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Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

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Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#71

Post by dman »

cdr wrote: post #31
JDShu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? There are radeon drivers within the open source ecosystem, and AMD also supplies an alternate proprietary driver, bad quality as it is, for those people who find 3D support essential. You can make the argument that nVidia Linux drivers are much better, but I don't see where you're getting the idea that it's hard to find AMD drivers.

The open source AMD driver has improved a lot over the past couple of years, it's really pretty good. "Pretty good" is unfortunately not good enough for really 3D intensive tasks like newer games, etc. Good enough for the vast majority of desktop tasks though including hardware-accelerated video rendering etc. The closed AMD driver is pathetically bad. Neither multi-monitor mode works for me in Gnome3, due to from wh…

What distro are you using? Did you use aticonfig --dual-head to setup your xorg.conf file ?

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#72

Post by grannyg00se »

AlexDanger wrote: post #51
SkyMarshal wrote: post #4

TLDR: Linus at a Q&A, a woman asks why Nvidia still isn't providing any support for Optimus on Linux, Linus responds that Nvidia is being really difficult about that without good reason and "Fuck You Nvidia!" (flicks off the camera). Her question actually starts a minute earlier than the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=48m14s PS - Bravo Linus. This is issue is a real PITA, and a bit incongruent con…

Later in the talk someone says they are working for nVidia and doing something with Tegra. I couldnt quite make it out, what is he saying? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=playe...

He said they are now upstreaming tegra (super? / supra?)

I guess he's talking about pushing out some new driver support.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#73

Post by SkyMarshal »

saurik wrote: post #58

The original title of this submission was 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"', which was renamed by someone (the moderators? can the submitter change the title?) after a ton of people had upvoted and commented on it, and despite the link being not to the entire video but instead to a specific point in the video for which the title of the entire video is probably not even an appropriate description. So, when people are read…

The current moderation system isn't scaling. This post is a good example to illustrate the problem.

At first glance it appears to be a flamebait title, and hence a mod who sees it may feel it's a no-brainer - correct it and move on.

However, there's a nuance to it - that is exactly how Linus Torvalds expresses himself, and the original title ("Linus to Nvidia: Fuck You!", or something close to that) captured his sentiment accurately, so maybe it's not flamebait after all.

Or maybe it is flamebait even despite that, since Linus's SOP is to sometimes start flamewars to make a point, break through the red tape, or otherwise just make a command decision and move on.

Clearly plenty of room for moderation error, a nd that's just one submission. What's a mod to do?

So on the one hand, there has been a spate of godawfully-titled submissions in recent months:

1. "X things you should ... whatever" type titles (clearly banned in the HN posting guidelines)

2. Too short and uninformative (like a word or three).

3. Sensationalism, flamebait, miscategorized comparison results, etc.

4. more I'm sure...

But on the other hand, the mod system has problems as well:

1. Nobody even knows what the mod system is

2. Nobody knows who the mods are.

3. There's no way to give feedback on moderations, for the ones that were incorrectly modded.

4. Too many false positives (posts that shouldn't be modded but are, resulting comments like saurik's above, and entire threads complaining this problem).

5. Too many false negatives that slip through anyway.

And of course, not part of the mod system, but too many submitters just don't know how to descriptively, accurately, concretely title submissions anyway, increasing the volume a seemingly too-small group of mods has to deal with.

HN isn't the first social media site to have problems like this, but most others have a full-time dev team working on solving them, and they evolve certain solutions like Slashdot's meta-moderation or Reddit's user-run/modded subreddits.

So I don't think the mod system in its current form can scale with those problems, but on a more meta level I'm not sure that PG can scale as the developer of the mod system, given that YC takes 110% of his time.

Just trying to identify the problem before attempting to solve it, any thoughts?

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#74

Post by aurelianito »

flabbergasted wrote: post #61
saurik wrote: post #58

The original title of this submission was 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"', which was renamed by someone (the moderators? can the submitter change the title?) after a ton of people had upvoted and commented on it, and despite the link being not to the entire video but instead to a specific point in the video for which the title of the entire video is probably not even an appropriate description. So, when people are read…

I guess the moderators were offended by a four letter word. "People who get offended should be offended!" - Linus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=3672s

I really agree with Linus on this one. I usually say that when one person offends other person, the one who is wrong is the offended person.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#75

Post by jvehent »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #33
_delirium wrote: post #10

I'm behind the times here, but it took me a second to realize this was really Linus in the video. I still think of him as looking like the now-10-year-old photo gracing his Wikipedia article ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_Torvalds.jpeg ), but he looks a lot older here, possibly accentuated by the business attire.

