This isn’t about them being kicked out, this is about the fact we don’t know the process that resulted in this. Was this a decision Linus made after a night coding and thinking about the world? Was the foundation ordered to do it?

It lacks transparency into the process even if the outcome is fine and the way it was done doesn’t feel transparent, even if it makes sense not to include Russian coders in the project.

These projects are so big and complex that even with open-code a malicious actor is sometimes able to insert damaging code. Who suddenly made this decision? Did the US government order them to do this? If the US government can order them to do this, can they order the elevated coding status of a “benevolent” contributor on the US government payroll who is then ordered to put in a very hard to detect exploit? Open code doesn’t mean exploit free, it means exploits are more likely to be patched.

You don’t get it. It’s the lack of transparency about kicking these people out, not the kicking these people out, that is the problem. Who made the decision?

It makes sense to sanction Russia for being an ass but the way this was done doesn’t feel open, and many people sense it.

It would be much better if the company were not in a place in which gag orders can be issued, leaving questions as to transparency.

As it stands now, it isn’t clear if Linus is just “grouchy” about this with a unique personality or if the foundation got a NSL and can’t say anything. And that leads to questions about whether there were other NSLs other than this one and if it’s had an impact on the code.

Exploits are so hard to detect sometimes if done well and often although they get patched… eventually… the damage is done prior to the patch. The US government, despite doing lots of good things, engages in torture. And even if the US government is the “good guy,” this leads to less trust in the open-source ecosystem, no matter what the justification.

But seriously, Linus’s comment regarding this was… just… I have no words… he basically put every Russian in the same basket, called them trolls

There are a huge number of online Russian trolls. That part of his response was not hyperbolic. They do have troll factories there to influence public opinion.

The problem is this still leads to questions about transparency about the project in general and how this decision was made and whether it was made by those involved in the project or was an order from the US government.

Yes, this is exactly my same thoughts.

This is terrifying.

I don’t like what the Russian government is doing and Putin is cruel and evil, albeit intelligent (which makes him even more terrible).

That being said, in the US, government agencies can order a company to do certain things, put in certain code, or whatever and then issue a gag order as part of that preventing disclosure. And although there’s a limit to how much that can screw over open-source software users, we do not know what exploits nation-states have, we don’t know what backdoors are in different chipsets or closed-source firmware.

If a developer writing open source code can be blacklisted so easily without transparency into the process, it suggests the company is being ordered to do certain things and not disclose them by the US government, which is a government that still engages in torture.

Notice how they are not coming out and saying “We were not ordered to do this by any government agency.”

Could the foundation be forced to elevate a developer with government ties who then is able to “accidentally” put in an extremely hard to detect exploit into linux that won’t be detected at first and only patched later?

I really wish companies associated with linux were not in a country that lacked transparency with government regulations and in which gag orders were not possible.

As little as possible. This will probably be a low traffic site. I just want something cheap and not cloudflare.

Oh my gosh I need this now.

Fedora? 🤢 jk

Also what the fuck is a tiling window manager? I want it!

I’m sorry, can you clarify what you wrote? I read it but then got distracted by my cursor moving on its own while I was reading an article about xzutils. Perhaps I should read it again since it made no sense the first time.

I’m so happy.

But also liked when linux felt like a secret.

Microsoft finally did something right: they made their shitty product shitty enough for people to realize it.

This can’t be true! Really?

There’s a song by Gucci Mane called Pop Music

I would play that really loudly using Pop! OS, like noise violation loud, and then just spin in a chair until dizzy while listening

(also enable TimeShift)

Pollution leads to a decline in the bug population. Pollution = human byproducts (including byproducts of imprisoned animals) causing global warming and climate change affecting habitat; pollution = pesticides and chemicals which make it harder for insects to reproduce; pollution = plastics, trash, and environmental contamination; pollution = human changes that are functionally useful for humans (like roads and farms with pesticides and cities) but may be not helpful for insects.

The joke is that at first, having fewer bugs is nicer because a lot of bugs are annoying.

The joke is also that while it’s convenient at first, in another few decades it means EVERYTHING will die, so it’s not actually a good thing.

The joke is also the obliviousness of the human driver, who is relieved to be dealing with fewer bugs, not realizing that they are missing for the same reason he’s about to become extinct.

