- Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.
- Torvalds was once rumored to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, but he clarified it was a joke and denied owning a Bitcoin fortune.
- Torvalds also dismissed the idea of technological singularity as a bedtime story for children, saying continuous exponential growth does not make sense.
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero. I’m thinking here also of his rant not long ago on social.kernel.org (a kernel devs microblog instance) that was essentially a pretty good anti-anti-leftism tirade in true Torvalds fashion.
EDIT:
Torvalds’s anti-anti-left post (I was curious to read it again):
I think you might want to make sure you don’t follow me.
Because your “woke communist propaganda” comment makes me think you’re a moron of the first order.
I strongly suspect I am one of those “woke communists” you worry about. But you probably couldn’t actually explain what either of those words actually mean, could you?
I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with.
And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race. So please just unfollow me right now.
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero.
It’s just that almost everyone else that could do it ended up being fucking ghouls of people.
Torvalds can be… brusque, sure. But he doesn’t support child labor, he doesn’t cheat on his wife, and he isn’t some crazy cult leader waging a war against workers’ rights.
Another interesting thing to consider.
To be clear, he is rich. But he’s not crazy crazy rich, like nowhere near billionaire status.
With that in mind, his kernel is a key component of RedHat’s, SuSE’s and Canonical whole business, with at least two of those being multi billion dollar businesses.
His kernel is a key component of Android phones, which represent over 50 billion a year in hardware spend, and a bunch of software money on top of that.
His kernel is foundational to most hosting/cloud services with just mind blowing billions of revenue quarterly.
It’s used in almost every embedded device on the planet, networking gear, set top boxes, thermostats, televisions, just nearly everything.
People with a fraction of that sort of relevance are billionaires several times over. A number of billionaires owe much of their success to him. Yet he is not among their numbers.
Now there’s more to things than just a kernel to be sure, but across the hundreds of billions of dollars made while running Linux, there was probably plenty of room for him to carve out a few billion for himself were he that sort of person, but he cares about the work more than gaming the dollars. I have a great deal of respect for that.
Means that while he may not always be right, but I at least believe his assessments are sincere and not trying to drive some grift or cover some insecurity about being left behind.
gitis a way more important contribution to the world that the linux kernel IMO. Its basically the assembly line of almost all modern software production. And Linus actual wrote most of the initial code for it. With Linux he organized the project but was almost immediately not a major contributor. He developed git in the process of maintaining the linux repo.I disagree. Git is great but we’d have done fine with Subversion or whatever. Could you imagine the whole internet running on Windows Server though? The thought alone makes my skin crawl.
Free software would be just using freebsd or whatever, it wouldn’t be that different
You probably need to learn a bit more about VCS fundamentals if you think Subversion would’ve been fine.
I’m old enough to remember the SVN days (he’ll, even the CVS and…dare I say it… source safe days).
Git is fantastic. It’s pretty universally uses because it’s the best dvcs out there and it’s free. It wipes the pants with the likes of mercurial.
In certain industries (such as gaming) there’s still a strong hold by perforce but we can ignore that as it’s proprietary and a bit specialised.
Anyway, as great as git is for making things easier and cleaner when dealing with distributed development, it by no means makes something impossible “possible” - it just makes it a hell of a lot easier.
The Linux kernel on the other hand enabled a lot of impossible things. Remember back in the day there wasn’t anything free and open source in the operating system world, it was all proprietary and licensed. If you wanted to create your own operating system, you basically had no option but to spend a fortune either writing your own kernel or licensing someone else’s (and the licensing part means you cannot distribute it for free).
The fact that the FSF has always wanted to write their own OS and never been able to achieve it without the Linux Kernel, in spite of them essentially writing “everything else” that makes up an operating system, shows just how nontrivial this is.
Well, I don’t know what you mean, so possibly? I just briefly used SVN in a small team for about half a year and would never claim to be an expert. It’s alive and kicking though, so regardless what you say I don’t believe it’s a complete clusterfuck and a world without git would be doomed.
Can’t two things both be important in different ways? Why must we always relativise?
git is why we can’t have nice things
There’s many better VCS, but everyone just goes on GitHub and uses git.
