Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.” • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by wongarsu » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

draugadrotten wrote: post #249

yAnonymous wrote: post #212

Could this whole disaster and the shitty patches have something to do with the remote kill switch (Anti Theft) Intel have in their CPUs? If someone could enable and trigger that remotely, it would make for fun times.

It may interest you that a virus which kills its host won't spread as well as viruses which co-exist. This is basic from epidemics transmission rate. The longer an infected host keeps spreading the infection on, the more individuals will be infected. If the host is killed it will no longer spread the infection and therefore the infection may infect fewer hosts and this reduction in transmission rate alone may prevent…

In nature, we usually only consider two success metrics: hosts infected and hosts killed. To maximize hosts infected, keeping the host alive and transmitting is very successful, so the most successful examples are those we barely even take note of (common cold, intestinal worms, etc.). To maximize hosts killed, in the physical world you either need a long incubation period where the host stays alive and transmitting (AIDS) or agressive transmission methods that humans have been getting quite good at shutting down (with the exception of transmission by mosquito).

In the world of digital viruses traditional metrics can apply too (Ransomware is measured by hosts "killed", botnets by hosts infected), but those are no longer the only interesting metrics. A virus that spreads within a certain IP block and one month after inception bricks everything it can reach might be regarded as highly successful, despite killing itself in the process.

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

#332

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #284

pessimizer wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think that directness and honesty is identical to saying racist, sexist, and homophobic things. So "PC" becomes equivalent to "lying to make people like you."

The argument goes like this, the acerbic culture that grows around Linus is toxic towards female and (sexual/ethnic) minorities, because such contributor are disinclined to join projects where the lead can get verbally abusive. From what I've gathered the findings are based on real data.

[deleted]

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

#333

Post by swiley » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

trynewideas wrote: post #6

FWIW, at least a small part of that email is due to a confusion between Intel acronyms: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/04637.html

It worries me that this isn't higher both here and on Reddit. I read through the rest of the email thread this morning and wanted to say something but I'm worried that I don't understand it well enough.

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

#334

Post by dschuetz » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #301

dschuetz wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. S…

> His attacks and critique are never on the personal basis I don’t know how you can believe this after reading even a few of his messages. Read the message which started this thread and count the number of times where he is talking about not just the quality of work but the person who produced it. It’s possible to be blunt and unforgiving about code without saying that the person who created it is a moron.

Well, jeez. If I messed up badly and my boss, colleague, wife calls me a moron about this particular mess it doesn't mean they think I'm a moron generally, they just call it as it is, and I'm responsible for it. I don't take it personally just because they call me a 'moron', especially if I deserve it!

That means that if you get offended by the way someone else criticizes the mess you're responsible for you are not accepting the responsibility at all! Well, now that's an interesting insight!

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

#335

Post by xxs » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

awakeasleep wrote: post #313

josteink wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have the case of SJWs and Internet lynch mob’s being a real life threats to your project, your personal privacy and potentially your employment if you don’t show yourself to be “tolerant” enough in your communication. Calling genuine shit out as such can literally land you in a shitstorm if the person receiving message is of wrong color or sexualual orientation, etc, and decides to make that the point of the…

Wow I didn’t think of that but what if a woman wrote the code in that patch? Linus would be making her feel unwelcome.

There are prior examples of his writing style offending a lady who turned to actually had a pretty potty mount, herself, as well.

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

#336

Post by jnordwick » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

shakna wrote: post #216

mmrezaie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/dag-erling/meltdown One of many source codes online and they are actually pretty understandable by me. I am just a mediocre c programmer.

I'm afraid that jnordwick doesn't consider PoCs to be "real" enough for some reason. [0] I think he's waiting for a piece of malware to be found in the wild before he'll consider it a problem.

Just something that would work in the wild. There are a number of things that might theoretically be possible if the machine of complicit with you but aren't actually exploitable.

Like i said:

- JavaScript appears to not be a possible attack vector. So now we're just worried about already had access to run a native binary.

- so a native program that sat snooping sudo passwords would be a good demo, but obviously if a rogue binary had to sit running for days with only a part success rate, we would be able to attack stupid managers and evil corporations because it wouldn't be very impressive. If I'm already running binary code, i have a lot of better ways to attack the system.

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

#337

Post by skwirl » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

mrmondo wrote: post #195

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 alternat…

His language is why this particular post is getting such traction. This is what he does. You can't get attention for your bluntness and not have your bluntness discussed.

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

#338

Post by acdha » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

dschuetz wrote: post #334

acdha wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His attacks and critique are never on the personal basis I don’t know how you can believe this after reading even a few of his messages. Read the message which started this thread and count the number of times where he is talking about not just the quality of work but the person who produced it. It’s possible to be blunt and unforgiving about code without saying that the person who created it is a moron.

Well, jeez. If I messed up badly and my boss, colleague, wife calls me a moron about this particular mess it doesn't mean they think I'm a moron generally, they just call it as it is, and I'm responsible for it. I don't take it personally just because they call me a 'moron', especially if I deserve it! That means that if you get offended by the way someone else criticizes the mess you're responsible for you are not a…

The behavior you’re describing may be satisfying for the person slinging insults but is widely recognized as unhelpful by most management or educational guidelines because it doesn’t lead to any positive outcomes but does lower morale and increase stress.

Most people are going to take it personally, especially when it’s public in front of their peers, and since it’s so lazy and unhelpful there’s no benefit from doing that rather than, well, anything constructive

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

#339

Post by dpark » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #144

DoreenMichele wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gather, some of this is cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. That directness is generally associated with multicultural environments where subtler context-dependent communication simply does not work. Some of the quotes I am seeing here from him are things I think are unnecessarily harsh, but most are not. Discussions about something he has said or written seem…

> From what I gather, some of this cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. I've heard this blunt(/direct/honest) argument quite often (and the same about my country, The Netherlands), but I've also seen Americans in IT who can be very blunt. I attribute it not to country_of_origin, but to the [autism] spectrum.

> ... I've also seen Americans in IT who can be very blunt. I attribute it ... to the [autism] spectrum.

Please stop. It's unhealthy to pretend that undesired behaviors in IT are generally the result of autism. It perpetuates an unhealthy culture by essentially saying that guys (because it's only guys who are excused this way) in IT are not responsible for their behavior. It's also insulting to people with autism to lump their legitimate social difficulties in with people who are simply choosing to be assholes.

If a salesperson or marketer or artist or executive is blunt/rude/an asshole, no one assumes it's because they're autistic. It's assumed that this is part of their personality, because they find it more effective to communicate this way (or in some cases, that they're simply bullies).

There is no indication I see that Torvalds is autistic. He's certainly not socially awkward. He manages an organization of thousands of contributors very effectively. If he's blunt or rude, it's because he chooses to be.

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

#340

Post by davidkuhta » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #242

piyush_soni wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a Linus who doesn't yell at people will be any day better than having one who abuses others at will. He needs to take anger management classes. We could seriously do with a little less high-headedness in the world.

>> Having a Linus who doesn't yell at people And having my cake and eating it too in every scenario would be great. That's not how things work all the time. It's up to you to deal with it, not Linus to change. He's the scarce resource. He has the leverage. You're just someone on the Internet mad.

Even if I was offended by his communication style, I agree that his technical acumen ought to afford him freedom to communicate as he pleases (possibly limiting to the realm of his expertise).

I've found this quote by Neil Gaiman to be applicable to more than just Freelancing:

> You get work however you get work, but people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of todays world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you