Notices by Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Friday, 24-Jul-2026 18:23:12 JST 
Jonathan Corbet
"The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG’s webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user’s TV."
— Krebs https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/lg-to-ban-residential-proxies-from-smart-tv-apps/
Better late than never, I guess. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Friday, 24-Jul-2026 13:00:11 JST
Jonathan Corbet
GrapheneOS has a "duress code" feature that will wipe the device if it is used in an attempt to unlock it. A potentially useful feature, but the US is now trying to prosecute somebody for having given the duress code to an officer demanding the unlocking of his phone.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jul-2026 00:44:41 JST
Jonathan Corbet
I've been spending rather too much of my time reading the depressing threads on LLM use in the kernel. But I thought that this contribution from Lyude Paul worth the investment.
"For many people who need their jobs, guidelines around acceptable use of these tools beyond "a person needs to own the the code" may end up being the only thing allowing employees to be responsible with their contributions without repercussion from employers."
https://lwn.net/ml/all/3a5d891b536588e8e4fc84d60a5c8af72091d852.camel@redhat.com -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Monday, 29-Jun-2026 06:21:33 JST
Jonathan Corbet
The @lwn web site is currently under the most intense scraper attack I have seen yet. 1.3M unique IP addresses within the last couple of hours, and it's not done yet. The work we have done on defenses appears to be paying off, though; the server is holding up reasonably well — so far.
...just in case anybody wonders why I have a rather dim view of the whole AI industry... -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Monday, 23-Mar-2026 08:12:21 JST
Jonathan Corbet
As the number of LLM-generated patches in my inbox increases, I am starting to experience the sort of maintainer stress that has long been predicted. But there's another aspect of this that has recently crossed my mind.
Just over a week ago, a new personality showed up with a whole pile of machine-generated patches claiming to fill in our memory-management documentation. A few reviewers had some sharp questions, the response to which has been ... silence. This person doesn't seem to have cared enough about that work to make an effort to get past the initial resistance.
Once upon a time, somebody who had produced many pages of MM documentation would be invested enough in that work to make at least a minimal attempt to defend it.
Kernel developers often worry that a patch submitter will not stick around to maintain the code they are trying to push upstream. Part of the gauntlet of getting kernel patches accepted can be seen as a sort of "are you serious?" test.
When somebody submits a big pile of machine-generated code, though, will they be *able* to maintain it? And will they be sufficiently invested in this code, which they didn't write and probably don't understand, to stick around and fix the inevitable problems that will arise? I rather fear not, and that does not bode well for the long-term maintainability of our software. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Friday, 13-Mar-2026 02:37:47 JST
Jonathan Corbet
So somebody is really convinced that there is an SQL-injection vulnerability lurking in the LWN login form, and they have been employing a small botnet in a determined effort to find it. I'm not hugely worried about the attack, but I still find this kind of thing annoying. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Mar-2026 09:55:49 JST
Jonathan Corbet
Dan Simmons is gone.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/02/hyperion-author-dan-simmons-dies-from-stroke-at-77/
There are people saying that he was not an entirely pleasant person. I know nothing about that. I do know that I found the Hyperion series to be mind-blowing; I wish I could write like that. May he rest in peace. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Friday, 27-Feb-2026 03:41:07 JST
Jonathan Corbet
"This winter wasn’t just a bit warm or slightly unusual. It was a complete failure of the cold‑season that the West depends on, and the consequences will extend far beyond a lack of snow along Colorado’s Continental Divide. When winter fails this profoundly, the disruption radiates outward through every system that relies on the steady rhythm of cold, snow, and gradual melt. Water managers lose the natural reservoir that mountain snowpack is supposed to provide, leaving cities, farms, and entire states in the Colorado River Basin facing increasingly uncomfortable decisions about how to stretch a shrinking supply. Reservoirs that should be quietly refilling through winter will instead stumble into this spring underfilled, offering far less protection against the triple punch of summer heat, irrigation demand, and wildfire suppression. Millions of Americans who depend on the Colorado River will feel the consequences of this winter long after our snow-starved peaks fade from the headlines."
https://bouldercast.com/a-complete-failure-of-winter-across-the-west-and-what-it-means-for-the-rest-of-2026/
*sigh* -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 04:22:07 JST
Jonathan Corbet
@luis_in_brief Said milestone was reached in December, but I'm glad the world is catching up :)
https://lwn.net/Articles/1050174/ -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:30:35 JST
Jonathan Corbet
So let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that you were foolish enough to try to make a living by writing high-quality, well-researched, technical articles about Linux and free-software development. I know that's crazy, but bear with me. In such a scenario, how does one succeed in a world increasingly full of stuff like this?
https://www.webpronews.com/linux-7-0-looms-large-inside-the-landmark-kernel-release-that-could-reshape-open-source-computing/
(I'll post no more links to that site, I promise).
These folks appear to take the stuff we humans write, inject a bunch of errors, then slop it out to the world.
