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Will Future Generations Think We're Gross?

https://chillphysicsenjoyer.substack.com/p/will-future-generations-think-were
1•crescit_eundo•2m ago•0 comments

Kernel Key Retention Service

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/security/keys/core.html
1•networked•2m ago•0 comments

State Department will delete Xitter posts from before Trump returned to office

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/07/nx-s1-5704785/state-department-trump-posts-x
1•righthand•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Verifiable server roundtrip demo for a decision interruption system

https://github.com/veeduzyl-hue/decision-assistant-roundtrip-demo
1•veeduzyl•6m ago•0 comments

Impl Rust – Avro IDL Tool in Rust via Antlr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmKvw73V394
1•todsacerdoti•6m ago•0 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
2•vinhnx•7m ago•0 comments

minikeyvalue

https://github.com/commaai/minikeyvalue/tree/prod
3•tosh•12m ago•0 comments

Neomacs: GPU-accelerated Emacs with inline video, WebKit, and terminal via wgpu

https://github.com/eval-exec/neomacs
1•evalexec•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Moli P2P – An ephemeral, serverless image gallery (Rust and WebRTC)

https://moli-green.is/
2•ShinyaKoyano•21m ago•1 comments

How I grow my X presence?

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrowthHacking/s/UEc8pAl61b
2•m00dy•22m ago•0 comments

What's the cost of the most expensive Super Bowl ad slot?

https://ballparkguess.com/?id=5b98b1d3-5887-47b9-8a92-43be2ced674b
1•bkls•23m ago•0 comments

What if you just did a startup instead?

https://alexaraki.substack.com/p/what-if-you-just-did-a-startup
3•okaywriting•30m ago•0 comments

Hacking up your own shell completion (2020)

https://www.feltrac.co/environment/2020/01/18/build-your-own-shell-completion.html
2•todsacerdoti•33m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Gorse 0.5 – Open-source recommender system with visual workflow editor

https://github.com/gorse-io/gorse
1•zhenghaoz•33m ago•0 comments

GLM-OCR: Accurate × Fast × Comprehensive

https://github.com/zai-org/GLM-OCR
1•ms7892•34m ago•0 comments

Local Agent Bench: Test 11 small LLMs on tool-calling judgment, on CPU, no GPU

https://github.com/MikeVeerman/tool-calling-benchmark
1•MikeVeerman•35m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AboutMyProject – A public log for developer proof-of-work

https://aboutmyproject.com/
1•Raiplus•35m ago•0 comments

Expertise, AI and Work of Future [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsxWl9iT1XU
1•indiantinker•36m ago•0 comments

So Long to Cheap Books You Could Fit in Your Pocket

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/books/mass-market-paperback-books.html
3•pseudolus•36m ago•1 comments

PID Controller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional%E2%80%93integral%E2%80%93derivative_controller
1•tosh•40m ago•0 comments

SpaceX Rocket Generates 100GW of Power, or 20% of US Electricity

https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/2019932764515234159
2•bkls•40m ago•0 comments

Kubernetes MCP Server

https://github.com/yindia/rootcause
1•yindia•41m ago•0 comments

I Built a Movie Recommendation Agent to Solve Movie Nights with My Wife

https://rokn.io/posts/building-movie-recommendation-agent
4•roknovosel•42m ago•0 comments

What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won't end

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00238-z
2•beardyw•50m ago•0 comments

Sidestepping Evaluation Awareness and Anticipating Misalignment

https://alignment.openai.com/prod-evals/
1•taubek•50m ago•0 comments

OldMapsOnline

https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en
2•surprisetalk•52m ago•0 comments

What It's Like to Be a Worm

https://www.asimov.press/p/sentience
2•surprisetalk•52m ago•0 comments

Don't go to physics grad school and other cautionary tales

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2025/12/19/dont-go-to-physics-grad-school-and-other-cautionary...
2•surprisetalk•52m ago•0 comments

Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/randomly-quoting-ray-bradbury-did-not-save-lawyer-fro...
5•pseudolus•53m ago•0 comments

AI anxiety batters software execs, costing them combined $62B: report

https://nypost.com/2026/02/04/business/ai-anxiety-batters-software-execs-costing-them-62b-report/
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•53m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

We do not break userspace (2012)

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CA+55aFy98A+LJK4+GWMcbzaa1zsPBRo76q+ioEjbx-uaMKH6Uw@mail.gmail.com/
87•surprisetalk•6mo ago

Comments

santoshalper•6mo ago
I'm really impressed by how Mauro handles himself in the face of a huge man-baby temper tantrum.
add-mobius•6mo ago
Linus is not a man-baby. He’s an actual man. This is what a man looks like- he stands up for users and the integrity of the product with force, even at the risk of being called man-baby by someone over a decade later.
sschnei8•6mo ago
You can “stand up for users and the integrity of the product” without telling someone to SHUT THE FUCK UP
_101•6mo ago
You’re generalizing expectations for an average human and trying to apply it to an human with extraordinary responsibilities.

It takes an incredibly strong hand to lead a team whose product is the operating system of most of the Internet.

Do you think Jobs, Bezos, or Gates would say, “Hey guy. I respect you, man, and you write great code. I think we should work together to solve this. Are you cool with that? Maybe we can grab a latte.”

No, they didn’t do that shit.

Pretending you’re their HR manager and get to tell them what’s acceptable doesn’t make you equal or better than them. People have faults, but you can’t get on your high horse picking on them when you’re using their shit everyday.

komali2•6mo ago
This is a toxic masculinity form of mythology that ignores reams of historical evidence of effective ways of leading people.

If you want a good bibliography, check out the sources of any Dale Carnegie book. He went through letters, journals, biographies, and writings of leaders as far back as the ancient Greeks. His conclusion is the opposite of the one you're making here. The best leaders lift people up, not shout people down.

Others here discuss absurdities like drill instructors. None of us work on a battlefield, none of us are in life or death situations here.

We're talking about leading people in labor. It's basically a solved problem, but for some reason people keep needing to debate the effectiveness of "tough love" approaches. It baffles me.

dzhiurgis•6mo ago
> None of us work on a battlefield

Startups are absolutely like battlefields. Maybe even worse since you can't die.

exe34•6mo ago
Get real! On a battlefield, if you stop fighting you get shot. In a startup, if you stop fighting you can go and start a new life.
komali2•6mo ago
Please, please be saying this ironically. If not I say this out of genuine concern for a fellow forum member: never say this to anyone in real life, you'll be mocked relentlessly.

Give a friend a pack of firecrackers and tell him to pop one off directly next to your ear randomly for a week. See if it feels anything like even your worse day at a startup. Combat is so traumatic you can see the physiological changes in people's brains.

dzhiurgis•6mo ago
This was obviously a satire...
komali2•6mo ago
The internet has broken me, I apologize.
inemesitaffia•6mo ago
Masculinity is fine in all it's forms.
exe34•6mo ago
Being a dick isn't masculinity though. In fact the Inuits consider it childish.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/6855333...

Anger is a feeling, it's internal. Reacting externally with anger is a choice to be a dick. If you can't tell the difference, you have some growing up to do. Linus did.

general1726•6mo ago
But being a castrated yes man is not masculine either.
exe34•6mo ago
"No" does not need to be said in anger. Being firm has nothing to do with being castrated. Maybe overt anger itself is a sign of insecurity and insufficiency. Do you think Linus has been castrated now that he behaves more like an adult?
inemesitaffia•6mo ago
Like I said, it's fine in all it's forms. You claimed it's toxic. Now, it's not masculinity. If it's not, why relate it to masculinity at all?
exe34•6mo ago
The whole thread is about overt display of anger being linked with masculinity (with or without the label of "toxic"). You said "Masculinity is fine in all it's forms." It is reasonable to assume that you meant childish displays of anger was included in masculinity and that you didn't consider it toxic at all.
inemesitaffia•6mo ago
I consider masculinity completely fine. I consider the idea of toxic masculinity used to describe actions men take as an intentionally gendered misnomer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44630887

