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

lkml.iu.edu

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

#661
post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it just means someone lacks a proper grasp of the English language! I find a thesaurus is handy.

Please use your thesaurus and enlighten me to how then I say “this code is garbage” in a nice way, while clearly communicating the full meaning of: - this code is bad - you should reassess your skills and values that lead you to believe this was good - your worldview may be flawed, look into that - don’t do this again - you should probably feel bad too, to attach emotion to strengthen your memories of this to make th…

rm -rf

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

#662
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This debate is about desktop and server processors. You are imagining there is a market segment, worth caring about for non-niche companies like Intel, of non-hackable systems with no network access that use high-end microprocessors, but it isn't so. Most relatively complex systems that use deluxe microprocessors and could be air-gapped are accessible for convenience instead, and more extreme actually inaccessible sy…

Why do you exclude all single-purpose networked servers? e.g. why wouldn't it be reasonable tradeoff for a private compute cluster with a limited set of applications (or even just one), systems running really dumb services, ...?

Reasonable for hackers, horribly optimistic for the defense team.

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

#663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>No amount of gifted skill is a threshold for crossing that behavior barrier. Sure there is. You would rather have Linus in your life who yells at people than not. Linus being an asshole is something you have to deal with to get access to his intelligence. I suggest you make peace with this understanding, as it applies to far more people than Linus.

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.

No, it will not. Because then we get a Linus who would have to maintain a filter as well as his technical expertise. The later would suffer, I'm shure.

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

#664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is the personal attack when he calls Intel engineers morons. That 1 little unnecessary addon is uncalled for because it's quite reasonable that there's a lot of politics going on (...) can't be fixed properly without delaying & impacting revenue in a way that execs won't allow. If that is really the case, then calling the engineers morons is actually very much called for!

Note this is a hypothetical since it's quite possible it's not the case, in which case even by your logic the moron label is incorrect. So in your opinion engineers are unintelligent because they listen to the demands of people who can fire them or perhaps, god forbid, they're trying to balance technical solutions against revenue? That seems perfectly rational reasoning to me but that must be because I too am a moron…

Very reasonable objection. So the engineers should be called "moral morons" or "ethical morons" because they are willing to follow instructions that stick Intel customers with terrible security problems, to help Intel shore up their share price.

Maybe Linus is being deliberately ambiguous about the type of moron he means.

Is this better?

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

#665

A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, blameless postmortems, and a host of other mechanisms that de-escalate and de-personalize things. The Meltdown work at Google probably didn't begin with a rant about morons. It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize other…

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic . The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend on…

Not sure if you're trolling, but please chill out with the personal attacks. I'm sure it feels great to make a stand, but your comment doesn't add anything meaningful to the discussion besides demonstrating your hypocrisy.

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

#666

A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, blameless postmortems, and a host of other mechanisms that de-escalate and de-personalize things. The Meltdown work at Google probably didn't begin with a rant about morons. It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize other…

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic . The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend on…

I too am interested in the detailed, specific discussion, so thank you for the link. But I also appreciate strong language calling out bad things with broad consequences. Especially by experts in fields I don't have expertise in. I appreciate the use of strong language as a signal of the current state of the solution and the probability of recurrence. Yes, Linus should modulate his language more. Yes, he's a dick. Yes, he would be more effective if he had more self-control. I just don't think this rant is entirely useless (though it's useless for reasons he did not intend so I can't give him full points)

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

#667
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they ask politely? It is not like the Linux mailing list would be polite environment. Nothing against impolite environment, people make case for it daily here and I don't care. But it combined with the standard expectation that when someone else talks to them he should be always polite is getting funny in that context.

There's more ways to be impolite than saying nasty words. Linus had been treating all this situation very fairly so far, but I guess Intel just had to repeatedly try pushing very bad fixes to a problem they created themselves. Imagine you go to a restaurant, and the waiter just repeatedly brings you the wrong order, repeatedly.

Ad restaurant: I would not be rude to them in that situation. I would refuse to pay wrong food if I would think I don't want to eat it.

If I would be hungry, I would be angry, but I would still not insult them and there is no rational reason to do so. I can control my anger in easy restaurant situatuon like that. At worst, I would leave.

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

#668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic . The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend on…

Not sure if you're trolling, but please chill out with the personal attacks. I'm sure it feels great to make a stand, but your comment doesn't add anything meaningful to the discussion besides demonstrating your hypocrisy.

Really? My comment doesn't add anything meaningful to the discussion?

I linked to a far more informative post that actually discusses a technical issue. Frankly, the response should have been what was linked on HN, not some rant.

I can't believe the irony of telling me to "chill out" with personal attacks when commenting on a rant that is majority perosnal attacks.

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

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we disagree on your assumptions. Positive team environment and corporate culture are not inextricably linked. They may overlap depending on the corporation in question, but they are not one in the same. This should be obvious since you can have a positive team environment on teams where no corporation is involved (e.g., hobby projects). Clearly the suggestion that FOSS should have a positive team environment…

Everything I am reading indicates that: A. Linus doesn't do this very often. Most of the time, he is perfectly well mannered. But we don't hear about that. We only hear about these incidents. B. Most of his work conversations occur on the public record. So anyone can get hold of it when he gets riled. When a CEO gets riled, that is much more likely to occur privately and get covered up. C. He created Linux for free.…

I don't think Linus is wrong for how he interacts with people, but I do worry that people are so easily distracted by his display that the ensuing conversation about his behavior detracts from his message. Nearly every statement he makes like this devolves into musings on human psychology.

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

#670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note this is a hypothetical since it's quite possible it's not the case, in which case even by your logic the moron label is incorrect. So in your opinion engineers are unintelligent because they listen to the demands of people who can fire them or perhaps, god forbid, they're trying to balance technical solutions against revenue? That seems perfectly rational reasoning to me but that must be because I too am a moron…

It’s not hypotycal, it’s the part of hardware that made Intel CPU vulnerable to last week attack. Linus was right.

I highly recommend reading the rest of the thread beyond just Linus' complaint. This isn't about Meltdown but Spectre which impacts all CPUs with speculative execution. I believe these patches apply to AMD too even though Intel engineers are posting them as they appear to be generic x86 code. Not only is David brilliant at defusing that situation, he provides quite a bit of context to clarify confusion for external readers while correcting Linus' potential misunderstanding of the patch too. The "moronic" patch Linus is complaining about is to fix Skylake that still is impacted by a potential exploit even with the though the other less ugly fixes fix the majority of chips. David even agrees with the unfortunateness of the whole situation & says he's OK dropping that last patch if Linus wants because the Skylake vulnerability is less clearly exploitable. Ingo provides a follow-up suggestion about a potentially cleaner & simpler way to fix just the Skylake issue which is great & the whole point of how RFCs are supposed to work. So not only does it look like Linus' may have overreacted, it didn't even move the conversation along in any way (angry responses rarely seem to).
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