Jonathan Corbet
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@gfxstrand @lina Bear in mind, of course, that BUG_ON() tends to be fairly firmly frowned upon as well. Adding calls can lead to ... negative review comments. Kernel code needs to detect problems and continue on as gracefully as possible.
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@downey In-person events are the lubricant that makes our global, distributed community actually work. It is how we come to know each other, and how we solve our hardest problems. Without it, our effectiveness is reduced, misunderstanding multiply, and it is harder for new developers to find their place. And that may even have climate implications of its own.
I helped organize a couple of online-only conferences during the pandemic. By most accounts we were wildly successful. But nobody thought it was anything but a second-best fallback that failed to fill the role that conferences play in our community.
The carbon impact of everything we do has to be closely examined, and that certainly includes conference travel. If you have ideas for how we can knit the development community together into an effective whole without getting together in person, a lot of us would be interested in hearing them.
I helped organize a couple of online-only conferences during the pandemic. By most accounts we were wildly successful. But nobody thought it was anything but a second-best fallback that failed to fill the role that conferences play in our community.
The carbon impact of everything we do has to be closely examined, and that certainly includes conference travel. If you have ideas for how we can knit the development community together into an effective whole without getting together in person, a lot of us would be interested in hearing them.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Went for a bike ride this morning; quite windy, but nice anyway. The world is *finally* turning green.
Reflecting on the experience... on a bike, it's easy to notice (and complain about) a headwind. Tailwinds, instead, are much harder to notice. They can be a "I'm feeling good today, maybe I'm not in as bad a shape as I thought" experience, where you don't realize that you're getting help - until you turn the corner.
Life is kind of similar. It's easy to notice the headwinds (bad luck, discrimination, etc.) but just as easy to miss the tailwinds that make your experience easier and smoother than it could be. Tailwinds that others may not have.
A key to a good life (and a good bike ride) is to notice and appreciate the tailwinds.
Reflecting on the experience... on a bike, it's easy to notice (and complain about) a headwind. Tailwinds, instead, are much harder to notice. They can be a "I'm feeling good today, maybe I'm not in as bad a shape as I thought" experience, where you don't realize that you're getting help - until you turn the corner.
Life is kind of similar. It's easy to notice the headwinds (bad luck, discrimination, etc.) but just as easy to miss the tailwinds that make your experience easier and smoother than it could be. Tailwinds that others may not have.
A key to a good life (and a good bike ride) is to notice and appreciate the tailwinds.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
It's the first day of the merge window and, so far, there have been three pull requests with links to LWN articles describing the work. Nice to know somebody is reading all that stuff...:)
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/ZEbkqq1tvm1WHVHw%40bombadil.infradead.org/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/20230421-freimachen-handhaben-7c7a5e83ba0c%40brauner/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHC9VhQEXm3XG7B1wJBVsd15xFNpMjyuyxWDEcTAGrSN6zWoaA%40mail.gmail.com/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/ZEbkqq1tvm1WHVHw%40bombadil.infradead.org/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/20230421-freimachen-handhaben-7c7a5e83ba0c%40brauner/
https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHC9VhQEXm3XG7B1wJBVsd15xFNpMjyuyxWDEcTAGrSN6zWoaA%40mail.gmail.com/
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@mattdm @hrw The few lists I'm on directly go to folders. The bulk of my email following, though, is done in gnus, which allows me to quickly deal with something over 100 different lists. If those lists were on forum sites spread across the net, getting through it all would be much more of a slog; I doubt I would actually do it.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Just updated the laptop to Fedora 38. It seemed to go mostly well, but GNOME 44 seems to have changed something with font scaling; both gnome-terminal and emacs came up the size of a postage stamp — and a small stamp at that. Nothing like trying to tweak parameters when you can't see the dialogs without a microscope...
Firefox, instead, came up as always. Weird.
Firefox, instead, came up as always. Weird.
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@bookwar @mattdm Are you thinking of this talk by Greg KH, perhaps? https://lwn.net/Articles/702177/
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@mattdm The kernel community does cross-posting routinely, including often cross-posting with non-kernel lists. It's not generally seen as terrible; instead, it's a way to pull together the right people for any specific discussion. The world you describe is fine for *Fedora* discussions, but absolutely excludes anybody outside of that garden.
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@funnelfiasco Cross-posting is important, but that's not the whole of it. I follow a huge world in my NNTP reader; LWN would not be possible without it. Following a Discourse instance requires actually going and looking there; it's not scalable in any way. Each instance is its own little world, and the travel costs between them are high.
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@mattdm So how does one have a discussion involving, say, both the Fedora and Python communities? Cross-posting to mailing lists is easy, and happens frequently in some communities. Mailing lists are part of a global space. Each Discourse instance, as far as I know, is its own little world.
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@joeyh Indeed, I posted it to a *distributed* forum where we each can choose the tools we use to deal with it. I also don't mistake this forum for a place to have serious development discussions.
I did also send an email to the list expressing my thoughts as part of the discussion thread.
I did also send an email to the list expressing my thoughts as part of the discussion thread.
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@bookwar Discourse instances do have RSS feeds, but they are nearly useless. You can see if a topic starts, but nothing thereafter. I do try to follow some Discourses (including the Fedora one) that way, but it's painful.
Now a proper NNTP feed...*that* would be a useful thing...
Now a proper NNTP feed...*that* would be a useful thing...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Sigh ... another important mailing list (fedora-devel) is about to go dark: https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20230420212037.GA7197@mattdm.org/
I get it that email sucks, but forum systems do as well. The future we are headed toward seems to have every project in its own little walled garden, isolated from the others.
But at least we can get cute little badges ...
I get it that email sucks, but forum systems do as well. The future we are headed toward seems to have every project in its own little walled garden, isolated from the others.
But at least we can get cute little badges ...
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@jjdavis Those are great places indeed, though my favorite stop in those parts a few years back was Canyons of the Ancients - the Colorado side of Hovenweep: https://www.blm.gov/programs/national-conservation-lands/colorado/canyons-of-the-ancients
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Chaco Canyon pictographs thought to record a highly visible supernova that occurred in 1054.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
When the passport office destroys your international travel plans, you might as well go and check out some of the local wonders. This is what's left of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, built in the years 850 to 1150.
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