111–120 of 384 posts
This apology fails from the 5th word: "We sincerely apologize for any harm..." While there are other requirements, a sincere apology cannot in any way entertain doubt about the fact that there WAS harm. Truly acknowledging the harm done is foundational to a real apology, and most of us (myself included) end up sneaking in weasel words or phrases like this. Psychologically, its nice for the apologizer, since it allows…
Can someone please explain why someone who is working with others on a common goal for years suddenly conducts a breaching experiment? What were they thinking?
(Also, there must be experience within Linux about malicious commits, three-letter agencies from all over the world must have tried before. Why not try archeology?)
This apology fails from the 5th word: "We sincerely apologize for any harm..." While there are other requirements, a sincere apology cannot in any way entertain doubt about the fact that there WAS harm. Truly acknowledging the harm done is foundational to a real apology, and most of us (myself included) end up sneaking in weasel words or phrases like this. Psychologically, its nice for the apologizer, since it allows…
Someone will always be apologizing wrong for some. Some interpretation of what harm there was, is not necessarily the same as my interpretation. There are too many ways to construe what harm there was or may have been according to others to satisfy everyone addressed. This is an efficient wording that doesn't explicitly satisfy your (and many people's) specific issues out of "the community", which illustrates the point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We are sorry for the harm we've caused by our unethical experimentation involving members of the Linux community. In accordance with community standards and a desire to avoid benefiting from our ethical failure, we have requested the immediate retraction of the papers and other published work resulting from this unethical experimentation. We are also working together with our institutional leadership to address the…
Good suggestion, especially getting the IRB involved. The board failed to recognize that the target of the research was not inanimate software but human beings.
I really appreciate the apology and as they stated, its unconditional nature. Good. However, I find something very problematic. This quote shows it: "We have learned some important lessons about research with the open source community from this incident." This is something I don't like. This is not something about "research with the open source community". If anything, they should have learned something about treatin…
> Unless the researchers are lying (which I've not seen a clear indication of), the 190 patches you have selected here are nothing more than collateral damage while you are completely missing the supposed patch submission addresses from which the malicious patches were sent! This all really sounds like a knee-jerk reaction to thier posting. I have to say, I think it's the wrong reaction to have.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/18edc472a95f1d4efe3ef40cc9b8d26...
Greg Kroah-Hartman’s poorly thought out bulk reversion is the bigger waste of time here.
I really appreciate the apology and as they stated, its unconditional nature. Good. However, I find something very problematic. This quote shows it: "We have learned some important lessons about research with the open source community from this incident." This is something I don't like. This is not something about "research with the open source community". If anything, they should have learned something about treatin…
"If anything, they should have learned something about not treating human beings as persons and not as involuntary guinea pigs." Perhaps the entire "tech" industry needs to learn that lesson. Non-technical end users should be entitled to that same level of trust as nerds. I can download free open source code, extract a tarball and build the software without worrying too much about scanning through all the files first…
Audit studies are conducted all the time where researchers lie to people and waste their time.
> Factors Determining Callbacks to Job Applications by the Unemployed: An Audit Study
> We use an audit study approach to investigate how unemployment duration, age, and holding a low-level “interim” job affect the likelihood that experienced college- educated females applying for an administrative support job receive a callback from a potential employer. First, the results show no relationship between callback rates and the duration of unemployment. Second, workers age 50 and older are significantly less likely to receive a callback. Third, taking an interim job significantly reduces the likelihood of receiving a callback. Finally, employers who have higher callback rates respond less to observable differences across workers in determining whom to call back. We interpret these results in the context of a model of employer learning about applicant quality
http://www.econ.ucla.edu/tvwachter/papers/audit_study_Farber...
to the folks picking this apart word-by-word: all evidence suggests that two of the signatures are natives of china, and the third of india. it is reasonable to credit them with not being native english speakers.
I can imagine research on a "process" made up of humans as having some value. For example, testing EMTs on whether they correctly diagnose injuries, or testing TAs on whether they catch exam cheating. But I would expect the researchers to ask someone (in those cases, maybe the manager of the EMTs or the TAs, in this case I suppose Linus) whether this research is wanted, and for guidance on how to go about it. For example they could submit the questionable patches during slow times. Does anyone know if that happened? I assume if it had, they would've mentioned it.
With that kind of permission, I wouldn't have a problem with this research and I don't think most people here would either. Without, this is the academic equivalent of those "just a prank, bro" youtube videos.