University of Minnesota Banned from Contributing to the Linux Kernel for Submitting Nonsense Fixes for a Research Project

[FakeNSA]

On 4/21/2021 at 1:33 PM, HarryNyquist said:

Oh my god, they got their IRB to think this wasn't "human research"

 

Someone is getting fired for this. Lmao

Honestly, that's what gets me: The IRB process in this institution should have caught this months before the research even began.

Massive screwup on their part.

[LAwLz]

I would liken this to a car mechanic shop deciding "let's disengage the handbrake on every fifth car we service without telling anyone, and let's see how long it takes before people notice".

 

Absolutely a horrible idea, and it's a stupid point to prove as well. 

[CarlBar]

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

This isn't a joke, people use the Linux kernel for all sorts of things that sometimes involve risks to human life - intentionally introducing bugs without telling anyone is extremely bad.

 

This, if anyone had died because of a fault induced by this code then every single researcher is on the hook for manslaughter.

[Chiyawa]

On 4/22/2021 at 2:56 PM, AnonymousGuy said:

Could side rant for a while about how graduate programs are basically diploma mills nowadays for foreigners.   No shortage of people in my job who have graduate degrees and are functionally at about a high school level in the subject.  "Seriously you have a masters degree in electrical engineering and you can't even explain ohm's law?!"

Last time, education is more of a 'study hard, study smart, pass the exam, get the certification'. These days, it's more of a 'pay to get certificate'. Even at the past decade, you can see that an Intel engineer doesn't know how to differentiate DDR and DDR2 RAM in a desktop PC environment. Education is being plague by greedy corporation. A university is just a corporation. Elementary and high school is nothing more than institution driven by money making motives.

[n0stalghia]

19 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The thing is they didn’t.  They proved a much smaller thing which was that patches from academia are often vetted less closely.  Which was not news. This isn’t unreasonable, because there are normally much larger repercussions  for doing this sort of thing in academia than other places. As example of this they may have flushed their academic careers. This is WHY it reminded me of that acorn thing.  It also reminds me of push polling. 

Ah right, this is a good point. They only proved it for university e-mail addresses.

[spartaman64]

22 hours ago, n0stalghia said:

But it worked, right? Unless they published that paper, nobody would've known - so I guess they have proven their point. 

 

Would probably have been smarter to insert nonsensical code that does nothing to show that quality control is horrendous, but I guess then a point could be made that "we only check for security issues and not quality control so that's why this was allowed to be merged"

idk i feel like the whole premise of the paper is a bit disingenuous because of course a submission by a university would be less scrutinized than a submission from a random person. if they really wanted to do an experiment on this they should have submitted as a random person instead of from their university account

[Bombastinator]

6 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

Last time, education is more of a 'study hard, study smart, pass the exam, get the certification'. These days, it's more of a 'pay to get certificate'. Even at the past decade, you can see that an Intel engineer doesn't know how to differentiate DDR and DDR2 RAM in a desktop PC environment. Education is being plague by greedy corporation. A university is just a corporation. Elementary and high school is nothing more than institution driven by money making motives.

You seem to be making some very profound accusations.  You seem to be saying A publicly funded institution non-profit institution is actually a for-profit institution and the systems set in place to differentiate the two don’t actually do anything.  You are also saying that educational institutions don’t actually teach anything and that it’s merely a certificate formality.  

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

idk i feel like the whole premise of the paper is a bit disingenuous because of course a submission by a university would be less scrutinized than a submission from a random person. if they really wanted to do an experiment on this they should have submitted as a random person instead of from their university account

Which is more likely to contain bad data? Random stuff off the internet or stuff where the source is at least supposedly known to have studied the subject and could undergo heavy punishments if their input was later found to be false?

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, n0stalghia said:

Ah right, this is a good point. They only proved it for university e-mail addresses.

That too.  They seem to be making a point that universities are not always a trusted source because asshats like themselves exist.  The reaction that this applies only to the university of Minnesota is also strange.  A university email address is not necessarily a mark of trusted source is a not invalid point.  Getting access to a university email address is not particularly difficult.  I’m not sure that invalidates the concept that these people did a thing specifically against the rules of academia and it is not impossible that they will be removed from it partially or entirely.  I suppose if I wanted to poison Linux and kill people and I was a hacker from a foreign military, spoofing the email address of a trusted source for patches such as a famous academic researcher would not be wildly difficult and could conceivably get bad code incorporated into Linux without vetting because the reputation of the sender was above reproach.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Bombastinator

[dalekphalm]

21 minutes ago, n0stalghia said:

But it worked, right? Unless they published that paper, nobody would've known - so I guess they have proven their point. 

Lots of research is 100% unethical even though the gains from the research would be a positive outcome.