There are decreases in pretty much all types of animals that are neither human nor domesticated by humans, and for bugs there are decreases of bees, and there’s been discussion that the world is experiencing and extinction event.

Wynn Bruce set himself on fire and died trying to alert people that these trends pose a problem for humankind and no one cared. David Buckel also set himself on fire trying to warn people. It doesn’t matter at this point.

The problem is religion. People are stupid and believe in imaginary bullshit that doesn’t exist and society accepts this as normal thinking. Psychiatry says bizarre religious thinking is a symptom of schizophrenia, but normal religious thinking is acceptable if enough people believe it (in an unscientific capitulation to popular opinion in a “scientific” field that is hardly ruled by scientific rules). Religion is always illogical and it’s dooming us all.

People believe god would never create a planet that could be destroyed and don’t understand math or how to analyze scientific data. On top of that, greed caused by capitalism means that for most poor people, they are just struggling to get by and really can’t contemplate next year much less 100 years from now.

Most pollution is caused by not only poor resource management and not correctly taking into account externalities of pollution into the markplace in creating government rules (and conservative economic theory means making rules to deal with externalities) but also caused by just too many people. It’s sad, but likely some horrible virus like bird flu killing most of the population is the only way in which the planet remains habitable. The fact that only Communist China has successfully been able to reduce their population through non-economic policy declarations (as opposed to restricting resources) is a sad commentary on some of the problems of democracy when so many people just can’t understand math and instead embrace religion. (China also is a large contributor to pollution and this is not meant as exculpation of the Chinese Communist Party, but rather a brutal look at how religion has played a large role in decimating the environment.)

If people weren’t religious, they could understand these problems. But instead religious idiots take pleasure in making fun of Greta Thunberg as woke because they are literally too stupid to analyze graphs and intelligently assess data. That’s okay, if humankind lacks the intelligence to deal with this problem, then war famine and plagues will perhaps succeed since human reasoning has failed. Religion allows these people the comforts and safety of their delusions as a cocoon away from the anxiety and fear caused by dealing with reality, which can be harsh. Unfortunately, people in this delusional cocoon make really stupid decisions so we’re probably all going to die.

Often when bacterial populations with limited space and infinite glucose supplies are left to their own, they pollute and pollute and population grows exponentially until suddenly the pollution is too much and nearly all of them die. Glucose = oil; petri dish = earth; colony collapse in a petri dish = 7.99 billion people suddenly dying.

If some horrible disease like bird flu suddenly killed 4 billion people, perhaps AI could swoop down from the metaphorical cloud and help humanity manage resources in time to stop us from all dying, but probably it’s too late for even that.

(When you hear Elon Musk say people need to populate the planet even more, I think he knows what is about to happen and is taking the rational position that fleeing earth is the best option for survival and it will be hard to flee earth is everyone is so scared of death they stop working. So his message of “everything is fine, let’s increase the population and also thereby pollution even more” is dishonest, but highly rational. I don’t know if this is actually what he thinks. His hostility towards trans people also seems strange so I suppose it’s possible he is that illogical, but his response to that may be a result of a lack of empathy caused by severe autism, whereas telling people to keep increasing their numbers may be a rational lie so he can increase the likelihood of fleeing earth prior to planetary collapse.)

A certain subset of people have given up on trying to convince people of anything or do anything, figuring it’s like arguing with the sun rising and setting and that planetary biosphere collapse is just an inevitable part of nature. Others set themselves on fire to warn people, some people hold cardboard signs and gather and chant and think that will change capitalist societies and wake people up from the delusions of religions, deprogramming people through signs held up by large numbers of people. A lot of people are aware on some level, but don’t like to feel existential dread and so they just sort of ignore it.

It’s a very funny commentary on how we’re all about to die!

Why didn’t the scientists warn us that pollution was bad? Where were the scientists lighting themselves on fire in protest?

This is all science’s fault!

This is the smart answer for people who understand things conceptually. But it’s so much easier to just tell anyone who wants to try Linux to “just install Mint” and then they can distro hop later. You can’t go wrong with Mint.

Yep, when in doubt, Mint. You don’t even need to understand linux at all to use Mint. Any problems you can look up. The answer is always “Just install Mint.” The good thing about Pop is Nvidia drivers are built in, that would be a reason to try Pop first, but Mint makes everything so easy.

The answer to both is Mint.