dolebirchwood•6mo ago
There is a tendency among conflict-avoidant people to lionize "keeping cool" as a moral virtue. This strategy of putting passionate (yet justifiable) anger to shame ensures there is minimal rocking of the boat, thereby allowing all aboard to sit peacefully with smiles on their faces as the ship sinks due to their own negligence and dereliction.
komali2•6mo ago
Do you believe conflict resolution requires telling someone to "shut the fuck up" in all caps and then insult their abilities as an engineer? Do you believe this is the most effective method of conflict resolution that doesn't involve "rolling over?"

Personally I think Dale Carnegie cracked that nut nearly a century ago and had the research of many great figures in history to back it up. If you haven't read "How to Win Friends," spoilers: he never suggests screaming someone out of a room.

itsthecourier•6mo ago
SHUT THE DUCK UP, KOMALI /s
dolebirchwood•6mo ago
Do you believe Linus was interested in "winning a friend" in that conversation?
komali2•6mo ago
I agree that the book's title is a bit old fashioned. The other half of the title is "...and Influence People," though. Surely Linus is interested in influencing people, effectively? Surely he's interested in being an effective leader?

I'll answer for you: yes, he is, and also yes he believes this screaming version of him was wrong to be so cruel and abrasive: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167

If Linus is trying to grow out of the emotional outburst version of himself I don't understand why people continue to try to defend it. The man himself now believes it's the wrong way to be.

dolebirchwood•6mo ago
Fair enough. Thanks for sharing.
komali2•6mo ago
This is interesting to me because usually the attitude on this forum is that emotions get in the way of rational behavior and thought. Of course we're all different people but I've noticed that trend. The more Spock, the better, at least in technical fields and debate.

Yet that goes away as soon as it becomes time to defend Linus Torvalds. Then it's "actually his emotional outbursts are rational and necessary."

I hate to say it but I've always wondered how different the attitude towards Linus would be if everything about him and his history was the same, except, he was a woman.

If your gut reaction is to defend him because he's so clearly a once in a generation engineer and very smart, remember, the even more experienced and wise version of him has disavowed this earlier, emotional outburst version of him: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167 Why defend behavior that he himself has agreed is indefensible?

_101•6mo ago
I’d defend the hell out of Linus as a woman.
grosswait•6mo ago
Seconded. Makes no difference
komali2•6mo ago
Well great, you two are good people. I recommend searching through the mailing list and forums for when Sarah (now Sage) Sharp was recommending a code of conduct and pushing back on people for being brutes. Many were opining along the lines of Sharp was just a girl that couldn't take the heat, was trying to make the FOSS world all fluffy rainbows etc. Strong evidence that girl Linus wouldn't haven't had the same amount of success and his emotional outbursts would have been seen very differently by the community, despite us three staunch defenders.

Linus' whole come to Jesus and apology was kicked off by that and the code of conduct saga, which was predicated on the fact that 98% of kernel developers were men. I think we can agree it'd be naive, despite us three not being misogynists, to believe that the community wouldn't construe girl Linus' outbursts as hysterical?

rmunn•6mo ago
The two are not comparable behaviors, though. Sarah was doing the opposite of Linus's (mostly former) communication style. She was pushing for a "let's all get along" style, and got pushback for that from the Linux kernel community who said "We don't need our hands held and our feelings massaged, we're fine with a 'tough love' communication style". And you're using that as evidence for an assertion that if a woman in Linus's position was using a "tough love" communication style, she would have gotten pushback from the kernel community. I just don't believe that the evidence supports your argument.
komali2•6mo ago
> and got pushback for that from the Linux kernel community who said "We don't need our hands held and our feelings massaged, we're fine with a 'tough love' communication style".

