481–490 of 1001 posts
> I will not be sending any more patches due to the attitude that is not only unwelcome but also intimidating to newbies and non experts. Maybe not being nice is part of the immune system of open source.
I was enjoying Linus being less aggressive, but maybe we do need angry Linus.
They should be reported to the authorities for attempting to introduce security vulnerabilities into software intentionally. This is not ok.
The fact that both of the researchers seem to be of Chinese origin should definitely raise some questions. Not the first time things like this have been tried.
I fail to see how this does not amount to vandalism of public property. https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/594/
This seems like a pretty scummy way to do "research". I mean I understand that people in academia are becoming increasingly disconnected from the real world, but wow this is low. It's not that they're doing this, I'm sure they're not the first to think of this (for research or malicious reasons), but having the gall to brag about it is a new low.
> having the gall to brag about it is a new low Even worse: They bragged about it, then sent a new wave of buggy patches to see if the "test subjects" fall for it once again, and then tried to push the blame on the kernel maintainers for being "intimidating to newbies". This is thinly veiled and potentially dangerous bullying.
Fortunately, the episode also suggests that the kernel-development immune-system is fully-operational.
How does something like this get through IRB - I always felt IRB was over the top - and then they approve something like this? UMN looks pretty shoddy - the response from the researcher saying these were automated by a tool looks like a potential lie.
When James O' Keefe tries to run a fake witness scam on the Washington Post, and the newspaper successfully detects it, the community responds with "Well played!" When a university submits intentionally buggy patches to the Linux Kernel, and the maintainers successfully detect it, the community responds with "That was an incredibly scummy thing to do." I sense a teachable moment, here.
This is supremely fucked up and I’d say is borderline criminal. It’s really lucky asshole researchers like this haven’t caused a bug that cost billions of dollars, or killed someone, because eventually shit like this will... and holy shit will “it was just research” do nothing to save them.
It’s just a shame there is no mechanism in the license to withdraw permission for this so-called university to use Linux at all
I can't help but think of the Sokal affair. But I'll leave the comparison to someone more knowledgeable about them both.
I'd bet that it was inspired by the Sokal affair. The difference in reaction is probably because people think the purity of Linux is important but the purity of obscure academic journals isn't. (They're probably right, because one fault in Linux will make the whole system insecure, whereas one dumb paper would go in next to the other dumb papers and leave the good papers unharmed.) The similarities are that reviewers…
Most people in the outgroup who know about the Sokal Affair but who know nothing about the journal they submitted to aren't aware of this, but Social Text was known to be not peer reviewed at the time. It's not that reviewers failed some test; there explicitly and publicly wasn't a review process. Everyone reading Social Text at the time would have known that and interpreted contents accordingly, so Sokal didn't demonstrate anything of value and was just being a jackass.