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

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

#491

Post by xroche » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

ealexhudson wrote: post #108

smcleod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not the only one, he may be brash at times but god damn we need him and maybe we need his brash anti-bullshit meter too.

Being able to call out bullshit doesn't mean having to curse it out. All Linus needs to do is say something like "I don't understand why this is here, and I'm not merging it until I do", rather than "They do literally insane things. They do things that do not make sense". The latter is not a technical argument, and it doesn't provide accuracy or clarity about next steps. "So somebody isn't telling the truth here. Som…

> Being able to call out bullshit doesn't mean having to curse it out

Sometimes this is actually necessary to get heard, and have the issue taken seriously. It helps providing the feedback that something REALLY wrong just happened and needs to be addressed immediately.

Imagine a sergeant talking to a trainee. What's the most efficient ?

- "Dear soldier, I think the way you handle your weapon is going to get you killed in a few moment. You should probably change that appropriately. If I may provide you this advice, of corse."

- "Stop this shit now! You're going to shoot yourself!"

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

#492

Post by tome » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #463

tome wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument was > From what I gather, some of this is cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. and my response was > Regardless of the style in his country and language or origin he is writing in English, in public, for an international audience. Which parts of what I said seem inconsistent to you?

Saying that you expect a different tone because he is currently writing in English, in public, for an international audience is not the same as saying that his culture of origin in no way influences his communication style. That's like saying because my mother is now an American citizen, she should obviously no longer have a German accent. You may personally feel she has some obligation to do her best to lose the acc…

Ah, I think I completely misunderstood you. When I read

> From what I gather, some of this is cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things.

I assumed you meant

> His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things and that is sufficient justification for his using a rude tone on a public mailing list

and I was also rather confused because this seemed to be a non-sequitur. I thought you had indended to reply to one of the other comments criticising his tone. On rereading it now seems that you were saying that

> His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things and this is why his is good at calling out bullshit when he sees it

Sorry for a double misunderstanding. If I hadn't made the first one I wouldn't have made the second one either.

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

#493

Post by yAnonymous » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:17 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…

Nothing you said is really related to the topic... classic computer viruses are a thing of the past and there are so many other attack vectors.

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

#494

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #488

DoreenMichele wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both my sons and their father likely all qualify for an ASD label, though none of them has been officially diagnosed. My sons are vastly more socially savvy than their father, largely due to having been raised better. I know a lot about the topic of autism and related issues. I get tired of seeing social difficulties chalked up to a label of some disability or other. It takes a couple of decades to properly raise a h…

> Both my sons and their father likely all qualify for an ASD label, though none of them has been officially diagnosed. > I know a lot about the topic of autism and related issues. Me too. I have a diagnosis based on DSM-5, and with ICD numbers (for insurance related reasons I guess). My cousin had an Asperger diagnosis based on DSM-4 when that was still relevant. My partner likely has autism as well (though its diff…

Your initial assertion:

I attribute it not to country_of_origin, but to the [autism] spectrum.

And you now say:

As a general note we shouldn't diagnose other people, but that wasn't the intent of my original post at all. I merely noted its a trait people with autism commonly have.

Those two things don't add up. Maybe think about that.

There is a lot of other failed communication happening here that I don't really think is worth trying to talk more about.

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

#495

Post by faragon » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

Intel, please, hire Linus: If you can't beat him, join him.

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

#496

Post by Chaebixi » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

The sad thing is that people have unironically labeled Linus "toxic" for calling out crap very bluntly like this.

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

#497

Post by boomboomsubban » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #483

boomboomsubban wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't some lone beginner trying to help improve Linux, this is a billion dollar company with decades of experience trying to cover their own ass. Judging by Linus' thousands of emails on the mailing lists, any reply you got would be polite and helpful.

So, how likely do you think Linus is to look past the fact that I work for Google? It doesn't make me any less of a beginner in the space. :P

If Google were making you upload the patches to fix some huge problem in every Chromebook, you wouldn't get the beginners treatment. If it was some universal bug fix or optimization I doubt the Google connection would matter.

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

#498

Post by otakucode » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

PopsiclePete wrote: post #441

Roritharr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. I've worked at a company that had 20 people and a company that's had 5000 and some ones in between. Going from 2-3 people to 20 is pretty manageable. Everyone knows each other, work gets done, you can call people out on their bullshit, stuff is fixed, becau…

I'd argue that it could be done, but no longer can. In the past, all of the failings of corporate structures were more than made up for by the value they brought. They solved the problem of distribution, both distributing work to workers and end product to consumers. This was outrageously valuable for a century.

Now, however, it's nearly worthless. Anyone can do distribution, both of work and of end products, with very little effort thanks to computers and the Internet. Now, the limitations of those corporate structures are starting to cut deeper and not be compensated for. Their assumption of all of the tremendous failings of in-person human communication (that 'broken telephone' you mention is only part of it, there's also the inherent prejudices and irrational means of influence at play which are inescapable) in combination with both voluntarily abandoning essentially every single benefit they ever offered to employees and the inherent limitations in such a centralized structure will result in them falling apart. I mean, if the market has anything to say about it. Back when factories got big people accepted things like limitations in variety of goods, limited to nil personalization, etc because supporting those things was difficult for factories. Such is still difficult for large companies. They have executives who want to impress 'grand visions' upon the company so that they have some excuse (both personal and professional) to collect such absurdly overlarge compensation.

The human brain, by the way, is limited to keeping around 150 people in mind and maintaining stable relationships with them. It's called 'Dunbar's Number' and while there's certainly variation amongst different people with regard to it, I think we can safely presume there is no one with the ability to maintain and consider 1000+ stable relationships. That this is not reflected in our social structures is probably an error.

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

#499

Post by tomhoward » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

jnordwick wrote: post #342

tomhoward wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're still making the mistake of extrapolating the entire community's nature from a small sample of comments and votes. It's a common reaction when we feel like our own opinions are being attacked or undervalued but it means we fail to appreciate and value the side that is worthy of our support and appreciation, and we fail to take responsibility for the role we all have in making the site better.

Comments lamenting how much better HN "used to" be have been a constant from not long after it began:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hn%20used%20to%22&sort=byPo...

Please, if you want HN to be good, be the change you wish to see!

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

#500

Post by mrmondo » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

Sniffnoy wrote: post #458

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. Nitpicking, since everyone can tell what you mean, but FWIW, the phrase you are looking for here is someting like "ad hominem" or "tone argument", not "straw man"; that's something completely different.

You're completely correct - I did indeed use the wrong terminology and I've done exactly that before with characterising the change in direction of an argument as a straw-man when as you rightly point out - is not correct. Thanks for politely pulling me up on this, I do appreciate it.