Yes, because that was what was selected for, a toxic masculine form of communication. My point was I believe these emotional outbursts wouldn't have been treated as tough love if Linus had been a woman, they would have been perceived as hysteria, because the community had selected for a 98% male environment of men losing control of their anger at each other.

Now Linus has changed, and so has the community's communication style, and so too has the demographics of the contributors. People of all stripes that were turned out by the old brutish, uncontrolled way of communicating are coming back, and the project is much better for it.

Maybe it's unrelated but this new era of Linux, where the project has a code of conduct, is also the era of record high market share of Linux based desktop operating systems.

inemesitaffia•6mo ago
The market share numbers you read are sus.

They are also significantly mostly Chromebooks, Steam Decks and TV's.

Also there's nothing wrong with masculinity of any form.

exe34•6mo ago
Could you mention a few of these "form"s?
komali2•6mo ago
The version of masculinity portrayed by early James Bond, slapping women at random, nothing wrong with that? The version used to convince hundreds of thousands of German men to give up their lives uselessly in WWI in some kind of manly imperialist crusade, nothing wrong with that?

As a man I completely reject these forms of masculinity. There are plenty of positive aspects of traditional western male culture we can trim out from the fat of historical toxic masculinity. We don't need to keep the terrible parts. They hurt us almost as much as they hurt others.

inemesitaffia•6mo ago
I see toxic masculinity as societal expectations/pressure.

Not anything any man whatsoever does in response to them or does in general. (A very problematic remaking of an idea.)

Good or bad.

It's always fascinating you don't see anything about toxic femininity from the people who push the idea of toxic masculinity being things that men do. They tell you it's internalized misogyny (is toxic masculinity internalized misandry? Some will say misandry doesn't exist). It's like the more modern idea that it's men, not patriarchy that oppresses. And that men aren't supposed to have any benefits regardless of evidence they are disadvantaged.

That's how you get “It’s not for further advantaging men. It’s really quite bizarre.” where men are a minority.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/08/sydne...

The idea that since men are privileged elsewhere or historically, supporting men today who aren't in any way is "quite bizarre".

Language in its plain form shapes us. That's why I won't take any slander of men or masculinity as ideas while there's cultural bars to doing that to others.

Masculinity is fine.

Antisocial behavior and the ideas that lead to it can be treated without using language that diminishes ones sex/gender or its expression.

This is why I always laugh at talk of representation. The foundational ideas are toxic.

komali2•6mo ago
Well at the very least you're thinking about it, that's refreshing.

Toxic masculinity isn't a word meant to diminish the very idea of masculinity, it's meant to describe the forms of it that hurt other people and men. E.g. "tough love" parenting hurts the son and robs the father in the future of a healthy and loving relationship with their son.

Toxic feminity is a concept but you correctly pointed out that it's tied to patriarchal ideology, it basically is a form of feminity that tries to validate patriarchy. The reason it isn't focused on misandry the way toxic masculinity is focused on misogyny, is because in western society, men and the culture of men had the vast majority of power. It's kinda similar to how one can certainly be prejudiced against white people in the west, but you'd have a hard time arguing for the existence of racism against white people in the west, since that word more describes prejudice with the weight of systems behind it. Thus the "n word" is "the n word" while saying "cracker" is generally fine or at least not nearly as socially unacceptable. Does that frustrate you as well? If so, it could be a good starting point for you to learn why your idea that we shouldn't be allowed to criticize "one side but not the other" is a bit wrong headed.

Anyway, so too does toxic masculinity and patriarchy describe something much larger than one man or one family.

If we hesitate to use these words because we're afraid of not being "both sides" enough or "fair," we're robbing ourselves of the opportunity to treat the root cause of, as you say, some antisocial behaviors. E.g. the incel movement is male-driven, the incels who got radicalized and driven to violence were all men, and incel culture latches on to the most toxic aspects of western male culture and uses it as their core ideology. If we want to analyze and perhaps "do something" about the incel movement, we have to be honest with ourselves about it and the history that led to it.

