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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.”

#341

Post by pdpi »

hashkb wrote: post #294
pdpi wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop repeating this? Assertiveness and assholery are not one and the same. Linus has both in abundance, and we can decry the one without wanting the other to go away.

If you can't claim "PC has a chilling effect" without being asked to stop claiming it, the case is closed.

That's insane. That's effectively saying that we shouldn't be critical of other people because criticism has a chilling effect (unless you're Linus, in which case it's A-OK to be both critical and an asshole about it).

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

#342

Post by jnordwick »

tomhoward wrote: post #247
jnordwick wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does HN not allow people to question things like this? Any attempt to bring some non hyperbolic view to the topic is continually voted into the ground. I think it is useful to know that these exploits just might not be as bad as they are being made out to be. Ice talked to a number of people that don't seem to understand that there are limits on these: somebody cant just start reading data from random programs.

I know what you mean, and I've felt your frustration before. But as I've learned more about how this community works, I understand that "Why does HN [do this thing I don't like]?" is not a valid question. HN is a vast community of many different people who think and behave differently. Sometimes a few more people will downvote your comment than will upvote it, either because they disagree with your point or they disl…

It is a relatively recent issue. HN was a lot of our escape for Slashdot. But HN has developed the same bandwagony, anticorporate, managers suck, other people are stupid angst.

In the last few months it has become a monoculture similar to Slashdot. The general view has become if you don't agree you must not know what you are talking about (this is seen upthread).

Stories like these allow people to dislike Intel, say it is run by dumb managers, and just generally complain.

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

#343

Post by pdpi »

crdoconnor wrote: post #288
pdpi wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop repeating this? Assertiveness and assholery are not one and the same. Linus has both in abundance, and we can decry the one without wanting the other to go away.

Linus "being an asshole" is what drew attention to this issue. His caustic nature is marketing of a sort. It's clearly putting additional pressure on Intel. How you feel about that depends on how you feel about them furiously trying to sweep everything under the carpet and hoping nobody notices. Personally I think his humiliation of Intel here is putting necessary pressure on them. If he couched his terms and tried t…

See it from this angle: if Linus wasn't known for flipping his lid all the time, him flipping out _this_ time would be even more impactful. Overuse makes it progressively less remarkable.

I wasn't even saying that his tone on this particular instance was excessive. I was responding to the general accusation that "PC culture will silence him". There's exactly one sentence I have issues with here ("the whole hardware interface is literally mis-designed by morons"). The rest of the email is toeing the line, but manages to be forceful without being outright insulting.

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

#344

Post by EpicEng »

pessimizer wrote: post #272
jimktrains2 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pc culture? What are you talking about? Linus is pc (in that he doesn't go on misogynistic, racist, or similar rants and doesn't denigrate people for their non-technical decisions) , he's just not nice to those that should know better. While I think you've also been bitten by the "we accept everyone! (who thinks the way we do)" crowd as well, this is not the place or the way to express that frustration.

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."

>Some people think that directness and honesty is identical to saying racist, sexist, and homophobic things

Not any serious people, so why do we care?

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

#345

Post by davidkuhta »

piyush_soni wrote: post #214
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…

BULLSHIT (I hear you like it). It's about basic etiquette, and treating humans as humans. No amount of gifted skill is a threshold for crossing that behavior barrier.

While I believe your perspective to be reasonable, you do realize that your first sentence undermines your credibility to assert there validity.

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

#346

Post by sangnoir »

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…

I'm fascinated by the lack of self-awareness in your comment: "I wish people in this thread would stop talking about X and talk about Y instead. Anyway, here are my thoughts on X."

-_-

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

#347

Post by lmm »

rebuilder wrote: post #289
jacques_chester wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming to a court with "unclean hands" won't help their case either. And showing bad faith can really crank up the damages awarded if it's a jury trial. (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

Would this be bad faith? Assume no fix is available, at least for existing processors, that doesn't result in reduced performance. What should Intel do? - Force users to take the performance hit? - Let users decide whether to take the performance hit in exchange for security?

The processor's security features should perform as described - anything less is a very nasty surprise waiting for users. Intel could allow users to opt-in to insecure behaviour for performance, but insecurity absolutely must be opt-in rather than opt-out.

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

#348

Post by hajile »

alxlaz wrote: post #307
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A silver bullet is having one smart guy at the top who doesn't care how much pressure you exert on getting something into the codebase, or how much man-hours were spent (sunk cost fallacy). I think in a lot of "corporate" projects (not-open source) there's much less of that and the software is designed by commission, with the lead developer(s) quickly no longer having much of an influence on the code itself, being dr…

This may be true, but FOSS does not magically make it happen. Many FOSS projects are led or dominated by large companies today; the development may happen in the open, but it is as "corporate" as it gets, and no bullshit calling occurs (or if it does, it is quickly silenced with EWONTFIX & co.)

That's only partially true. When you only have one corporations interests, things get shady very quickly. When you have multiple, competing corporations, they have a vested interest in keeping their competitors honest. It would be very rare indeed to find something that every company wanted to downplay at the same time.

Spectre and meltdown are a great example of this. Sure, ARM, Intel, and (to a lesser extent) AMD may want to downplay these things, but Google did not, so it became a big deal anyway.

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

#349

Post by mcv »

rebuilder wrote: post #289
jacques_chester wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming to a court with "unclean hands" won't help their case either. And showing bad faith can really crank up the damages awarded if it's a jury trial. (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

Would this be bad faith? Assume no fix is available, at least for existing processors, that doesn't result in reduced performance. What should Intel do? - Force users to take the performance hit? - Let users decide whether to take the performance hit in exchange for security?

Users can already choose. They can buy old processors without the fix.

I really don't see what case anyone could have against Intel if they just fixed this. Having a fix but turning it off by default seems far more dangerous from a legal perspective. Or having the processor perform far worse in reality than advertised.

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

#350

Post by xelxebar »

c3534l wrote: post #241
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…

> 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. There wasn't much of a technical and security discussion in what was posted. Linus spent his time writing about his feelings and how hurt they were that someone did something he didn't like. Very little of substance or merit was com…

I feel like a lot of people judge Linus by some internal moral compass which just seems pointless to me. If anything is petulant and childish it's trying to control others for not fitting within some arbitrary set of personal rules.

Linus does a good job at maintaining kernel development and often makes sharp technical commentary. By those measures his communication style seems to have been successful and practically helpful so far.

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