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from the do-you-have-update-for-my-boothole? dept.
Red Hat and CentOS systems aren’t booting due to BootHole patches:
Early this morning, an urgent bug showed up at Red Hat's bugzilla bug tracker—a user discovered that the RHSA_2020:3216 grub2 security update and RHSA-2020:3218 kernel security update rendered an RHEL 8.2 system unbootable.
[...] The patches were intended to close a newly discovered vulnerability in the GRUB2 boot manager called BootHole.
[...] Unfortunately, Red Hat's patch to GRUB2 and the kernel, once applied, are leaving patched systems unbootable. The issue is confirmed to affect RHEL 7.8 and RHEL 8.2, and it may affect RHEL 8.1 and 7.9 as well. RHEL-derivative distribution CentOS is also affected.
Red Hat is currently advising users not to apply the GRUB2 security patches (RHSA-2020:3216 or RHSA-2020:3217) until these issues have been resolved.
Ubuntu and Debian are also apparently affected.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 02 2020, @02:03PM (18 children)
Can the eds and mods do something about this, please? It's making the site really hard to read. Uzzard's fallacious ideas about what results in maximal freedom are what lead to this. We need some sane housekeeping rules.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday August 02 2020, @03:01PM (17 children)
Change your threshold to 1 - SPAM disappears! That is all you have to do. If you browse at 0 you are actually saying that you want to see the spam or any other comments that have not been deemed worthy of upmodding. Use your mod points wisely, You have all the control that you need and you have made a conscious decision to view everything posted at 0. It takes no more than 30 seconds to change your personal settings. What is the problem?
I think it is highly unlikely that we are going to rewrite the software just so that you don't have to change your viewing threshold. It isn't TMB's personal whim either - this has been frequently discussed by all of the staff and more widely by the community. You have the means to moderate comments and to select what you view,
If you are simply unable to manage APK's posts then it seems he has, in your case, won the battle. Don't let him. Just moderate his posts as SPAM, change your threshold, and ignore him.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday August 02 2020, @04:31PM (2 children)
At the current level of spamming, it's still at least distracting, because it leaves the pages looking like this:
+ Comment Below Threshold
+ Comment Below Threshold
+ Comment Below Threshold
+ Comment Below Threshold
Here's an interesting comment.
+ Comment Below Threshold
+ Comment Below Threshold
+ Comment Below Threshold
Here's another comment worth reading.
I personally do browse at 0 and expand most of the -1 comments as well as there are often many insightful comments there.
When there's a lot of spam on the site, moderating it takes up a lot of time that could be used for intelligent discussion, so it can absolutely become a distraction.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday August 02 2020, @06:12PM (1 child)
But censorship is not the correct response for a 'distraction'. Who decides what is acceptable - a religious extremist, a politician, the Chinese government, the most wealthy, a tinpot dictator, white supremacists? With moderation - WE, the community, decide what is acceptable on our site.
APK's posts might be easily recognisable as Spam, but who gets to decide the cases that aren't as obvious?
Yes, many of the posts piss me off too, but the USA has a principle of freedom of speech. We chose to host this site in the USA to take advantage of that very fact amongst others. I used to have to browse at 0 as an active editor, but I found that scrolling past unwanted comments and moderating up the comments worth reading was a small price to pay to keep that freedom.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday August 08 2020, @04:12AM
I share the view that some other Soylentils have expressed recently (and TMB appears to share) which is that once the same text is being posted multiple times at close intervals (or text which appears to differ only to evade a spam filter), blocking or removing the redundant comments don't impinge upon freedom of speech in any meaningful way in the context of this discussion forum, provided the original comment is left intact.
The community, of course. Part of the reason APK's posts caused so much discussion is they were widely perceived to have crossed a line, suggesting that they should perhaps be dealt with differently to the less obvious cases. TMB talked about the prospect of implementing filters to block them, for example.
