Posts by corbet@social.kernel.org
(DIR) Post #Atd0HsUoYcBIxHUo64 by corbet@social.kernel.org
2024-05-08T18:23:29.638676Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Xcel Energy just sent me a survey asking about my "recent outage experience". Not sure what to say... "Five stars — would definitely do again"?
(DIR) Post #Atd0IQtSfU6BdZHyEa by corbet@social.kernel.org
2024-05-03T13:49:16.374083Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
This post on how scammers use Chase's confirmation system to get victims to open up their accounts:https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/05/bank-scammers-using-genuine-push-notifications-to-trick-their-victims/Decades ago, we saw universal connectivity as a path to freedom. Instead, we have created a world where we are literally subject to dozens (if not many more) attempts to rip us off every day. We've made a world that is much more predatory and hostile, and it is getting worse.Thus far, I've managed to avoid falling victim to any of these attempts. But I can only wonder when, as I get older and more confused and the scammers get more sophisticated, that will change. "When", rather than "if", seems like the relevant word here.Oh well...I guess I'll get more coffee and read more email, I'm sure that will make me feel better.
(DIR) Post #Atd0KUlPFZi8DeVLRw by corbet@social.kernel.org
2024-04-01T17:14:11.154514Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Quote of the day (from the Fedora devel list):We have no mechanism to flag when J. Random Packager adds "Supplements: glibc" to their random leaf node package. As a reminder, *we are a project that allows 1,601 minimally-vetted people to deliver arbitrary code executed as root on hundreds of thousands of systems*, and this mechanism allows any one of those people to cause the package they have complete control over to be automatically pulled in as a dependency on virtually every single one of those systems.— Adam Williamson
(DIR) Post #Atd0OUIav61Nw6vpyK by corbet@social.kernel.org
2024-04-05T20:34:41.417063Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@monsieuricon I got around this by thinking of ln as a rename that doesn't remove the old file. And, indeed, they are the same program underneath.
(DIR) Post #AvIYs6zlM6fwV7Igkq by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-06-19T19:15:32.481160Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
After years of wanting to, I finally managed to pay a visit to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Unlike the heavily visited south rim, the north rim has little in the way of accommodations and is rather harder to get to, so it's much less busy with people. It is also at a far higher elevation with the sort of tall-pine-and-aspen forest that one does not expect so far south. Definitely worth it.
(DIR) Post #AvIa086xBqm2EV3E92 by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-06-19T19:40:57.354888Z
3 likes, 6 repeats
The Wayback Machine managed to capture a Linux Journal article about the Arch Linux distribution's plan to switch to "rye-init" before whatever human intelligence remains there figured out that "rye-init" does not actually exist.The Linux Journal predates LWN by some years and was, for a long time, the definitive read for Linux users. The Don Marti ( @dmarti ) years were especially noteworthy. It is sad to see where it has ended up now.https://web.archive.org/web/20250618001301/https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/arch-linux-breaks-new-ground-official-rust-init-system-support-arrives
(DIR) Post #Avvaj4pruwofPM6j44 by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-07-07T15:03:55.940347Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Perhaps it's just me, but I do find it amusing that the GNU Readline 8.3 announcement, in July 2025, gives two FTP URLs as the primary way to obtain the software. I don't remember when I last fired up an FTP client, and my web browser has long since forgotten how to do it too.https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-readline/2025-07/msg00004.html
(DIR) Post #Ax4Flch9AHBs7gTptA by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-08-11T17:15:41.207318Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
The fact that Microsoft is reorganizing the management of GitHub, which it purchased in 2018, is not particularly surprising. The fact that it is being moved into Microsoft's AI operation, though, says a lot about what GitHub is actually for now.https://www.theverge.com/news/757461/microsoft-github-thomas-dohmke-resignation-coreai-team-transition
(DIR) Post #Ay2bO27yoIoWWkmdGa by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-09-09T17:23:43.398191Z
2 likes, 2 repeats
...that feeling of dread that comes when your bank starts sending cheery emails about how wonderful their reimplemented app is going to be...
(DIR) Post #Ay2p0F989eqBJOs7JQ by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-06-26T16:18:26.904961Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
If you run an operation that pays freelance authors for articles, you get a *lot* of people trying to sell you the output from their slop factory of choice. These pitches far exceed the legitimate ones at this point.Today we got a pitch for an article about the load-balancing scheduler regression caused by the sched_ext framework in the 6.11 release. Somebody has clearly put a bit more than the usual amount of attention into the sort of topic that might appeal to @lwn. There is only one little problem... that regression had nothing to do with sched_ext, which was merged in 6.12. The pitch was a bunch of authoritative-sounding bullshit; the article would surely have been more of the same.Sometimes I truly lose hope about humanity's ability to keep its head above the flood of this stuff.
(DIR) Post #AyzieCjCHNIpghxwmW by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-10-08T06:58:19.700015Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
There are days when I feel like I want to find a different world to live in; this post from Kevin Kelly has brought that feeling to the fore. Consider:Some authors have it backwards. They believe that AI companies should pay them for training AIs on their books. But I predict in a very short while, authors will be paying AI companies to ensure that their books are included in the education and training of AIs.Or perhaps...If a book can be more easily parsed by an AI, its influence will be greater. Therefore many books will be written and formatted with an eye on their main audience. Writing for AIs will become a skill like any other, and something you can get better at. Authors could actively seek to optimize their work for AI ingestion, perhaps even collaborating with AI companies to ensure their content is properly understood, and integrated.Kevin has certainly consumed large amounts of Kool-Aid on this one. Personally, I plan to keep writing for humans, even if that is seemingly obsolete.