There is no feminine equivalent of this. There's incels that are women, but there's no massive internet movement that touches all aspects of culture and sometimes leads to school shootings. It's an issue of toxic masculinity, among other things, and feminine culture simply doesn't come into the picture. Shall we not talk about it until some more women have done school shootings for misandrist reasons?

That isn't inherently misandrist. You can talk about this without lumping all men into it, the same you can talk about the grave American crime of chattel slavery whole also including the abolitionists who sometimes put their lives on the line to resist it.

inemesitaffia•6mo ago
My browser has crashed twice. Maybe it's telling me not to respond but ultimately why would I hold my tongue when I'm free and don't agree? Everything is subject to criticism. Including the ideas of systemic anything and things were engineered not to say.

Unfortunately I have to cut my reply significantly. I addressed every issue before I lost but can't again

The idea both the current ideas and the word on its face itself aren't misandrist begger belief especially with the frequent rejection of gendered descriptions even when other genders are a stark minority. I ultimately reject ideas similar to or lead to "positive masculinity" because it's "progressive" traditional masculinity that only saddles men with gender roles.

komali2•6mo ago
That's extremely annoying when browser issues cause a message to get deleted. I'm so scarred from the same thing happening to me that I type my replies in an emacs scratch buffer and paste them into HN now. I'm interested in this conversation so I'm grateful you took the time to reply anyway. If you're very annoyed about the web ui, my email is in my bio.

It sounds like your critique is one opposed to the gender binary, because you aren't interested in saddling men with gender roles? That's very interesting if so, usually people interested in challenging the gender binary do so in part because of the toxicity around traditional gender roles.

Anyway, I don't think modern critique of toxic masculinity requires "saddling men" with anything that women aren't "saddled with" - simply a challenge to people, regardless of gender, to resist toxic gender roles. The talk around toxic masculinity is simply a reflection of the fact that in the West, men historically have had far more power, and our society still retains the leftover aspects of male culture from that, as well as of course the occasional case of modern misogyny.

I really feel like the thing you're concerned about is not happening, I'm wondering if perhaps your understanding of modern gender critique is a bit of a twitter caricature? Toxic masculinity isn't a misandrist term because not all men participate in toxic masculinity (that's the point...), it's just an accurate term to describe a male-sourced, male-centric culture.

How would you describe the fact that, in 1963, James Bond slaps a woman on screen, and is viewed as the "good guy?" That scene made it out of the writing room, in front of the director, into the hands of the actor, and then through editing and test screenings. To you, what does that say about society at the time, and how would you describe a culture that glorifies male violence against women?

Edit: thinking more on it I guess I'm confused about whether you're grocking that the existence of toxic masculinity implies also the existence of positive forms of masculinity: man as nurturer and protector, for example, or stoicism, dependability, and responsibility. Women can be that way too of course but I specifically mean the masculine portrayal of these traits in popular culture. How else do we describe the difference between the things we want to keep in our culture and the things we want to grow away from?

inemesitaffia•6mo ago
My critique starts from the labels themselves. The labels force a colocation in the minds of people about the people it's used to describe in a gender asymmetrical way.

Your description/definition doesn't match mine and I've given the reason above. and men indeed

I've also mentioned that men don't live in the history you keep bringing up.

I'm also not the sort to say and men like you did. Men as an afterthought. Never independently thought about but always in relation to some other entity. I always consider it a yellow flag unless the audience is politicians or "not men".

Men as men are whole without roles.

>man as nurturer and protector, for example, or stoicism, dependability, and responsibility

I'm supporting men regardless of the presence of these especially because others are supported without regard for virtue.

You warned earlier about things people can't say. I'm here saying them. (I believe PG has an essay)

In a world where someone in power can say this

“My snarky reaction always to that is: I never heard anyone talking about the desperate need for gender balance when women were so underrepresented,” Bigham said. “Really, it’s just when boys seem to be falling behind and suddenly it’s a thing. This whole argument that we need gender balance – there’s really very little to back it up.” without censure;

I feel compelled to speak out.