One suggestion I would make is to have an option to move all posts below a certain score to the bottom of the page, or better still, to a separate page that's not even downloaded to the client unless you open the link. That would have stopped the Spam filling up the page and making the other comments harder to read and it's still not censorship because you're not deleting it and all users can still read it if they want to.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 02 2020, @08:36PM (13 children)
Okay Janrinok, then I want a concession from the admin team: carte blanche to mod ANYTHING like that he posts Spam, no fucking "hurr hurr the posts weren't exactly identical have a 30 day mod-ban!" horseshit either. He's abusing the system and you lazy fucks won't implement the obvious fix, so give us the tools to do it ourselves and don't stand in our way.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 03 2020, @07:27AM (12 children)
The person being lazy is YOU. You can moderate comments as Flamebait, Troll or Spam, depending on which is the appropriate moderation. But apparently you cannot do this difficult task. You don't need a carte blanche - but to prevent moderation abuse you must be prepared to justify why you have used the moderation that you have. Remember that once a comment is moderated as either Flamebait or Troll it has to be modded UP again before it can be tagged as Spam. If you are unsure if the Spam moderation is justified then come up on IRC and ask. You might not get an immediate answer - we all have more important things to do than worry about what APK is posting - but you will get an answer. Count how many of APK's posts have been marked as Spam over the weekend, and then tell me who has been banned for making those moderations please.
You have the ability to change your viewing threshold. But apparently this is also too difficult for you. Nobody else cares what viewing threshold you choose so you needn't worry about having to justify your choice. If you view at 0 then you are actually saying you want to see every post - even the Spam, Troll and Flamebait posts.
Thirdly, you probably have a scroll wheel on your mouse. Try scrolling past the comments that have no interest for you. APK's Spam is easily recognisable so it isn't a very hard thing for you to do. I risk being repetitive but again this seems to be beyond your mouse manipulation abilities.
What is this 'obvious fix' that you refer to? The ability for you to personally choose what is said on this forum? Some way of enforcing a specific group-think that accords with your own views and opinions? What more do you need other than the tools that have already been provided? You also seem to be under the impression that the current way of doing things is all the fault of TMB - you are wrong. It has been discussed all the way from our community to the board that oversees our operations. Your 'better way' does not seem better to all of us. We could insist on people logging in before posting but that would only result in a flood of sock puppets and use-then-discard accounts. It would also prevent many insightful comments and expression of interesting views being made by our AC members.
Finally. you are letting APK get to you. You have given him the reaction that he wanted. Your inappropriate language in the post to which I am replying indicates that he has got under your skin. Your inability to ignore somebody who is totally irrelevant in your life has given him the satisfaction that he seeks. Now he is more likely to pick on you again and again, along with any new targets that appeal to his feeble intellect.
So to make it clear in terms that you will understand: You already have the tools to fix SPAM comments - you are unwilling or unable to use them. Neither I nor anyone else is standing in your way..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @11:50PM (1 child)
Let me run another fix up the pole:
Currently, if a post gets moderated to - 1, it can't be moderated lower, albeit a post can be moderated as high as +5.
Is it practical to have a - 2 level, which Only a spam moderation can assign, with the present limitations of the requisite "karma" at risk for abusers of the spam mod?
I still like to read at - 1. Many posts are indeed off topic, trolls, or flame bait, but interesting nevertheless.
Any given post will require two - 1 mods to knock it to -2 (spam), with the last moderation has to be spam, with significant karma loss for abuse.
And have you guys have a log showing the spam posts. Just to verify abuse.
I like the idea of empowering us to crowdsource some of the janitorial duties around here. Many hands make for light work. And besides, we've already invested the time to read and classify the content, and it's no big thing to tag it so everyone else doesn't have to wade through it.
You will probably have to limit how many posts per hour that any AC can post from IP subnets. I get the idea this could easily erupt into another gnaa war, and the only way I see out is to make it time consuming to post, then that which got up doesn't stay up.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:17PM
It is a reasonable suggestion - lets see what others think. Thank you.