I think Linus looks better these days. He’s lost weight, and the grey hair and glasses make him look wiser.

I guess he just proved he isn't any wiser, after all :)

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#76

Post by cdr »

dman wrote: post #71
cdr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open source AMD driver has improved a lot over the past couple of years, it's really pretty good. "Pretty good" is unfortunately not good enough for really 3D intensive tasks like newer games, etc. Good enough for the vast majority of desktop tasks though including hardware-accelerated video rendering etc. The closed AMD driver is pathetically bad. Neither multi-monitor mode works for me in Gnome3, due to from wh…

What distro are you using? Did you use aticonfig --dual-head to setup your xorg.conf file ?

Mint13 with Cinnamon; not precisely Gnome3 but close enough.

And yes, I did. I actually spent half a dozen hours fiddling with xorg.conf etc trying to get multiple monitors to work with fglrx [AMD proprietary driver]. I should have known better. Especially since my not-that-old card is being dropped in the next fglrx anyway.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#77

Post by cdr »

Intermediate wrote: post #18
tshadwell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still much harder to find ATI drivers for Linux than Nvidia drivers.

There is basically no nvidia drivers available for many modern mobile GPUs on Linux, so I doubt that Nvidia is more linux friendly than ATI/AMD nowadays.

AMD is ruthless about dropping support for older architectures, which hits laptop GPUs especially hard. They're about to drop support for R600 and there's still lower-end devices being sold with those. Fortunately as noted above the AMD open source driver is pretty good, more than good enough for a laptop I would think.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#78

Post by functional-tree »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #73
saurik wrote: post #58

The original title of this submission was 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"', which was renamed by someone (the moderators? can the submitter change the title?) after a ton of people had upvoted and commented on it, and despite the link being not to the entire video but instead to a specific point in the video for which the title of the entire video is probably not even an appropriate description. So, when people are read…

The current moderation system isn't scaling. This post is a good example to illustrate the problem. At first glance it appears to be a flamebait title, and hence a mod who sees it may feel it's a no-brainer - correct it and move on. However, there's a nuance to it - that is exactly how Linus Torvalds expresses himself, and the original title ("Linus to Nvidia: Fuck You!", or something close to that) captured his sent…

It's been like this for a long time. It's by far the least transparent moderation in a community I've ever seen. For a long time I thought of HN as a generally smart, reasonable community (less so these days with the masses here) but the completely opaque moderation has always seemed extraordinarily, unnecessarily restrictive and elitist. It's unlikely to change at this point. The minority who care don't matter enough.

Personally I'd love to see another smaller, more refocused community spin off where better, more open and reasoned tech/startup discussions can take place. Keep it invite-only perhaps.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#79

Post by flabbergasted »

kristofferR wrote: post #52

The title you gave it doesn't make much sense considering what this post/part of the speech and following discussion really is about - Nvidia's lack of support for Linux and Linus' reaction. You should have titled it "Linus Torvalds Angry at Nvidia, Flips the Finger at Speach" or something. That would have been more descriptive, just a heads up for next time! ;)

I used the title 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"'.

Apparently, a clueless moderator decided to change it.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#80

Post by marshray »

grannyg00se wrote: post #70
forrestthewoods wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video in question (including the woman's question) require a lot of outside knowledge to understand. Maybe I'm missing critical information? Right now Nvidia Optimus technology work only on Windows 7. It doesn't even work for Windows Vista or Windows XP. Why should Nvidia devote resources, potentially a significant amount, to make Optimus work on Linux? I do not buy the argument that they should do so out of grat…

Furthermore, the woman who posed the question indicated that she knew the Optimus drivers were going to be troublesome for linux. Why would you try to combine two technologies that you know are troublesome to get working together and then complain about it?

Historically, the Nvidia proprietary drivers have sucked less than ATI/AMD's. I had had a not-so-horrible experience with them on my previous laptop. To be fair, I've also had a not-awful experience with AMD's OpenGL drivers, too.

Now try to find a laptop with a discrete Nvidia GPU that doesn't have this Optimus junk and you'll see the problem.

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