I dread ever having to touch it. The CLI is unintuitive, the snapshot system is confusing, and may God have mercy on your soul if you mix merging and rebasing
Well, I think Linus Torvalds is one of the rare rich people who actually “deserves” being rich.
I think the main motive behind leftism should be stopping 8 people from owning the 50% of the world’s wealth, not to distribute Linus Torvalds’ 50 million dollars which a well deserved amount of wealth for someone who created the OS which runs the modern world.
Besides, what Linus owns is not even a droplet compared to billionaires like Bezos, Musk or Bill Gates
I think it’s a shining example of the ‘right’ sort of rich. Despite a significance that overwhelmingly exceeds usual billionaire level, he’s not nearly so ‘rich’ and yet he has enough to just not worry about money, but he has earned it.
Yea. It’s almost like caring about your craft and being motivated chiefly to just make good things and fix things … aren’t terrible character traits?!?
he doesn’t cheat on his wife
he doesn’t cheat on his wife so far.
Well, we all know he beats his wife…
…in monopoly! Give me those brown properties!!!
Healthy relationships have ridiculous hall-passes that share at least one person in common.
He’ll live long enough to end up on the wrong side of the polygamy rights fight. But I’d like to be surprised.
I imagine he will be an old and gray man and someone will ask him his opinion and it will probably be like
What? Are you fucking with me? I didn’t give a shit what people did behind closed doors 40 years ago, what fuckin made you think I would care now? Are you fucking mental? Did your daddy not love you enough? Get the fuck out of here, your making my blood pressure spike…
Polygamy: Mormons, etc. generally opposes womens rights.
Polyamory: Ideally places noone above another, elevates everyone to have the healthy connections such that noone is a “3rd wheel” or more disposable. Less about “polycules” recruiting new members, and more about individuals pairing with new partners, and existing partners (initially at least) gaining a metaphor. Mileage may vary and the point is everyone’s needs are a bit different and shouldnt feel pressured to fit neatly into a nuclear box.
Just fyi.
He just seems frustrated. And I respect that. I’m a nerd who’s often frustrated as well.
I remember this. That was a great day to be on the internet.
I wonder what direction the Linux kernel will go once he’s gone. Obviously it will continue to go on and Torvalds should get a statue somewhere if he doesn’t already have one.
I don’t follow thinigs closely at all, but I’m under the impression he’s already starting to kinda take his hands off of the wheel? If so, maybe that picture is emerging now, at least behind the scenes.
Linus hasn’t written kernel code in years at this point, however he still is the final gate keeper of what gets merged and an active code reviewer, he manages the entire direction of the project.
As of what will happen when Linus passes, that’s already been decided. The position of projects leader will go to his most trusted project co-maintainer, which we have a good idea of who that is.
For the uninformed, who is that?
There are a few candidates, the most prominent are probably :
- Greg Kroah-Hartman: Played a pivotal role in stabilizing the memory management subsystem and enhancing block I/O performance, both critical areas for system stability and performance.
- Sarah Sharp: Instrumental in the development and maintenance of the networking subsystem and the ARM architecture code, ensuring compatibility and efficient networking for various ARM-based devices.
- Git Junio Hamano: Maintainer of Git, the version control system that underpins Linux development. His leadership in maintaining Git ensures smooth collaboration and efficient code management for the vast kernel developer community.
Greg Kroah-Hartman is speculated to be the most likely candidate, but it also depends on a few factors. Like, if Linus dies suddenly vs dying slowly or just stepping down, there’d be a big difference in selection process.
Ofc, things may change in the future and there’s many other talented developers who can be considered. Nothing is set in stone.
Thanks for the details. With things heading more and more towards arm architecture I’m surprised Sarah Sharp isn’t the leading candidate. But this is all new to me so what do I know lol
It’s not like she couldn’t win, she has some serious stake in it. Consider her achievements and read the following :
Here are some key qualities a potential successor should possess :
- Deep understanding of the Linux kernel: Intimate knowledge of the kernel’s codebase, architecture, and development process is essential.
