4 ms·

Linus Torvalds is in a race against time to save his legacy

16 points by jensgk 5y ago

pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
In case you get redirected to a 404-ing link: https://archive.ph/ryTAs https://archive.ph/ryTAs
lupire 5y ago
Drama bait. Linus's legacy is secure as one of the greatest heroes in world history. Now he's trying to get along better with more people. Good for him.
recursivedoubts 5y ago
ideas, events, people
- raarts 5y ago
  What's the relevance here for how to distinguish between great and small minds?
RichEO 5y ago
> [Contributing to kernel development] requires having free time, a computer, and a reliable internet connection — something not everyone has access to. It also helps to have a good education and to be fluent in English. As a result, the community leans toward people with those privileges, largely white men. This was quite a jarring leap in the article. On the global scale that development of the Linux kernel takes place, this statement feels very neo-colonial. Does the author really believe that people in the rest of the world live lives devoid of free time and internet access? Being generous, I have to imagine this is a careless application of US racial theory to matters of international significance, but it appears the author is unwilling to be that generous herself.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  "studently hundreds of commits from Samsung vanished inexplicably from the repo, since they were all submitted by engineers of Korean ancestry".
- kevincox 5y ago
  Yeah. - Free time. Sure, you need free time to do anything. But the async-workflow of kernel dev is actually fairly forgiving. - A computer. Yes, if you are patient even a fairly slow computer will do. Not a huge barrier for someone who wants to work on something that is only useful if you have a computer to run it on. - A reliable internet connection. You don't even need reliable. Cloning the first time will take a while (a shallow-clone won't be too bad), but the async email workflow is very forgiving of poor connections. Overall I struggle to see how the kernel development workflow could be made more accessible. The only possible improvement would be making it easier to hack on a small part of the kernel without downloading and compiling the whole thing.
joshstrange 5y ago
> When Torvalds walked in, he wore flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt. "flip-flops" is a link and it takes you to hxxps://www.businessinsider.com/best-flip-flops which is exactly what you think it is, a review of some flip-flops with affiliate links. Who thought this was a good idea? I mean the flip-flop article is just referral trash like wirecutter and I guess some people like that but why would you link to that "article" (Ad) from this article? They have nothing in common. I can't tell if this was something gross the writer, editor, or blogging platform itself did but whatever it is I quite dislike it and the trend of linking to completely unrelated things just for referrals/affiliate-links or SEO-type reasons.
- jgerrish 5y ago
  There's probably ad, biz dev, and other teams and departments in media organizations that do this, not the writer. They probably use specialized tools to scan text for keywords that have high paying ad payouts. Fucking interesting shit honestly. You've got: 1. ad keyword auction data 2. product pricing and product margins 3. internal business goals 4. external business relationships and deals Gross and cool, think quant monster geeks. I'm sure some people love working on this, I wish them the best. It's nice to feel good in what you do and your life.

16 points by jensgk 5y ago

In case you get redirected to a 404-ing link: https://archive.ph/ryTAs https://archive.ph/ryTAs

Drama bait. Linus's legacy is secure as one of the greatest heroes in world history. Now he's trying to get along better with more people. Good for him.

recursivedoubts 5y ago

ideas, events, people

raarts 5y ago
What's the relevance here for how to distinguish between great and small minds?

RichEO 5y ago

> [Contributing to kernel development] requires having free time, a computer, and a reliable internet connection — something not everyone has access to. It also helps to have a good education and to be fluent in English. As a result, the community leans toward people with those privileges, largely white men. This was quite a jarring leap in the article. On the global scale that development of the Linux kernel takes place, this statement feels very neo-colonial. Does the author really believe that people in the rest of the world live lives devoid of free time and internet access? Being generous, I have to imagine this is a careless application of US racial theory to matters of international significance, but it appears the author is unwilling to be that generous herself.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
908B64B197 5y ago
"studently hundreds of commits from Samsung vanished inexplicably from the repo, since they were all submitted by engineers of Korean ancestry".
kevincox 5y ago
Yeah. - Free time. Sure, you need free time to do anything. But the async-workflow of kernel dev is actually fairly forgiving. - A computer. Yes, if you are patient even a fairly slow computer will do. Not a huge barrier for someone who wants to work on something that is only useful if you have a computer to run it on. - A reliable internet connection. You don't even need reliable. Cloning the first time will take a while (a shallow-clone won't be too bad), but the async email workflow is very forgiving of poor connections. Overall I struggle to see how the kernel development workflow could be made more accessible. The only possible improvement would be making it easier to hack on a small part of the kernel without downloading and compiling the whole thing.

joshstrange 5y ago

> When Torvalds walked in, he wore flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt. "flip-flops" is a link and it takes you to hxxps://www.businessinsider.com/best-flip-flops which is exactly what you think it is, a review of some flip-flops with affiliate links. Who thought this was a good idea? I mean the flip-flop article is just referral trash like wirecutter and I guess some people like that but why would you link to that "article" (Ad) from this article? They have nothing in common. I can't tell if this was something gross the writer, editor, or blogging platform itself did but whatever it is I quite dislike it and the trend of linking to completely unrelated things just for referrals/affiliate-links or SEO-type reasons.

jgerrish 5y ago
There's probably ad, biz dev, and other teams and departments in media organizations that do this, not the writer. They probably use specialized tools to scan text for keywords that have high paying ad payouts. Fucking interesting shit honestly. You've got: 1. ad keyword auction data 2. product pricing and product margins 3. internal business goals 4. external business relationships and deals Gross and cool, think quant monster geeks. I'm sure some people love working on this, I wish them the best. It's nice to feel good in what you do and your life.