Jonathan Corbet
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Not having a cat, I'm not given to posting cat pictures ... but my daughter's cat is here for a visit, so here's my chance.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
I was digging through my bookshelves when I stumbled across this book, untouched for years.
I picked up Anybody's Bike Book sometime around the mid 1970s, after having discovered the freedom that a good bike gives to a kid who needs to move around in northern Wyoming. It taught me that there was nothing in my bike that I couldn't fix myself — an empowering lesson to learn. With a mixture of plain language, clear descriptions, and sharp humor, it was perhaps my first example of what technical documentation can be.
So, a belated "thank you" to Tom Cuthbertson for this outstanding book; there is no doubt it had a strong influence on all the words I have inflicted on the world.
I picked up Anybody's Bike Book sometime around the mid 1970s, after having discovered the freedom that a good bike gives to a kid who needs to move around in northern Wyoming. It taught me that there was nothing in my bike that I couldn't fix myself — an empowering lesson to learn. With a mixture of plain language, clear descriptions, and sharp humor, it was perhaps my first example of what technical documentation can be.
So, a belated "thank you" to Tom Cuthbertson for this outstanding book; there is no doubt it had a strong influence on all the words I have inflicted on the world.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@KasTasMykolas You need to look at least long enough to know what names have been assigned to the form elements. It would take less than a minute, but you need to do it for every site you want to attack.
Because I'm an obnoxious person, I changed the names of those elements today, conveniently bringing an end to all of those login failures. We'll see if they bother to update their script...
Because I'm an obnoxious person, I changed the names of those elements today, conveniently bringing an end to all of those login failures. We'll see if they bother to update their script...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
So here is a weird one ... the LWN site has been seeing a steady stream of login attempts, all using weird yahoo addresses as the username. By "weird" I mean things like lllbnwidgqeerdyi@yahoo.com and other equally unlikely strings.
These do not correspond to LWN accounts, but somebody has looked at our login form for long enough to post the login attempts directly, without loading the form first. The attempts come from all over the Internet, suggesting that some sort of botnet is doing this.
I don't suppose anybody else has seen this sort of pattern, or has any idea what it is that they may be trying to accomplish?
These do not correspond to LWN accounts, but somebody has looked at our login form for long enough to post the login attempts directly, without loading the form first. The attempts come from all over the Internet, suggesting that some sort of botnet is doing this.
I don't suppose anybody else has seen this sort of pattern, or has any idea what it is that they may be trying to accomplish?
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
On the radar: file-based memory management
https://lwn.net/ml/all/20241122203830.2381905-1-btabatabai@wisc.edu
This looks like fairly wild stuff, haven't had a chance to figure out how it actually works yet.
https://lwn.net/ml/all/20241122203830.2381905-1-btabatabai@wisc.edu
This looks like fairly wild stuff, haven't had a chance to figure out how it actually works yet.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@larsmb @tante I think the point in question was highly visible enough.
Had that conversation been allowed to continue, it would have gone on for hundreds of posts, and brought people out of the woodwork that you really would rather not know even exist. We've been there in the past, and it threatened to kill the site at one point. Thus our "no personal attacks" policy, which we had to enforce here.
Should we, instead, have just pulled down the article, as some are saying? That would have "blocked the discussion" too, of course. We also try not to hide our mistakes.
Things like this make me wish I'd made a career in JavaScript framework development or some such. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some kernel drama to somehow deal with.
Had that conversation been allowed to continue, it would have gone on for hundreds of posts, and brought people out of the woodwork that you really would rather not know even exist. We've been there in the past, and it threatened to kill the site at one point. Thus our "no personal attacks" policy, which we had to enforce here.
Should we, instead, have just pulled down the article, as some are saying? That would have "blocked the discussion" too, of course. We also try not to hide our mistakes.
Things like this make me wish I'd made a career in JavaScript framework development or some such. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some kernel drama to somehow deal with.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@davidgerard First, what "mask" do you think has come off?
Second: if you look hard, you still will not find either of us "defending her honor". Please do not put words in our mouths.
We did do our best to close down the conversation; what good comes from hundreds of posts of people throwing names at each other? There are enough posts criticizing the person involved for anybody to get the point; there are almost none in the other direction. Trust me that this would not have been the case had we let the conversation run. *That*, perhaps, indicates an editorial bias, but it is not the one you are accusing us of.