 

I've heard conflicting accounts on whether or not it was "caught". My understanding is that some of their code was caught and rejected as buggy (this happens literally all the time and is normally not a big deal). They didn't find out it was intentional until the paper was published - and at that point, they couldn't trust a single code commit from that source anymore.

21 minutes ago, n0stalghia said:

Would probably have been smarter to insert nonsensical code that does nothing to show that quality control is horrendous, but I guess then a point could be made that "we only check for security issues and not quality control so that's why this was allowed to be merged"

Given it's the kernel for Linux, they likely are checking for both - but since it came from a University, it had less scrutiny as they assumed it was a trustworthy source.

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Lots of research is 100% unethical even though the gains from the research would be a positive outcome.

 

I've heard conflicting accounts on whether or not it was "caught". My understanding is that some of their code was caught and rejected as buggy (this happens literally all the time and is normally not a big deal). They didn't find out it was intentional until the paper was published - and at that point, they couldn't trust a single code commit from that source anymore.

Given it's the kernel for Linux, they likely are checking for both - but since it came from a University, it had less scrutiny as they assumed it was a trustworthy source.

I’m not sure if this act was a defense of Linux or an attack on it.  The U of MN was one of the more trusted places on earth for Linux code to come from.  Moreso even than some other Universities.  There are ones that are considered better for this such as U Cal Berkeley, but what it effectively does is make public Linux competition with private OSes particularly private OSes originally based on Linux such as android potentially much more difficult if not impossible.   It increases workload by orders of magnitude while reducing the number of people who can do that work. 

[AMD A10-9600P]

Well, as much as I disagree with what they did, it seems they did prove their point, that much can be said.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, AMD A10-9600P said:

Well, as much as I disagree with what they did, it seems they did prove their point, that much can be said.

Depending on which point they were attempting to make.  They apparently attempted to make several and overblew all of them to boot.  This is why it feels a bit like a push poll to me.

[Guest willies leg]

The best thing about the open source community is exactly this.

[Bombastinator]

50 minutes ago, willies leg said:

The best thing about the open source community is exactly this.

As long as it stays functional.  The purpose of this whole thing may have been to kill non-privatized Linux 

[Chiyawa]

18 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

You seem to be making some very profound accusations.  You seem to be saying A publicly funded institution non-profit institution is actually a for-profit institution and the systems set in place to differentiate the two don’t actually do anything.  You are also saying that educational institutions don’t actually teach anything and that it’s merely a certificate formality.  

Well, I'll be happy if my school can teach something like how to do your taxes, basic survival skill, and most importantly, managing your earnings. In my school, even if it is public government funded, focus more on science and maths, while neglecting the rest, including physical education, musical class, art class and majority of other the classes. In average, we study science and maths almost 3 quarters of the time! They keep on pestering that science and maths are the future. True to that, but not everyone turns out to be a scientific geniuses when they grow up. I'm not really good with biology, hell, I'm not even good at chemistry, I'm more on arts and culture, and I have no chance to honed my skills just because I score good grades on maths. They should put me on accountant class.

 

Oh, before you say anything, may I remind you that this actually happens in Malaysia, and not in other places? We don't have the freedom to choose which courses we like to pursue, where grades are an absolute to determine your future (scoring high grades will net you a good job and scoring low grade will net you a beggar, at least this is what the school principal told us), and money can buy you education in the form of 'extra tuition', where the class teacher teaches exclusively for the privileged in better environment and only a few students at a time so they could focus on them. And of course, it can't be help that my class has 40 students including me. So, yeah, my experience in education sector sucks. I don't know about your situation (maybe you are more lucky to get a better side of the education), but for me, and Malaysia in general, this is utter horror. I know other places are worse, but for me, this is no good.

 

Look, maybe I vent out my rage on educators (especially those that really strive for the children and their students), so I should apologised. It's my bad and I shouldn't have done that. I just felt that life is cruel and even now, in my area, the rich are getting richer and can get things to favour their side, while the poor gets poorer. That's mostly because we are not taught on basic survival skills, and our basic education is a laughing stocks compare to our neighbours like Singapore or even Thailand, this also because I come from a poor family. No matter how hard I study, I just can't keep up with those that are more privilege. Hell, even at college, those with lots of money don't really need to put on the effort to get a master degree (which brings me to that Intel engineer scenario). The thesis can be bought, and the educators don't even raise a question.

 

So, I hope that you understand my situation, how frustrated I am. Again, I apologised if my comments hurt anyone. I know not all institutions are like that. I acknowledge that there are good institutions that gives better education quality. In my case, it also didn't help because I had Autism Spectrum Disorder when I'm young (and virtually, no one (or shall I say only very few people, because doctor do seems to aware of my situation, but still has no clue about autism at the time) is aware of my condition or what autism is at that time. I'm talking at the 90's and early 2000, in Malaysia).

