Jonathan Corbet
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@archiloque Well, the coreutils 9.7 release fixed a relevant bug: "'cat' would fail with "input file is output file" if input and output are the same terminal device and the output is append-only. [bug introduced in coreutils-9.6]" But the cat-related news has been rather scarce since then.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
It's almost enough to make me want to get a cat.
https://soranews24.com/2026/03/27/japan-now-has-a-special-desk-for-people-who-work-at-home-with-a-pet-catphotos/
https://soranews24.com/2026/03/27/japan-now-has-a-special-desk-for-people-who-work-at-home-with-a-pet-catphotos/
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
I see on HN that John Bradley, the creator of xv, has died:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534086
The real announcements, alas, come from sources that I am unwilling to link to.
Xv, an image viewer/editor, is one of those tools that hit a peak of usability that really hasn't been matched since. It supports a wide range of image-manipulation functions, and has an interface that gets the job done quickly. I've sort of moved away from it over the years, but I still keep it around.
RIP, John, you made something good.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534086
The real announcements, alas, come from sources that I am unwilling to link to.
Xv, an image viewer/editor, is one of those tools that hit a peak of usability that really hasn't been matched since. It supports a wide range of image-manipulation functions, and has an interface that gets the job done quickly. I've sort of moved away from it over the years, but I still keep it around.
RIP, John, you made something good.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@monsieuricon @ljs I agree ... and we are absolutely unprepared for it.
I've been getting a bunch of stuff from this creature:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260321181511.11706-1-rito@ritovision.com/
Somehow I'm supposed to accept 1000 lines of uncommented JavaScript and Jinja2 - to run in the browser of everybody who pulls up the kernel docs - from a new contributor who summoned it from a machine.
I grow weary of this timeline sometimes.
I've been getting a bunch of stuff from this creature:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260321181511.11706-1-rito@ritovision.com/
Somehow I'm supposed to accept 1000 lines of uncommented JavaScript and Jinja2 - to run in the browser of everybody who pulls up the kernel docs - from a new contributor who summoned it from a machine.
I grow weary of this timeline sometimes.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@ljs Interesting, I didn't see that this entity had graduated from wanting to be the lib/ maintainer to generating memory-tiering modules for DAMON. Quite the flexible guy! And here I was getting irritated because "he" thought that sending Acked-by responses to random typo-fix documentation patches was somehow helpful...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@MarkBrigham Colorado front range. Much of the western US is in deep trouble this year, though.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Today I got an email from a local farm saying that they will not be doing a community supported agriculture (CSA) program this year because they don't think there will be enough water to grow food.
Need I say this is not a good sign?
Need I say this is not a good sign?
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@WesternInfidels I've seen stories of maintainers who have found themselves talking to a contributor who is just relaying questions to the LLM and feeding the answers back. Haven't been there myself, yet, so far as i know...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@jani People are clearly not using the Assisted-by tag; I've seen a lot of examples of that in recent days. In many cases people seem to be unaware of the rules. The human inclination to not read our documentation continues, but it appears that the LLMs don't bother to read it either.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
An interesting post on BLDGBLOG points out a problem with the US petroleum reserve that had never crossed my mind: this reserve was only designed to last through five empty-and-fill cycles.
"The Financial Times calculates that we are already at the cavern’s ninth historic drawdown, suggesting that 'catastrophic structural damage,' including dissolution of the salt caverns, is now a viable risk."
https://bldgblog.com/2026/03/contextual-collapse/
"The Financial Times calculates that we are already at the cavern’s ninth historic drawdown, suggesting that 'catastrophic structural damage,' including dissolution of the salt caverns, is now a viable risk."
https://bldgblog.com/2026/03/contextual-collapse/
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
As the number of LLM-generated patches in my inbox increases, I am starting to experience the sort of maintainer stress that has long been predicted. But there's another aspect of this that has recently crossed my mind.
Just over a week ago, a new personality showed up with a whole pile of machine-generated patches claiming to fill in our memory-management documentation. A few reviewers had some sharp questions, the response to which has been ... silence. This person doesn't seem to have cared enough about that work to make an effort to get past the initial resistance.
Once upon a time, somebody who had produced many pages of MM documentation would be invested enough in that work to make at least a minimal attempt to defend it.
Kernel developers often worry that a patch submitter will not stick around to maintain the code they are trying to push upstream. Part of the gauntlet of getting kernel patches accepted can be seen as a sort of "are you serious?" test.
When somebody submits a big pile of machine-generated code, though, will they be *able* to maintain it? And will they be sufficiently invested in this code, which they didn't write and probably don't understand, to stick around and fix the inevitable problems that will arise? I rather fear not, and that does not bode well for the long-term maintainability of our software.
Just over a week ago, a new personality showed up with a whole pile of machine-generated patches claiming to fill in our memory-management documentation. A few reviewers had some sharp questions, the response to which has been ... silence. This person doesn't seem to have cared enough about that work to make an effort to get past the initial resistance.
Once upon a time, somebody who had produced many pages of MM documentation would be invested enough in that work to make at least a minimal attempt to defend it.
Kernel developers often worry that a patch submitter will not stick around to maintain the code they are trying to push upstream. Part of the gauntlet of getting kernel patches accepted can be seen as a sort of "are you serious?" test.
When somebody submits a big pile of machine-generated code, though, will they be *able* to maintain it? And will they be sufficiently invested in this code, which they didn't write and probably don't understand, to stick around and fix the inevitable problems that will arise? I rather fear not, and that does not bode well for the long-term maintainability of our software.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
re: Rant about people ranting about Wayland
Show content
@jzb One good thing about all this, of course, is that all the people who have long sworn that X is the worst thing to have ever happened have now gone quiet, or even changed their views... It's almost 23 years ago exactly that I wrote this little piece...
https://lwn.net/Articles/26608/
https://lwn.net/Articles/26608/
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@carlrichell The record for earliest 90°F day here in Boulder is late May. They are saying it could happen tomorrow. In March. I'm surprised you found any snow at all...looks like fun, anyway!
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
According to the O'Reilly Radar blog, "code review is an expensive way to do something that may not be all that useful in the long run". We just have to get the specifications right in our vibe-coded future.
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/beyond-code-review/
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/beyond-code-review/
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@mhoye @azonenberg That part is true. I would never ban an address just for a 404 (though we do track such things in other ways). But if somebody is going for, say, /wp-anything, that's not a typo, that is seeing if a random doorknob is unlocked. Not the sort of reader we are writing for.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
I've been in Boulder for a long time; I don't think I've ever seen this sort of mass closure of our open spaces. What a "winter" this is.
Be careful out there...
https://bouldercounty.gov/news/all-trails-closed-west-of-highway-36/
Be careful out there...
https://bouldercounty.gov/news/all-trails-closed-west-of-highway-36/
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