- Proven leadership skills: The ability to effectively guide a large team of developers with diverse technical backgrounds and priorities.
- Strong communication and collaboration: Excellent communication skills to bridge the gap between developers, and foster a collaborative development environment.
- Technical merit and reputation: A well-established reputation within the Linux community for technical contributions and code quality.
- Vision for the future: A clear vision for the future direction of the kernel, ensuring it remains relevant and innovative.
I’d say she meets most if not all of them. All of the potential candidate’s are amazingly talented and determined individuals.
He did rule that Rust can be included in the kernel code a bit ago, but IIRC that’s the last big thing he did with Linux as of late.
They should do something like GNU from discworld in the code.
That guy seems pretty rad.
Yeah, I would say he has stayed in line with Finnish politics based on how I know of them
Chaddiest Chad to ever Chad
I have an hard time disagreeing with his post. What exactly outrages you? The stances on Trans rights, religion or gun control? Or maybe the fact that “woke” has no definition whatsoever (you may just say “you are a c*t” with the same intended effect)
That said, i share much more often Linus’ opinions than Elon Musk, Besos, Picai combined. Even in the open source community he is the most reasonable and balanced person, imo.
Should he take a “public speaking 101” course? Heck yeah! Does he make less of a reasonable person? Heck no!
Are you replying to the right comment?
Its good to see some antileftism once in a while. We need some other perspectives. I didn’t think we’d get it from Linus but here we are.
You might want to re-read that.
You don’t know what you’re on about and you cannot read.
WHOOOOSH
Smart man!
Holy shit, the crypto bros are really triggered by this, out in full force in the comments. If the only argument you can bring for crypto is that you make/made money on it, that sounds a lot like a Ponzi scheme
It is a Ponzi scheme. Very clearly one. How that garbage is legal, I will never know. I could have gotten into crypto from the ground floor eons ago and made tons of money but I didn’t because I knew it was illegal and figured the whole thing was going to collapse as soon as governments found out about it. Imagine my shock when most legitimized the damn thing. Still wouldn’t bother even if I could go back and do it again knowing the brain dead, money-greedy idiots are going to legalize a literal Ponzi scheme because I have values and morals.
Yeah, it’s relatively easy to make good money in crypto if you understand investing. There are a lot of things that are illegal in regulated securities markets that are not yet illegal with crypto.
I intentionally don’t invest in crypto, because it doesn’t produce anything. Any money you make is just taken from another investor, usually because they don’t know what they’re doing. When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers. Something is created and rarely are people cheated.
The people investing in crypto are intentionally cheating uninformed investors in a way that is not possible in regulated securities markets.
When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers.
You mean, executives with “fiduciary responsibility” take extremely irresponsible actions to “maximize shareholder profits” and gut the company that produces those products such that the product is minimally viable, borderline shit, and might even kill the end user (Boeing, Tesla, GE, etc etc). Oh and jobs and the economy are on the line too, so that’s great.
All of that is way more productive than crypto because something actually gets produced. Crypto is literally only gambling and scams, plus it’s bad for the Earth. And I have nothing against gambling, it’s the fact that vulnerable people lose tons of money thinking it’s an investment.
Plus actual gambling is way more fun.
intentionally don’t invest in crypto, because it doesn’t produce anything. Any money you make is just taken from another investor, usually because they don’t know what they’re doing. When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers. Something is created and rarely are people cheated.
Isn’t that the same as investing in any currency?
No one is investing in regular currencies. You’re supposed to use it to buy stuff.
How many people got in early, made some money, lost it all getting scammed or just making bad choices, and will spend the rest of their lives chasing that dragon? How many drunks are at some bar right now talking about how much money they could have made if they had waited to sell, or how much their nft portfolio is gonna be worth when the market rebounds?
Fully agree. I think there exist both good and scammy-bubble types of blockchain and crypto. Crypto can be a scam, memecoin rugpull, ponzi scheme, …etc, but it can also be the peer-2-peer decentrilized self-custody borderless international currency of people away from governments manipulation, inflation, banks and middlemen, which is something that has its own advantages and negatives as we’ve seen it with criminals, tax evation and money laundering, but also used by people fleeing war zones after their banking come down and escaping trumbling government fiats. However, it also needs regulations and the protections of world governments to work but also claims to want governments and regulations off.