Below is stuff I'm repeating to answer your edit

"Antisocial behavior and the ideas that lead to it can be treated without using language that diminishes ones sex/gender or its expression." - me

"Language in its plain form shapes us. That's why I won't take any slander of men or masculinity as ideas while there's cultural bars to doing that to others."- me

komali2•6mo ago
> "Language in its plain form shapes us. That's why I won't take any slander of men or masculinity as ideas while there's cultural bars to doing that to others."- me

What I don't understand is what I perceive to be an unwillingness on your part to separate the toxic from the masculinity, toxic being an adjective describing the noun masculinity, so therefore, one form of masculinity.

Is this all just because you perceive this to be unfair for some reason? Are you a redpiller or men's right activist type? Do you believe it's unfair that white people can't say the n-word and black people can?

inemesitaffia•6mo ago
I love men and consider them whole regardless of their colour or societal standing. In the manner several other groups are loved. Not with gendered exceptions.

I'm black but don't use the N word. Or any other racial insult/epithet.

Go call other people's existence or yours toxic and stop pretending you don't know about word association and how that can cause prejudice.

These men are bad, they are assholes but people's actions aren't toxic masculinity. Men aren't to be referred to as "and"; by-products and afterthoughts. While other groups exist as wholes and are wholesome.

Toxic masculinity is 100% societal pressure on men to act in certain ways (you've seen an example from someone else in this thread[you]) and people who push claims that it's men's actions or response are the sort of people who write this:

“My snarky reaction always to that is: I never heard anyone talking about the desperate need for gender balance when women were so underrepresented,” Bigham said. “Really, it’s just when boys seem to be falling behind and suddenly it’s a thing. This whole argument that we need gender balance – there’s really very little to back it up.”

Or nod to it like lizards in full acceptance.

Real men indeed.

podunkPDX•6mo ago
My best mentors in the tech field (software QA, sysadmin) have almost all been women.
glenstein•6mo ago
>Why defend behavior that he himself has agreed is indefensible?

Great point and a great link. For someone not as fully immersed in the context of this history of Linus outbursts, I found this comment to be the most clarifying and important in the thread.

He's essentially being celebrated for behavior that, as you noted, he himself has agreed is indefensible. Just quoting from your link:

>This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me.

>I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry.

>The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely.

>I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately.

Impressively introspective, at least compared to the comments that are the topic of this thread. Fascinating how many people think they're taking Linus' side are taking a side that he wants nothing to do with.

JuniperMesos•6mo ago
This is obviously a famous "Linus gets mad" moment. Honestly, I think Linus' comments, while intemperate, were not super-unreasonable, and I think the amount of flak he got for this was unfair. It's better in some sense if you can express anger at a collaborator for making a bad technical decision that makes things harder for other people without telling them SHUT THE FUCK UP, but that kind of emotion is also pretty natural when you're working on something that you passionately care about. If I had made this kind of error in kernel code, and gotten yelled at by Linus about it, I would've felt appropriately chastised (as Mauro appears to have here), and wouldn't have held it against Linus.
overgard•6mo ago
When I first read this, back in 2012, I thought Linus' was kind of a dick for being so insulting about it. With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though -- sometimes developers will get hell bent on getting their PR through no matter how bad it is, and you almost have to be mean in order to get through to them. If you just pick at specific issues instead of saying "This is all bad, start again", sometimes you just waste a lot of time.

Also, to be fair I don't think I would know about this "We Do Not Break Userspace" rule if this hadn't been so famous at the time.

wahern•6mo ago
"Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights."

