as easily say ‘Ross, this is shit - just rewrite it’ and my not so hypothetical Ross in this situation would read that - probably laugh, agree and rewrite it the next day OR ask for clarification stating why he doesn’t think it’s shit.

My point is, what matters is the product, the code, the result and the quality there of. The communication around it is entirely based on the relationship and expertise of those around you.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#199

Post by dschuetz »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #190
dschuetz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that's pretty scary. Are the rest of heavy weight kernel code maintainers too stupid for than then? If it weren't for Linus' hard judgement? Would we then buying badly engineered products without ever questioning?

Linus, like Jobs, is a bully. He lives under the sword. The moment he stops being right, everyone will swiftly turn against them. What separates them is that they're almost never wrong. Not when they pull out "this is garbage" card. This is a difficult ability to learn. You need to stay quiet most of the time, then be a complete asshole when it's important. I really hate that aspect of our industry. But that's just h…

I think there needs to be a clear distinction of what a bully is and what they do. Bullies are violent for no reason, for the pleasure of it. Linus is at most verbally harsh for pretty obvious reasons, the main reason being the harsh his language the more important the issue is. His attacks and critique are never on the personal basis, yet people get offended for no apparent reason instead of focusing on the issue. So, yes, it seems to be evident that those people are scared of other people who are able to speak their mind freely. People who are doing important jobs like maintaining critical code are cowards who break under the slightest hint of critical pressure (no, not all are cowards, but that's the trending issue right now). And then I read something like this above "I hate it when he's right and gets away with his bullying". The IT-industry is doomed. When criticism is being judged by how it's carried and who is criticizing rather than what is criticized and how important that is. If everything is going to shit some day then it's because someone was too scared to speak their mind.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#200

Post by sametmax »

mrmondo wrote: post #8

I think we should count ourselves lucky we have someone so good at spotting bullsh*t like this - and isn’t afraid to call it out as they sees it. Intel & friends have absolutely disgusted me lately, it could be all to easy to settle for less based on their standards, but let’s not let them set the standard - they’ve shown they can’t be trusted with quality and when they fail - they can’t be trusted to be transparent…

I think you are very harsh with "they’ve shown they can’t be trusted with quality". Their product is incredibly complex, it's amazing only so few mistakes like this happen.

I totally agree with "they can’t be trusted to be transparent or even take ownership of the problems they create" though. When you play at Intel's level and mess up on that order of magnitude, doing what they did make you loose all trust.

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