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Cake day: May 17th, 2024

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  • 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.



  • 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.







  • I was raped and if I had a gun with me in a purse or bag I wouldn’t have been raped. I did own a gun at home for protection but didn’t keep it with me because of concealed carry laws, which is why I got raped. So yeah, rape does work like that, unfortunately. I’m not against free health care and wish everyone had universal health care.

    Part of my calculation when being held down and deciding whether or not to fight back was whether I would get killed if I really fought back intensely. I tried pushing him off but he weighted a lot. I had initially tried to reason with him, but reasoning your way out of being raped apparently doesn’t work. The easiest way to fight back in the situation I was in would have been to have pressed my thumbs into his eyeballs and I thought if I did that, I might be able to get away, but I also might end up strangled to death. So I didn’t do that.

    With something like mace or a taser, if I had that, it would have helped, but mace is a bit hard to aim in the dark. With both a taser and mace, yes, they may have worked, but they may not have. I really think if I had merely injured him, he would have killed me after.

    It would have been much better had there been a gun with me.

    Guns give ordinary people the autonomy to fight back against extreme brutality. It’s unfortunate the issue has become polarized. All people should be able to own guns, all people should have universal health care, and all people should have the right to peacefully die if they want. Many of the “crazed” people in the US likely would have chosen a peaceful state-approved suicide or free emotional health service or both when their conditions deteriorated if the laws were different, and linking seeking care to forever having restricted rights (such as the ability to fly a plane or own a gun) is why so many men don’t seek mental health support. Idiot liberals think if they buy more ads publicizing the importance of “mental health awareness” that men will suddenly go get help despite the restricted rights that always come with any diagnosis, which is always needed for insurance purposes. Countries that don’t have an armed citizen are opening themselves up to brutal extreme tyranny, including dictators and oligopoly rule using the latest tech and AI, and only the stupid and naive don’t see the risk or realize that in some countries it may already be here. The solution is more guns. For everyone.







  • i’m not sure the number of dicks that a person needs to suck to no longer be in the right wing camp, but i am way past whatever number that is

    you’re completely wrong. the solution isn’t fewer guns, it’s many MORE guns. if teachers all had guns, none of these school shootings would happen

    the problem is that in the US mental health is not free and mental health evaluations are tied to people being deemed second-class citizens.

    these laws that are designed to remove guns from crazy people mostly result in 18 and 19 year olds who are at higher risk of going crazy specifically avoiding mental health help so they aren’t permanently denied rights and become second-class citizens, and they are already likely to avoid mental health help as a result of cost factors

    shockingly, many teenagers with mental health problems don’t have just bags of money lying around to pay for extremely expensive professionals while in a highly stratified society with extremely unequal wealth distribution.

    you and your ilk create bizarre incentives for people to not get mental health help, encourage schools to be completely gun free, and then are pikuchu-level-shocked when some crazed 19 year old doesn’t get mental health help and then goes to a school in the USA and kills children

    YOU are saying all the left wing talking points, and they may sound nice in a country that has a safety net, and there may be so-called data to support these theories that if you disarm everyone then everything is better, but the reality is if you disarm everyone, you set the stage for a new white nationalist dictator to decimate the USA without providing that much additional safety that couldn’t be accomplished in other ways

    Instead of complaining about too many guns, you should be advocating for free guns for teachers and making health care universal and disentangled from other aspects of civic life

    but it’s SO much easier to call me a right wing maniac right? And it’s SO much easier to push ideas that would never work in the US and are not only politically infeasible but would also be disastrous… At least everyone will think you are smart for parroting all the liberal talking points.


  • I suppose you are right, but I just hate it

    I want to live in a world where I can say “look, it’s a pack of transgenders” and point to a group of trans people like it’s exciting and cool, i just think, why can’t transgender people be seen as so cool and interesting and fun that this doesn’t matter?

    can’t tonality matter?

    there’s this 7 foot tall transgender black woman that shops in the same store as me and i never talk to her and always want to take photos of her because she’s interesting to look at. but i never say anything. she’s probably not 7 feet tall. she looks 7 feet tall. she seems so cool. i’ve never said anything to her because i don’t know if she’d want to talk to me. i’m just a weird introvert who likes linux

    i feel like it’s so easy to be offensive in this world that tone and context should matter more, but at the same time, you’re not actually putting me on blast or seeming that offended. im just being inflexible and hate being wrong. and we live in a world with a lot of religious shitheads who haven’t died out yet and so i don’t want to seem like one of those people i guess. also, it’s not called Poh Key Man? How do you say it then? alright, i’ll try to stop saying the term in the republican way: trans people

    did i do it right?


  • You are confusing actual results with people being on the right side of a conflict.

    The NRA, even if it is an incompetent worthless organization as you suggest, at least is trying to stop the slippery slope towards a society of people who kneel to the wishes of the new king.

    The corruption of police does not mean an excuse to de-arm the populace so they can be lose their freedoms to authoritarianism and the NRA supporting guns in every context, even ones that seemingly are awful, doesn’t mean that they are awful. Perhaps the NRA supports cops doing awful things because they don’t want to lose a large pillar of support.

    Instead of criticizing the very people who are preventing society from crumbling into a new technocratic kingship, what about thanking them? What about saying “thanks NRA for encouraging the world to be filled with guns?”

    Only those ignorant of history (and to be clear, I am not implying this is you, I am explicitly saying this is you) are against the NRA and it’s wish to prevent the world from going to pre-democratic times in which only the king decided who should have arms.