If you were to engage in the silly quest described above, you would find that what you do is increasingly buried in the flood of this kind of material. Does anybody have any bright ideas about how one might survive in such an environment? -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Thursday, 05-Feb-2026 06:01:37 JST
Jonathan Corbet
I got a phishy-looking text from LWN's bank asking me to confirm that I really wanted to spend over $2000 in a Minnesota shoe store. It turns out that it really was the bank, though. People who know me know that shoes are not one of my bigger budget items ... so, once again, somebody has leaked my card information.
Thus begins the whole process of disputing the charges, getting a new card, updating the recurring charges before things start bouncing, etc. Just what I was planning to do this day. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2026 06:32:18 JST
Jonathan Corbet
As of the last count, @lwn has been hit by 1.6 million unique IP addresses since yesterday morning. We have managed to stabilize the site against that level of attack, but it is still annoying.
If only we could get them all to subscribe.
I do find myself wondering if there isn't material for a good class-action lawsuit here. We are far from the only ones having to cope with this crap. I'm not normally much of a fan of the US class-action lawsuit machine, but extracting money from the Bright Datas of the world to make some lawyers richer doesn't sound like an entirely bad proposition. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Thursday, 22-Jan-2026 03:42:50 JST
Jonathan Corbet
For the curious, today's scraperbot attack on @lwn has run to well over 800,000 unique IP addresses in the last few hours.
We've made some tweaks that are holding it off for now, but it is ongoing and could go bad again at any time.
If you are a real user and are being turned away by the site, could you let me know what your user agent is? -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Jan-2026 12:40:59 JST
Jonathan Corbet
So somebody took a couple of LWN's recent conference articles, threw them into an LLM blender with some other stuff, and produced ... this ...
https://www.webpronews.com/linux-kernels-future-tab-integrates-rust-navigates-ai-boosts-collaboration/
Google News propagates that stuff - something they have long refused to do with LWN's original material. But somehow we're supposed to continue to exist to feed material into that machine?
Sorry, having a grumpy day. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Sunday, 21-Dec-2025 07:54:35 JST
Jonathan Corbet
Power is back on here. After two days without, one definitely appreciates the luxury of being able to flip on a light.
According to the official numbers, the peak wind gust in my neighborhood was 102mph. Suffice to say I didn't get my bike ride in yesterday... otherwise all seems well at this point, though.
[Now looking harder at vehicle-to-home power solutions.] -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Thursday, 18-Dec-2025 23:05:54 JST
Jonathan Corbet
I encountered this gathering in Japan; was really tempted to post it as another Maintainers Summit group photo but ... resisted ... -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Thursday, 11-Dec-2025 07:40:39 JST
Jonathan Corbet
So I took some grief yesterday about the "clickbait" headline on the brief Rust news I put up:
https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/
In person, though, I've gotten far more grief for adding the "(successful)" parenthetical afterward — folks say the original was better.
Oh well, I've learned to be more careful with headlines now.
Next article: Seven Shocking Conclusions from the Linux Plumbers Conference — but #4 will warm your heart. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Nov-2025 17:32:35 JST
Jonathan Corbet
In 2017 Randall Munroe posted a strip called "Seven Years" about being the caregiver for a loved one dealing with cancer:
https://xkcd.com/1928/
That strip literally made me cry, it was such a clear telling of what that experience is like; much of it could have been about my own life.
Except that my own experience had a different ending.
Today he put out "Fifteen Years":
https://xkcd.com/3172/
This one made me want to cheer. What a joy to see a story that has played out so differently, so much better. I have never crossed paths with Mr. Munroe, but I rejoice in his and his family's good fortune as if he were a good friend.
Here's to many more years. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Oct-2025 05:36:45 JST
Jonathan Corbet
For whatever reason, I seem to have ended up with a position high on the list of people who, somebody thinks, are desperate to borrow money for their company from random people who show up offering it. It's generally at least a half-dozen phone calls and texts per day, plus all of the emails.
I'm guessing the scam is something like "we'll wire you the money right away, just give us your account number", or "the financing is all lined up, we just need you to pay an administrative fee first". I am not curious enough to find out.
It sure would be nice if all those bozos would go away. -
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Jonathan Corbet (corbet@social.kernel.org)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Oct-2025 18:16:43 JST
Jonathan Corbet
There are days when I feel like I want to find a different world to live in; this post from Kevin Kelly has brought that feeling to the fore. Consider: Some authors have it backwards. They believe that AI companies should pay them for training AIs on their books. But I predict in a very short while, authors will be paying AI companies to ensure that their books are included in the education and training of AIs. Or perhaps...
If a book can be more easily parsed by an AI, its influence will be greater. Therefore many books will be written and formatted with an eye on their main audience. Writing for AIs will become a skill like any other, and something you can get better at. Authors could actively seek to optimize their work for AI ingestion, perhaps even collaborating with AI companies to ensure their content is properly understood, and integrated.Kevin has certainly consumed large amounts of Kool-Aid on this one. Personally, I plan to keep writing for humans, even if that is seemingly obsolete.
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