Jonathan Corbet
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
A conference room with a better view than most - the memory-management room at LSFMM+BPF in Vancouver.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
We lost a longtime family friend, great mountaineer, and all-around amazing person this weekend.
https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/remembering-mountaineer-tom-hornbein
Farewell, Tom Hornbein; the world is a far better place for you having been a part of it.
https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/remembering-mountaineer-tom-hornbein
Farewell, Tom Hornbein; the world is a far better place for you having been a part of it.
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@delroth @LWN Yes, I read the comment the same way.
The thing is, if you suppress comments like that, then you may think that people like that aren't out there, and that they won't use these systems in that way. That, IMO, is a dangerous sort of ignorance. OTOH, I certainly don't want to get to the point where LWN is being used to *promote* that kind of use.
Sometimes I feel like I could step away from all of this and go raise goats in the mountains somewhere.
The thing is, if you suppress comments like that, then you may think that people like that aren't out there, and that they won't use these systems in that way. That, IMO, is a dangerous sort of ignorance. OTOH, I certainly don't want to get to the point where LWN is being used to *promote* that kind of use.
Sometimes I feel like I could step away from all of this and go raise goats in the mountains somewhere.
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@delroth @LWN We've had people like that all along, alas.
Moderating comments is, by far, the worst part of running a site like LWN. Appeasing the Texas Tax Commission was a joy in comparison. We lean toward only shutting down people when we really have to. It can be argued (and often is) that we let too much through, but others complain of censorship; you can't keep everybody happy.
The account in question has been warned before and is definitely on our watchlist.
Moderating comments is, by far, the worst part of running a site like LWN. Appeasing the Texas Tax Commission was a joy in comparison. We lean toward only shutting down people when we really have to. It can be argued (and often is) that we let too much through, but others complain of censorship; you can't keep everybody happy.
The account in question has been warned before and is definitely on our watchlist.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
My father was, among other things a mountain climber (on the 1963 US Everest expedition and did the first ascent of Tyree in Antarctica), a skier (Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole is named after him), and a maker of adventure movies. Then he was in a helicopter accident and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He used that time to show just how full a life with disability can be, and to help others to do the same.
"Full Circle" is a movie about him, and about Trevor Kennison, a young adventurer who has suffered a similar injury, and who is similarly unwilling to let it stop him:
https://fullcirclefilm.co/
It's a great film. But folks who wanted to see the screening in Denver were denied the chance when the theater canceled it. It seems that they were unprepared to deal with an audience that, it was expected, would include a large number of people in wheelchairs; they said it would be "unsafe for the community".
Not impressed. Hopefully they will be able to find a more enlightened venue sometime soon.
"Full Circle" is a movie about him, and about Trevor Kennison, a young adventurer who has suffered a similar injury, and who is similarly unwilling to let it stop him:
https://fullcirclefilm.co/
It's a great film. But folks who wanted to see the screening in Denver were denied the chance when the theater canceled it. It seems that they were unprepared to deal with an audience that, it was expected, would include a large number of people in wheelchairs; they said it would be "unsafe for the community".
Not impressed. Hopefully they will be able to find a more enlightened venue sometime soon.
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@securepaul My question: do we really need fully stackable security modules? What for? If the feature is truly valuable, why has implementing it been a single-developer quest for over a decade?
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@lina @gfxstrand I'd be careful, that approach can get you into trouble. About the only "throw up your hands" situation is if there is no way to continue without risking data corruption or other unpleasantness.
Seriously, you might want to look at some of the linux-kernel conversations around BUG_ON; https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHk-%3Dwhfor49J0YTYi6zauiJ_MWwF-XwhSty%2BHvD4CzxFQ_ZGA%40mail.gmail.com/ is one of the more polite responses.
I'm not trying to lecture on the "right way" to do things here... I very much want to see the Rust work succeed, and I'd hate to see it run into merge-window explosions. Sprinkling BUG_ON() or equivalent calls is a direct path toward that kind of explosion.
Seriously, you might want to look at some of the linux-kernel conversations around BUG_ON; https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHk-%3Dwhfor49J0YTYi6zauiJ_MWwF-XwhSty%2BHvD4CzxFQ_ZGA%40mail.gmail.com/ is one of the more polite responses.
I'm not trying to lecture on the "right way" to do things here... I very much want to see the Rust work succeed, and I'd hate to see it run into merge-window explosions. Sprinkling BUG_ON() or equivalent calls is a direct path toward that kind of explosion.
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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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