Credit: https://web.archive.org/web/20200909035546/https://diff.subs...

sedatk•6mo ago
404
wahern•6mo ago
Somehow I dropped the trailing 's'. Edited.
sedatk•6mo ago
Thanks! :)
chamomeal•6mo ago
That is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard lmao
ksec•6mo ago
>With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though

I am glad the pendulum is ( slowly ) swinging back.

andrewflnr•6mo ago
You don't need to be "mean" to make clear that a PR is fundamentally flawed. You can literally say, "the entire approach here is unacceptable, and we won't merge it or anything like it." No profanity, no personal insults, not even picking at ancillary details, just facts.
overgard•6mo ago
I think there's a lot of people that would find saying "the entire approach here is unacceptable" to be "mean" though. But I generally agree with your point of not making it a personal insult.
linusforthewin•6mo ago
There are different management techniques. Some focus purely on the thalamus and some engage the amygdala.

For example, maybe you work as a program coordinator in a liberal arts college, then you may target the thalamus- the center of logical reasoning. You explain to professors how the program you’re responsible for will advance some goal that seems logical though no one feels emotional about it.

Or maybe you’re a drill sergeant whose job it is to ensure that when soldiers are under duress in war, your barked commands and insults will be burned into their amygdala, their emotion center that handles fight or flight immediate responses and related fast and deep emotional memories, so that they will respond as trained instead of forgetting everything that was learned and running away, because that may not be as effective. Logic doesn’t play into decisions under duress.

Linus may have later decided that hurting others was not as helpful, but he wasn’t being a bad leader when he did and said what he felt he needed to at the time.

Sometimes it takes a little tough love to make things happen. Even Jesus had to overturn some tables.

anal_reactor•6mo ago
I have learned that number one rule of working in a corporation is "do not offend people". You can explain away a major delay. You can explain away an incident. You can explain away a project not being delivered at all. You can explain away all and any failure, but if you offend someone, you have a big problem. People's egos are extremely fragile, and it makes zero sense to risk even tiniest chance of conflict, unless your very job is at stake.

Seeing someone value a serious project higher than random guy's personal feelings is extremely refreshing.

> But you don't need to be mean

You don't need to be nice either

andrewflnr•6mo ago
> You don't need to be nice either.

...right, mostly. Being nice is nice, but the truth is more important. A corporation that could figure that out would run far better.

_nalply•6mo ago
Maybe. Maybe not. Given the human material (yes I know a dehumanizing formulation, but that's what Corporate does) it seems it's better not to step on anybody's toes except if it's abundantly clear that the person doesn't have a voice in things, but even then it's risky. Corporate is self-selecting: companies that don't generate profit die off sooner or later. Therefore we can conclude (if a bit shakily) from the norm in Corporate not to insult anybody that internal strife has been very damaging and therefore that Corporate self-selects in an evolutionary manner to avoid anything that leads to internal strife.
andrewflnr•6mo ago
That's giving evolution far too much credit. The same logic would tell you the appendix has some secret critical function.
_alternator_•6mo ago
It does. The appendix is probably a reservoir for repopulating your microbiome with a “backup copy” after particularly nasty stomach bugs.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12128343/

andrewflnr•6mo ago
I know. I said critical function for a reason. If you can remove it, it's not critical.

The point is, "but evolution" is a weak argument to justify any particular feature of an entity facing selection pressure. The laryngeal nerve detour would have been a better example but I wanted to stay accessible.

anal_reactor•6mo ago
I wouldn't say it has a good function on its own, but rather it's a mitigation strategy. People's fragile egos are a fact and this is not going to change anytime soon. So if you want to have a big organization, eventually you'll need to accommodate those who can't tolerate anything even remotely offending. Only organizations that aren't focused on growth can afford having a personality.
andrewflnr•6mo ago
> eventually you'll need to accommodate those who can't tolerate anything even remotely offending.

Nah, I don't want these people in my company. Speaking specifically, to be clear, of people who can't tolerate polite, precise correction. If I can't find enough reasonable people to grow, then that's fine. But honestly I think there are fewer of those people than you might think, given the right environment where (among other psychological safety factors) being proven wrong is fine and normal and genuinely does not require a counter attack.

tempnew•6mo ago
Should isn’t must.
ants_everywhere•6mo ago
Sometimes being a parent is like this too.