To clarify my position honestly, I think blockchain programming is here to stay but today 99% of it including BTC could be the scammy bubble type and does not represent or have most of the therotical advantages of the bitcoin’s original white paper which I listed above.
I mean not to mention the ridiculous amount of electricity it uses, and heat generated. but hey it’s low priority even though every year lately is the hottest in record.
For clarification. To my understanding, the older cryptographic currencies use an immense amount of power (Proof of Work). But newer models have solved that issue by switching to a Proof of Stake model instead.
The modern tech industry needs the old Linus to pay it a visit. Too many grifts
I for one would love for Linus, probably Woz, and a third party yet to be decided(this would be Aaron Schwartz in a better world) to be given free reign to gut the whole industry and rebuild it into something isn’t wholly based on ad revenue and grift
Edit: a bunch of good suggestions of people I need to read about for position three. If anyone can think of a digital equivalent to Marshall McLuhan I think we desperately needs input of that sort
Maybe Cory Doctorow?
I definitely considered just saying him outright but I don’t know quite enough about him outside of a few articles I’ve read to be certain I wanted to be so bold
Be so bold.
I feel like he’s definitely the person to sit in Schwartz’s seat.
Old Linus with Woz and Schwartz is a dream.
I understand why Linus wanted to clean up his act with people he works with. That is a good and admirable thing to do. I wish he would have kept his smoke for companies though.
I wonder if those three would get along. Collaborative chemistry can be an elusive thing, even if the individuals’ principles are mostly aligned.
Either way, I’ll bet it would be interesting.
It’s certainly possible they wouldn’t get along, I feel like their shared enthusiasm for tech, plus the fact that Woz can get along with even the largest and stinkiest of assholes would help
I’ve never met Woz, but yes, I’ve long had the impression that his humility and sincerity reach depths seldom seen in humans, let alone in tech. Sadly, I also suspect these traits have made him easy to take advantage of in the past.
You are very correct, and even sadder the state of tech today is very much a result of the success of his primary exploiter
Ballmer, for comedy relief
And coke.
John Gilmore is around
Bill Joy.
Stallman.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Stallman, is in fact, GNU/Stallman, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Stallman. Stallman is not a man unto himself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
I lack the creativity, but someone please come up with a recursive acronym for Stallman.
All you need to do is make the
Sstand for “Stallman”, and you’ll get a stack overflow before ever reaching the other letters (so you don’t need to think of a value for them).Asked ChatGPT
Stallman Tenaciously Advocates Liberation, Leading Movements Against Non-freedom
The only possible correct answer
No matter what crazy shit he says, give it a few years and he will be right . And I really hate that
Richard stallman is the only answer.
I really hate everything he says, but so far on a lot enough timescale he has been fucking right about everything
I fucking hate that the crypto currency ghouls have captured the word “crypto”. When I first read this I was wondering why in the fuck would Linus not like cryptography. My brain is old and crypto will always mean cryptography.
We just got to wait it out. Gods willing, it’ll come back to meaning cryptography again.
Still waiting for the Swastika/Manji to be de-nazified. Probably not gonna see it in my lifetime, unfortunately.
Behind the Bastards had a great few episodes about how a group of indigenous Americans chose to give up their sacred symbol that looked like a swastika because of the Nazis. Pretty sad but i guess fascists ruin everything.
Absolutely. That’s why I always write “crypto-tokens” instead. It’s a bit longer and more annoying to write but I feel we owe it to the respectable field of cryptography.
I’m still a student, same for me.
deleted by creator
If after 16 years you still have to be asked if you believe in crypto, then chances are that it is a scam.
Good point, I always wondered if there is a way the technology will evolve and somehow find a niche that’s unexpected. But you’re right, 16 years is a long time to be meandering.