(DIR) Post #AzD8fU5YLGLxgRAleq by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-10-14T20:27:31.313423Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
For whatever reason, I seem to have ended up with a position high on the list of people who, somebody thinks, are desperate to borrow money for their company from random people who show up offering it. It's generally at least a half-dozen phone calls and texts per day, plus all of the emails.I'm guessing the scam is something like "we'll wire you the money right away, just give us your account number", or "the financing is all lined up, we just need you to pay an administrative fee first". I am not curious enough to find out.It sure would be nice if all those bozos would go away.
(DIR) Post #AzP8tYIHpoagg3M8Cu by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-10-20T14:47:35.045722Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
"The manufacturer had the power to remotely disable devices and used it against me for blocking their data collection."https://codetiger.github.io/blog/the-day-my-smart-vacuum-turned-against-me/...and people wonder why I resist having that kind of stuff in my home...
(DIR) Post #B0b0Yhusbx0MOAl6wq by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-11-25T02:44:12.844317Z
6 likes, 4 repeats
In 2017 Randall Munroe posted a strip called "Seven Years" about being the caregiver for a loved one dealing with cancer:https://xkcd.com/1928/That strip literally made me cry, it was such a clear telling of what that experience is like; much of it could have been about my own life.Except that my own experience had a different ending.Today he put out "Fifteen Years":https://xkcd.com/3172/This one made me want to cheer. What a joy to see a story that has played out so differently, so much better. I have never crossed paths with Mr. Munroe, but I rejoice in his and his family's good fortune as if he were a good friend.Here's to many more years.
(DIR) Post #B17TgFzjQEW7pwhLGa by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-12-10T22:37:40.488787Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
So I took some grief yesterday about the "clickbait" headline on the brief Rust news I put up:https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/In person, though, I've gotten far more grief for adding the "(successful)" parenthetical afterward — folks say the original was better.Oh well, I've learned to be more careful with headlines now.Next article: Seven Shocking Conclusions from the Linux Plumbers Conference — but #4 will warm your heart.
(DIR) Post #B1M88VDx6rNzYdoPLc by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-12-18T00:18:36.547889Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
I worked at NCAR for 18 years; we did a lot of research that benefited a lot of people, and I felt proud to be a part of that institution. The administration's desire to destroy it is certainly in character; we can't have leading-edge science in a country ruled by ignorance, after all. But this one hits close to home. It will take generations to recover from the damage that is being done.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/climate/national-center-for-atmospheric-research-trump.html
(DIR) Post #B1SE40j8aUUcxL9dLc by corbet@social.kernel.org
2025-12-20T22:43:23.303993Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
Power is back on here. After two days without, one definitely appreciates the luxury of being able to flip on a light.According to the official numbers, the peak wind gust in my neighborhood was 102mph. Suffice to say I didn't get my bike ride in yesterday... otherwise all seems well at this point, though.[Now looking harder at vehicle-to-home power solutions.]
(DIR) Post #B2JqpV9S3o9FcCj8jY by corbet@social.kernel.org
2026-01-15T18:51:17.372101Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
So @lwn is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet. It is a DDOS attack involving tens of thousands of addresses, and that is affecting the responsiveness of the site, unfortunately.There are many things I would like to do with my time. Defending LWN from AI shitheads is rather far from the top of that list. I *really* don't want to put obstacles between LWN and its readers, but it may come to that.(Another grumpy day, sorry)
(DIR) Post #B2XsujWsfoftVrIWMC by corbet@social.kernel.org
2026-01-22T14:11:43.097840Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
As of the last count, @lwn has been hit by 1.6 million unique IP addresses since yesterday morning. We have managed to stabilize the site against that level of attack, but it is still annoying.If only we could get them all to subscribe.I do find myself wondering if there isn't material for a good class-action lawsuit here. We are far from the only ones having to cope with this crap. I'm not normally much of a fan of the US class-action lawsuit machine, but extracting money from the Bright Datas of the world to make some lawyers richer doesn't sound like an entirely bad proposition.
(DIR) Post #B3BkubYmzZMYnsYqQq by corbet@social.kernel.org
2026-02-10T19:38:08.110345Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
So let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that you were foolish enough to try to make a living by writing high-quality, well-researched, technical articles about Linux and free-software development. I know that's crazy, but bear with me. In such a scenario, how does one succeed in a world increasingly full of stuff like this?https://www.webpronews.com/linux-7-0-looms-large-inside-the-landmark-kernel-release-that-could-reshape-open-source-computing/(I'll post no more links to that site, I promise).These folks appear to take the stuff we humans write, inject a bunch of errors, then slop it out to the world.If you were to engage in the silly quest described above, you would find that what you do is increasingly buried in the flood of this kind of material. Does anybody have any bright ideas about how one might survive in such an environment?