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, SGT-AMD said:

Want to make it faster? Use NTlite: https://www.ntlite.com/

I wasn't talking about unnecessary components. I was talking about things like how the back button in settings is about 15k lines of code because of copy pasting.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

Well, I'll be happy if my school can teach something like how to do your taxes, basic survival skill, and most importantly, managing your earnings. In my school, even if it is public government funded, focus more on science and maths, while neglecting the rest, including physical education, musical class, art class and majority of other the classes. In average, we study science and maths almost 3 quarters of the time! They keep on pestering that science and maths are the future. True to that, but not everyone turns out to be a scientific geniuses when they grow up. I'm not really good with biology, hell, I'm not even good at chemistry, I'm more on arts and culture, and I have no chance to honed my skills just because I score good grades on maths. They should put me on accountant class.

 

Oh, before you say anything, may I remind you that this actually happens in Malaysia, and not in other places? We don't have the freedom to choose which courses we like to pursue, where grades are an absolute to determine your future (scoring high grades will net you a good job and scoring low grade will net you a beggar, at least this is what the school principal told us), and money can buy you education in the form of 'extra tuition', where the class teacher teaches exclusively for the privileged in better environment and only a few students at a time so they could focus on them. And of course, it can't be help that my class has 40 students including me. So, yeah, my experience in education sector sucks. I don't know about your situation (maybe you are more lucky to get a better side of the education), but for me, and Malaysia in general, this is utter horror. I know other places are worse, but for me, this is no good.

 

Look, maybe I vent out my rage on educators (especially those that really strive for the children and their students), so I should apologised. It's my bad and I shouldn't have done that. I just felt that life is cruel and even now, in my area, the rich are getting richer and can get things to favour their side, while the poor gets poorer. That's mostly because we are not taught on basic survival skills, and our basic education is a laughing stocks compare to our neighbours like Singapore or even Thailand, this also because I come from a poor family. No matter how hard I study, I just can't keep up with those that are more privilege. Hell, even at college, those with lots of money don't really need to put on the effort to get a master degree (which brings me to that Intel engineer scenario). The thesis can be bought, and the educators don't even raise a question.

 

So, I hope that you understand my situation, how frustrated I am. Again, I apologised if my comments hurt anyone. I know not all institutions are like that. I acknowledge that there are good institutions that gives better education quality. In my case, it also didn't help because I had Autism Spectrum Disorder when I'm young (and virtually, no one (or shall I say only very few people, because doctor do seems to aware of my situation, but still has no clue about autism at the time) is aware of my condition or what autism is at that time. I'm talking at the 90's and early 2000, in Malaysia).

In the US Public schools tend to be massively underfunded. Music and sports and things were once taught but they have been cut out one by one as funding is reduced.  Only the most very critical stuff is taught in public school anymore.  This is not true for “prep” schools that the people who make funding decisions send their own children to generally.  The stuff you are describing is the sort of stuff that was cut first rather than recently.  The difference between a “prep” school and a public school of the 1960’s is not large.  Parochial schools are generally not “prep” schools btw and can actually have lower standards than public schools.

[spartaman64]

On 4/27/2021 at 5:25 AM, Chiyawa said:

Well, I'll be happy if my school can teach something like how to do your taxes, basic survival skill, and most importantly, managing your earnings. In my school, even if it is public government funded, focus more on science and maths, while neglecting the rest, including physical education, musical class, art class and majority of other the classes. In average, we study science and maths almost 3 quarters of the time! They keep on pestering that science and maths are the future. True to that, but not everyone turns out to be a scientific geniuses when they grow up. I'm not really good with biology, hell, I'm not even good at chemistry, I'm more on arts and culture, and I have no chance to honed my skills just because I score good grades on maths. They should put me on accountant class.

 

Oh, before you say anything, may I remind you that this actually happens in Malaysia, and not in other places? We don't have the freedom to choose which courses we like to pursue, where grades are an absolute to determine your future (scoring high grades will net you a good job and scoring low grade will net you a beggar, at least this is what the school principal told us), and money can buy you education in the form of 'extra tuition', where the class teacher teaches exclusively for the privileged in better environment and only a few students at a time so they could focus on them. And of course, it can't be help that my class has 40 students including me. So, yeah, my experience in education sector sucks. I don't know about your situation (maybe you are more lucky to get a better side of the education), but for me, and Malaysia in general, this is utter horror. I know other places are worse, but for me, this is no good.