It’s such a first-world thing to not understand all the good that crypto has done. There are countless lives that have been financially saved by having a safe place to hold wealth while their countries’ fiat collapsed. It’s just a short matter of time until many first world folks understand this as well.
Sounds like the same shit those rare metal guys are always yapping about but with extra scams…
Yeah, probably, don’t worry about it, it’s all a bit complex so probably all just the same thing, who knows. No way to tell really. You’ll be fine without digging too deep into this stuff, it’s difficult to understand.
Yeah I don’t believe in smartphones, I just have one. I don’t believe in crypto, I acknowledge it’s pointless.
For all the reasons that crypto is a scam, every “value” stock - stock which does not now, and never has any intention of ever paying dividends - is also a scam.
Behind a value stock is a profitable company. Behind crypto-tokens is a hilariously inefficient database with no application in real life.
Gamble away your money, I’ll take the stock - or “have fun staying poor” like crypto-token morons like to say.
Lolok
Its just a big money laundering scheme
And/or a fucking casino
A bad one, at that. I think the reason many governments are going with it is because it’s far less untraceable than some idiots like to believe.
So you are saying more than the population of the United States as money launderers because somewhere between 400 and 550 million people use cryptocurrency. I kind of doubt they are all money launderers.
Why not? Couldn’t crypto be enabling money laundering on a massive scale?
This one is a bit old, but… https://medium.com/@MUBC/privacy-coins-debunking-myths-about-illegal-usage-9150c49a31a7
I can’t find it at the moment, but I saw a report for 2023 or 2024 that something like 0.4% of all crypto transactions are illicit activity. So that would mean roughly 1.9 million people use it for such activity, which is a far cry from 400 million.
Oh yeah? Then explain this!! /s
👏.
👏.
👏.
Based
Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.
Is it not clear which definition of Crypto he’s using?
Linus coming out against cryptography seems so unrealistically silly to me that it’s not even worth considering.
The security of Linux 2000 will be based entirely on steganography, Linux founder announces
good luck, I’m sure this comment will change how everyone talks from now on.
Crypto means hidden, stop using it to talk about cryptography.
Linus creates kernels. Nothing to do with cryptocurrency. Tech is tech, but I wouldn’t necessarily listen to him about other things than kernels and computers. For example, he doesn’t even believe in FOSS, and he openly supports Google because of Android, Chromebooks and ChromeOS using Linux.
Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.
To be fair, that’s because Crypto is a vehicle for scams, and a Ponzi scheme.
Crypto is just a waste of resources, similar to AI
Ai has function. Unlike crypto
You projecting about you
POS does not consume resources.
This goes to show how low-effort the criticism campaigns are.
However… all cryptos have their health tied to bitcoin which is a large energy consumer. So the point is actually still very true (due to some other reason).I think both have their uses. A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful. Crypto as it is now not so much.
AI has a bunch of useful applications in medicine, manufacture, research, monitoring… But where we see it is language models, art remixes, and deep fakes.
Nah it’s literally a waste of physical resources. Crypto currency is a waste of fossil fuels. AI has its functions at least.
Proof of stake uses a load less than proof of work.
Be really good if currencies could go in and out of crypto. Could cut out a lot of middle men.
again, what use does it serve over traditional banking?
even PoS requires a lot of resources in comparison, for a system that literally exists to funnel money to a smaller group of people
Advantages of cash and digital, without the swings of raw crypto. Also leaving the ability to usefully manipulate your country’s currency.
Crypto means easy, open payment systems. No gatekeepers like WorldPay.
like any true Liber-crypto-bro-tarian, your understanding of crypto is only undercut by your understanding of economics
Manipulating currency is a useful tool. If you don’t think so, that makes you more liberian than me.
Like many here, I’m big into open source, and card payment systems are an issue. Crypto is one solution to that. Crypto has advantages, but it falls down as a currency because of blind faith in the invisble hand.
I literally can’t transfer money to Kazakhstan without paying $50 for a wire.
Is this going to be the most replied to post on the Fediverse? 635 in 2 days and still going strong.
Edit: since it’s now at 666 replies, please nobody make any more comments
He is just like me. I don’t mess with the chucky cheese token money.