But I think the "don't break user space" rule would be more effective if it was very clearly stated and you could point to a doc that made it obvious to the committer that it was against policy.

Linus seems to have a strong internal sense of what the policy means, and he heaps on Monty Python style verbal abuse to get his point across. But while that's good at indicating how angry it is, it's not clear to me that it's the most effective way of reducing violations of the rule.

mycall•6mo ago
The main problem with "we don't break userspace" is that all general statements are false at some point. As what point is some specific instance considered by everyone incorrect that it doesn't get fixed? This is a strawman arg since I know it is simple enough to create new interfaces to bypass old problematic approaches and Linux is full of evolution.
mparnisari•6mo ago
I guess his comment is acceptable because this is OSS and it's not like he can get fired over it.

In a past employer I've left a PR comment with a much less aggressive tone, and the PR author messaged me saying "your message is unprofessional". Granted, it wasn't my best moment, I had snapped. But if I wrote something like what Linus wrote, i'd be insta-fired.

loeg•6mo ago
It's not really acceptable, and he's since been persuaded to make some strides towards more moderate tone.
adonovan•6mo ago
I saw this at the time, but reading it again now what struck me is how coolly his correspondent responded, without escalation, hurt, or resistance; and no-one else chimed in to confront the attitude. In other words, this kind of aggression was acceptable. It's a real sign of how things have changed--for the better. As you say, Linus has since made strides, and it's not as if he was the only one; I used to do it too (if not nearly as egregiously) until various people I respected called me out for it. Now I shudder to recall what passed for normal 20 years ago.
lacidar67•6mo ago
I recently had a coworker reach out to my tech lead to tell me that my very clearly noted DRAFT PR was "not collaborative". Dawg that's the entire point of git...
jaimex2•6mo ago
the only reply to that is 'that is your opinion'

Offence is taken, not given.

xelxebar•6mo ago
> unprofessional

This label is such a blatant Americanism. AFAICT it simply communicates a social threat for violating implicit cultural norms, shutting down communication, and carries virtually no useful content beyond that.

Communication takes two. If we want peers to take responsibility for their words and actions, then shouldn't we also take responsibility for our role in interpreting and reacting the same?

Some of the best work environments I've been part of allowed space for people to accept the fact that we're all human with human emotions. If someone blows up, maybe they're overstressed or maybe they're yelling at a kid about to get run over by a car.

arscan•6mo ago
Say what you will about the language, but I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to stick up for your users/customers, which is what Linus is doing here. It’s not ok to inconvenience them without an extraordinarily good reason to do so, and it absolutely is not ok to blame them.

I’m sure my reaction to this was different when I first read it many years ago. But now, I can strongly relate to the feeling behind these words.

xpressvideoz•6mo ago
> Btw, why pulseaudio is even trying to access a V4L2 control? I would expect an audio application to take care of its own audio business, and to not try to access other random Kernel APIs.

> In other words, only an application that handles video should be using those controls, and as far as I know, pulseaudio is not a such application. Or are it trying to do world domination?

Mauro's first response does seem a bit defensive, and reads like an attempt to justify his actions. It even feels a bit like an accusation against PulseAudio. I didn't know the exact context at the time, but now that I read the entire email, I think I'm getting why Linus was triggered.

sitzkrieg•6mo ago
very funny considering linux userspace is the most fragile thing imaginable
ethan_smith•6mo ago
The Linux userspace ABI has actually been remarkably stable for decades - that's why containers, ancient binaries, and compatibility layers like Wine work so reliably despite kernel changes underneath.
sitzkrieg•6mo ago
when was the last time you tried running a binary that was compiled against an ancient glibc?
FreakLegion•6mo ago
All the time, where ancient is, say, 15+ years old. I can't remember ever having an issue with it, unlike the reverse [1]. Even if there were issues, though, glibc's symbol versioning is a different beast than the Linux ABI.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31963255