I would like to clarify my earlier comment: I'm not saying LF is not supportive of my work -- in fact, I've always been encouraged to do whatever is necessary to make the Linux development community happy and productive, and there has always been solid backing for it from LF management and fellow IT team members.

However, I do have to manage multiple priorities and my #1 priority remains supporting the LF IT backend infrastructure for kernel.org (plus a few other similarly aligned projects), in addition to managing a small team of fellow IT pros. If I have to choose between working on tooling and working on something that requires attention from the infra side of things, the infra work is always prioritized for practical/operational/security reasons.

So, when I say that "my request hasn't been approved yet" I don't mean it in the sense that someone is telling me not to work on b4 or bugbot -- it just means that we haven't properly reallocated resources to allow me to prioritize tooling work -- yet. To properly request these resources, I need to present a clear vision of what we are trying to accomplish, why it makes sense to work on that (as opposed to, say, just moving things over to some large commercial forge and telling everyone to switch to that), and how this effort helps Linux development in the overall scheme of things. I'm sure we'll get there soon, I'm just explaining why we're not there yet (and hence why some cool stuff I've talked about hasn't made it to b4). :)

Sorry for the lack of progress on some of the b4 features -- I've been focusing on finishing up list migrations and planning some long-overdue infra upgrades to happen this year.

Unfortunately, my request to be able to dedicate more time to kernel developer tooling hasn't been approved yet. I need to put together a small report of what we were already able to get done with lore and b4 and what I hope to accomplish if I'm able to dedicate more time to working on it. Without that, there's a perception at LF that I'm just putting band-aids on a process that's beyond fixing and it's better to just move everyone over to GitHub/GitLab instead.

(Yes, I know that 50% of maintainers will vehemently agree with that statement, but I also know that 50% of others will just as vehemently disagree with it. My preferred course of action is iterative changes that would allow integrating forge workflows with the traditional decentralized model without having the whole thing rip apart. Now I just need to put this into words and plans.)

Why does every cautionary dystopian sci-fi tale from the past 75 years somehow become a startup's business plan?

TIL about another community on Slack who is now being asked to pay thousands to preserve basic functionality 😬

Proprietary tools that offer a lot for free, without fail, will squeeze you. And unfortunately, because of their nature, a lot gets left behind when you inevitably migrate.

When we select tools for our communities, we need to think over longer time horizons.

FOSS options like Matrix for chat and Discourse for forums are the better bet.

#Community #DevRel #OpenSource #FOSS #Matrix

There's a Russian word "zhabogadyuking" ("frog-rattlesnake-ing") which describes a situation when entities whom you actively dislike are fighting with each other.

Pardon the header bloat -- we've added ARC signing to all our mailing list messages in order to appease Gmail's new requirements.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#zippy=%2Crequirements-for-sending-or-more-messages-per-day

Day four of no power and no Internet. This big tree is the reason. One among hundreds in the area, but this is the one that took out *our* power and Internet.

PGE (Portland General Electric) claims we should get power back by 10pm today, but the ice storm arrives today, so we'll see.

Edit: well, it looks like PGE fixed the outage by just removing me from the outage database, not by actually reconnecting power. That was the second time that happened, so I re-re-reported the outage. Not that I was hugely optimistic about the 10pm timeframe, but it looks even less likely now.

I love this soundtrack -- it's been my work music for the past few weeks.

Try the game, too, it's great. Super relaxing (if you don't have a thing against great heights).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuug4RUjfBY

The U.S. is a “fat buffalo trying to take a nap” as hungry wolves approach, the European ambassador mused.

“I can hear those Champagne bottle corks popping in Moscow — like it’s Christmas every fucking day.”

As voters cast ballots in the Iowa caucuses Monday, many in the United States see this year’s presidential election as a test of American democracy.
But, in a series of conversations with a dozen current and former diplomats, I sensed that to many of our friends abroad, the U.S. is already failing that test.

The diplomats are aghast that so many U.S. leaders let their zeal for partisan politics prevent the basic functions of government.
It’s a major topic of conversations at their private dinners and gatherings.
Many of those I talked to were granted anonymity to be as candid with me as they are with each other.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/15/what-foreign-diplomats-say-about-u-s-politics-behind-closed-doors-00135326

inb4 the phoronix article...

Linus having power cut merge window paused

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wjMWpmXtKeiN__vnNO4TcttZR-8dVvd_oBq+hjeSsWUwg@mail.gmail.com/

Parker Molloy on #Threads screen recorded a Twitter search that appears to show dozens of bots responding to tweets with a boilerplate #OpenAI message.

One user commented:

"The bot activity is coming from inside the house (…) it appears these are stale accounts that were taken back over by XTwitter, turned into Blue Checkmarks and use AI to keep DAU/MAU and other activity metrics higher than they actually are."

None of these ... https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2024/01/09/parker-molloy-on.html

Report: Pastor testifies on the reason evangelicals support Republicans: We “made a deal with the devil”
"That deal was, we would support everything on the conservative agenda," says Robert Schenck and they would give us Roe. Taking rights away from half the population.

In that meeting that I participated in, the conversation went something like this: 'You guys want Roe v. Wade overturned, we can do that for you, but you take the whole enchilada, you take the whole thing,"' he said. "You take everything else that comes with it. Because if you want Roe gone, you have to work with us."

"From that point on that community that I had served, and still do, made a deal with the devil," he said. "That deal was, we would support everything on the conservative agenda, whether or not we had conscientious conflict with them.

The definition of evil, immoral and unethical.

boost, please.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/maga-evangelicals-iowa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NE0.479g.UcwQCQYr2BKn&smid=url-share

https://www.salon.com/2022/12/09/pastor-testifies-on-the-reason-evangelicals-support-we-made-a-deal-with-the-devil_partner/

Would be nice if all package managers understood/aliased all common English verbs meaning "remove this package", because I can never remember if it's "remove", "erase", or "uninstall".

Just to prove that not all mail we get is odd or threatening.

♥️

How to find all neomutt 2023-12-21 users of LKML: https://lore.kernel.org/all/?q=s%3A%22Re%3A+Re%3A+Re%3A%22+d%3A20231221..

(This is already fixed upstream, but there's no new release yet: https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/issues/4156)

Them: "To make this quick, just give me a call".
Also them: (calls go straight to voicemail)

« #AaronSwartz planned to publish millions of scientific articles, financed by public money and on which the authors received nothing. Prosecuted before he had published anything, he risked 35 years in prison. Facing this prospect, he died by suicide on 11 January 2013. 11 years ago.

In 2024, #OpenAI will apply its algorithms to any document, online or offline, without the consent of the authors. No one is likely to be prosecuted.

#IntellectualProperty is just a tool of oppression. » @ploum

if AI companies get access to all copyrighted works for free because "it isn't possible to train an AI without it", should we not give free access to all copyrighted works to children because it is not possible to train one without it?

🫠