We can already see who is moderating whom.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:01AM (9 children)
Hey, earth to the Sultan of the Peoples' Republic of Dipfuckistan! Check my mod history--I know you can do that--and see where my Spam mods have been landing!
The obvious solution is a smarter lameness filter, and it shouldn't be *too* hard to build one with a heuristic that can train on previous samples. Isn't this how SpamAssassin and company work to begin with?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:12PM
If it is that easy - let us know when you have finished writing it and we will begin testing it. Remember that it must stop Spam but nothing else, and it should be fully automatic to meet your specification.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:22PM (7 children)
When you get this abusive it is usually a sign that you have run out of sensible things to say and you are losing, or have already lost, the argument. This is possibly why APK and others pick on you, please try not to over react.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:43PM (1 child)
You must be new here. That's Azuma's normal civil communication. Wait until she gets pissed off!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 05 2020, @06:15AM
I suppose I am fairly new - just look at my ID number..... :-)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 05 2020, @02:33AM (4 children)
Let me know when you're making an actual argument then. Because all I got was "Use what's there." "That's not working, that's my point." "USE WHAT'S THERE DON'T BE LAZY." I deal with enough obstructive bureaucrats on a daily basis that my patience for this is on about the same scale as a water flea's pubic hair.
I haven't forgotten our previous clashes and remain as unimpressed with you now as then. You're hiding behind "professionalism" and an exaggerated adulation of the letter of the law over the spirit to avoid doing the things necessary to keep a community clean. I'm sure "the council" did indeed decide as a whole to have things the way they are--that tells us nothing about why, though, or whose opinions carried the most weight. And "the council" might want to reconsider some of their bedrock assumptions, especially in light of potential challenges to Section 230.
Uzzard's already floated the idea of modifying the lameness filters. Now, anything with an even remotely greedy heuristic is bound to get false positives, so it may be wise if possible to have comments with suspicious filter scores flagged for analysis rather than outright deleted?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 05 2020, @06:40AM (3 children)
If there is a bug that prevents you from changing your threshold, or it has no effect when you do change it, then please raise a bug report. It seems to be working for everyone else.
Fortunately I am not a bureaucrat so this comment is totally meaningless. But I can tell you how to stop seeing the Spam when you view the site. It is the same for everyone, so I doubt that we are going to do a major rewrite the software just for you., but it might happen. I do not like the Spam, but I am quite capable of scrolling past it when it occurs.
Modifying the lameness filters is far different than writing Bayesian analysis of every comment to ensure that something that offends you is removed. The latter is a major task. We have 1 programmer. He is busy. But pay me my daily rate I will gladly do it for you. As for the 'false positives', many of your comments would not get through a filter because you regularly resort to inappropriate language, personal insults and invective. And when comments do not appear - or are subsequently removed - the users get very angry about censorship' We have not nor will not condone censorship unless forced to do so by a legally sound instruction from an appropriate judicial authority.
BINGO - this is exactly what we already have. The community flag up suspicious comments and they can be tagged as Spam. Why didn't we think of that?! - Oh, that's right, we did. We currently have the best filters available - the members of our community. They are a smart bunch on the whole and they can spot Spam easily, and they are skilled in clicking the relevant buttons to flag it as such. Well, most of them can anyway - User 5086 seems to be experiencing a few problems but I'm sure she will eventually work it out for herself.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 07 2020, @03:41AM (2 children)
You were doing fine until that last paragraph. Go fuck yourself.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 07 2020, @01:03PM (1 child)
It seems my sense of humour is better developed than your own.
But don't take my word for how to fix the 'problem' that you are having - this is from Martyb [soylentnews.org]:
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 09 2020, @02:52PM
Yeah, I did this shortly after registering. First thing I did was go into the control panel and twiddle the knobs. Missing the point here, and deliberately, I suspect...but then that's been my experience with you so no surprise there :/
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...