Look, as I posted in the thread, had we known the backstory of the person involved, there is a good chance we would not have run that article. We are a small operation, we lack a biographical research unit, we will not have a background file on any of the hundreds of developers we write about over the course of a year.
Second: if you look hard, you still will not find either of us "defending her honor". Please do not put words in our mouths.
We did do our best to close down the conversation; what good comes from hundreds of posts of people throwing names at each other? There are enough posts criticizing the person involved for anybody to get the point; there are almost none in the other direction. Trust me that this would not have been the case had we let the conversation run. *That*, perhaps, indicates an editorial bias, but it is not the one you are accusing us of.
Look, as I posted in the thread, had we known the backstory of the person involved, there is a good chance we would not have run that article. We are a small operation, we lack a biographical research unit, we will not have a background file on any of the hundreds of developers we write about over the course of a year.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Maybe these AI models are onto something after all? https://fortune.com/2024/11/14/grok-musk-misinformation-spreader/
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@kernellogger @torvalds I am almost certainly the person who wrote those words. Yes, they could be improved... but note that the text talks about failing to *respond* to the regression, not the revert. That was surely the intent there, and I think it remains true.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@kernellogger @jann It's not just "unusual" that a cycle takes longer than 70 days, it has only happened twice in the last 15 years: 3.1 (slowed by the kernel.org compromise) and 4.15 (the meltdown/spectre release). It takes an event of that magnitude to slow things down at this point.
I'm not sure if we can realistically make the cycle shorter - some problems just take time to turn up and to be fixed.
I'm not sure if we can realistically make the cycle shorter - some problems just take time to turn up and to be fixed.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
For morbid reasons of my own I keep an eye on the Apache OpenOffice project's regular reports to the ASF board:
https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/OpenOffice.html
As is normal, the September report says that all is great with the project - community health is always "improving". And they are clearly on top of upcoming problems: "Python 2 is unmaintained. We have in the development tree the external python3 support. Internal python 3 support is difficult. We are checking alternatives." They plan to fix it in "the next major release". The project hasn't made a major release in ten years, so I wouldn't hold my breath...
(OK, so I'm still clearly in a snarky mode, sorry.)
https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/OpenOffice.html
As is normal, the September report says that all is great with the project - community health is always "improving". And they are clearly on top of upcoming problems: "Python 2 is unmaintained. We have in the development tree the external python3 support. Internal python 3 support is difficult. We are checking alternatives." They plan to fix it in "the next major release". The project hasn't made a major release in ten years, so I wouldn't hold my breath...
(OK, so I'm still clearly in a snarky mode, sorry.)
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Perhaps I am the only one out there using the Python GnuCash bindings to load and manage accounting data, but just in case: the GnuCash 5.9 release has a bug that completely wipes out an accounting file when opened in a Python program. It's a good way to get an extreme adrenaline burst, but I really don't recommend it otherwise.
GnuCash fixed this upstream on October 26, but has not made a release with the fix, so my 5.9 Fedora version showed the bug in all its glory. I've submitted a bug there (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2323303), hopefully they will include the fix soon. Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that anybody with GnuCash 5.9 installed be extra careful.
GnuCash fixed this upstream on October 26, but has not made a release with the fix, so my 5.9 Fedora version showed the bug in all its glory. I've submitted a bug there (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2323303), hopefully they will include the fix soon. Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that anybody with GnuCash 5.9 installed be extra careful.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
RIP Phil Lesh
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/25/1227749378/phil-lesh-grateful-dead-dies
He brought a lot of joy to a lot of people and will be deeply missed.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/25/1227749378/phil-lesh-grateful-dead-dies
He brought a lot of joy to a lot of people and will be deeply missed.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Filled out my ballot over the weekend — a rather time-consuming task in Colorado, as we have a lot of things to vote.
Now I just have to endure a few more weeks while the rest of the country catches up. And hope I don't find myself living in a fascist nation...
Now I just have to endure a few more weeks while the rest of the country catches up. And hope I don't find myself living in a fascist nation...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
So I am not quite sure what to make of this article. It is nice to see attention paid to documentation... but this is really about the man pages, and somehow the problem is Linus's fault...? The idea that we can solve it with some sort of editorial structure in the "post-Torvalds era" seems ... weird.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Linux-No-money-for-documentation-9978257.html
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Linux-No-money-for-documentation-9978257.html
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