Posts
409
Following
34
Followers
1843

Jonathan Corbet

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.
1
1
9

Jonathan Corbet

Edited yesterday
Every town in Italy (as in much of Europe) has its own special cheese that is made only there. Still, this one, found in Norcia, struck me as a bit more special than most...

No, I didn't try it.
5
3
18

Jonathan Corbet

Edited 6 days ago
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.

9
12
48

Jonathan Corbet

Taken in Porto last week - definitely a pretty place
1
2
24
@liw @lwn the world will survive, barely, but we miss you anyway!
0
0
3
@liw I have found https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-with-paste/ to be a most helpful add-on for such sites; I think there's a Chrome version too.
0
0
3

Jonathan Corbet

It would appear that US folks have until Monday to provide comments on the administration's plan to say that greenhouse gasses are just fine and there is no need to try not to emit them:

https://electrek.co/2025/09/20/2-days-left-to-comment-on-epas-plan-to-raise-gas-prices-76c-gal-kill-thousands/
0
3
10

Jonathan Corbet

On the radar: running multiple Linux kernels on a single system:

https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250918222607.186488-1-xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com

Just really looking at the patches now, could be interesting.
1
23
27
@pixelambacht The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner featuring, among other things, the original network worm! Had I not encountered that book at an impressionable age, I might never have entered this field at all.
1
0
1

Jonathan Corbet

Some days simply require going for a bike ride
4
7
33
@nixCraft The LF has essentially left the LLM question to each of its sub-projects to answer; official guidance at:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/generative-ai
0
0
0
@sjvn I agree with @etchedpixels that this is a wasted effort. Given the effort that these companies go through to bypass any sorts of controls that web sites try to put up, they certainly aren't going to pay attention to an additional file purporting to lay down conditions for use.
1
0
1
@_hic_haec_hoc The image that always stuck with me was the emergency backup space-weather radar.

(Four dogs cowering under the table).
0
0
0

Jonathan Corbet

Ouch, Stefano Benni is gone. Reading "Terra!" and "Elianto" in Italian was a great joy; he will be missed.

https://www.rainews.it/articoli/2025/09/e-morto-lo-scrittore-stefano-benni-aveva-78-anni-e080cace-95a3-4b81-8dc2-6133e48c9c7c.html
1
0
0

Jonathan Corbet

...that feeling of dread that comes when your bank starts sending cheery emails about how wonderful their reimplemented app is going to be...
3
13
43
@sjvn Interesting ... it turns up various versions of Linux Device Drivers, of course. But it also finds a refereed paper I published in 1994 ... those were the days ...

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/75/5/1520-0477_1994_075_0783_zsfida_2_0_co_2.xml
1
0
1
@jwildeboer @briankrebs @Em0nM4stodon @joriki "Shame" is not something these folks know much about. I was approached by Bright Data, which offered a special program to protect LWN from their scraperbots ... a nice little protection racket they run on the side, it seems...
0
4
5

Jonathan Corbet

For folks (like me) who have a SunPower solar monitoring system installed, this is of interest. A CVE for the system providing power to my home!

On the one hand, it's a gaping hole in a bit of critical household technology that could let an attacker screw with my power production. On the other, it may also be a path toward gaining more control over this device, which (I like to think, at least) I happen to own.

https://daganhenderson.com/blog/2025/09/cve-2025-9696
3
6
9

Jonathan Corbet

Under the current administration, the nation's public health infrastructure has been thoroughly and deliberately wrecked. Among other things, that has made it difficult to obtain COVID vaccines. Some of us would still really rather not catch COVID, so this is a problem.

For those of us who live in Colorado, at least, the state government is a bit more together; the public health department has essentially written a prescription to all Colorado residents enabling them to be vaccinated if they so choose. I've made my appointment.

https://cdphe.colorado.gov/covid-19/vaccine
1
12
27
Worried about the future of installing your own software on your Android device? @conservancy is hosting a Q&A to update you about sideloading software as well as other tips about how to ensure your phone runs the software you want, without any artificial restrictions. Join us on BigBlueButton this Friday September 5th at 15:00 UTC (08:00 US/Pacific, 11:00 US/Eastern, 17:00 CEST)

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2025/sep/3/sfc-qa-on-how-to-keep-your-sideloading/
0
9
0
Show older