 

Look, maybe I vent out my rage on educators (especially those that really strive for the children and their students), so I should apologised. It's my bad and I shouldn't have done that. I just felt that life is cruel and even now, in my area, the rich are getting richer and can get things to favour their side, while the poor gets poorer. That's mostly because we are not taught on basic survival skills, and our basic education is a laughing stocks compare to our neighbours like Singapore or even Thailand, this also because I come from a poor family. No matter how hard I study, I just can't keep up with those that are more privilege. Hell, even at college, those with lots of money don't really need to put on the effort to get a master degree (which brings me to that Intel engineer scenario). The thesis can be bought, and the educators don't even raise a question.

 

So, I hope that you understand my situation, how frustrated I am. Again, I apologised if my comments hurt anyone. I know not all institutions are like that. I acknowledge that there are good institutions that gives better education quality. In my case, it also didn't help because I had Autism Spectrum Disorder when I'm young (and virtually, no one (or shall I say only very few people, because doctor do seems to aware of my situation, but still has no clue about autism at the time) is aware of my condition or what autism is at that time. I'm talking at the 90's and early 2000, in Malaysia).

well schools already gave you all of the tools you need to do taxes. they taught you reading comprehension which 90% of doing taxes is reading the form and following the instructions. then if there is any terms etc you dont understand the school also taught you how to acquire information from internet sources. also most of this is what your parents are supposed to be teaching but if they are not then again schools teach you how to find information online or in book when they make you do research papers.

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

well schools already gave you all of the tools you need to do taxes. they taught you reading comprehension which 90% of doing taxes is reading the form and following the instructions. then if there is any terms etc you dont understand the school also taught you how to acquire information from internet sources. also most of this is what your parents are supposed to be teaching but if they are not then again schools teach you how to find information online or in book when they make you do research papers.

That's way easier said than done.

 

I've been doing my own taxes for years using tax software, and yes, I can do it myself. Some people are not as easily adaptable and find doing their taxes confusing.

 

Also there are plenty of things about taxes where unless you've learned/done the research thoroughly, you might not know you can claim X, or you should submit Y form, etc.

 

This also largely depends on your country, as the tax laws vary quite a bit from country to country, with some having near enough automatic returns, and others being totally manual.

 

My fiancee who is an incredibly educated and intelligent person struggles with doing her taxes on her own, and needs my help. I'm certainly not smarter than she is, but this is one area where I have the experience and knowledge she doesn't.

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

That's way easier said than done.

 

I've been doing my own taxes for years using tax software, and yes, I can do it myself. Some people are not as easily adaptable and find doing their taxes confusing.

 

Also there are plenty of things about taxes where unless you've learned/done the research thoroughly, you might not know you can claim X, or you should submit Y form, etc.

 

This also largely depends on your country, as the tax laws vary quite a bit from country to country, with some having near enough automatic returns, and others being totally manual.

 

My fiancee who is an incredibly educated and intelligent person struggles with doing her taxes on her own, and needs my help. I'm certainly not smarter than she is, but this is one area where I have the experience and knowledge she doesn't.

Not US taxes apparently.  Entirely different country. 

[spartaman64]

44 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

That's way easier said than done.

 

I've been doing my own taxes for years using tax software, and yes, I can do it myself. Some people are not as easily adaptable and find doing their taxes confusing.

 

Also there are plenty of things about taxes where unless you've learned/done the research thoroughly, you might not know you can claim X, or you should submit Y form, etc.

 

This also largely depends on your country, as the tax laws vary quite a bit from country to country, with some having near enough automatic returns, and others being totally manual.

 

My fiancee who is an incredibly educated and intelligent person struggles with doing her taxes on her own, and needs my help. I'm certainly not smarter than she is, but this is one area where I have the experience and knowledge she doesn't.

yep thats the other 10% but there are a ton of resource online to help you with that and if you cant find an article or something there are people you can ask on reddit etc. and the easy way to think about it with US taxes at least is anything you gain money from you need to report and pay taxes lol

[papajo]

I am too bored to read the actual paper anybody who did to tell us what were their findings? Like did it take too long for the rest of the community to notice the buggy commits? 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, papajo said:

I am too bored to read the actual paper anybody who did to tell us what were their findings? Like did it take too long for the rest of the community to notice the buggy commits? 

It’s become standard news.  I saw a thing on it on the CNN app. The only updates so far are apparently that the people who did it sent what was  apparently a pretty insincere apology.  More of a “you don’t understand” than a “we screwed up” and was rejected.  

[LAwLz]

23 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

This also largely depends on your country, as the tax laws vary quite a bit from country to country, with some having near enough automatic returns, and others being totally manual.

I've never understood the US's problems with taxes but that's probably because I live in Sweden.

We just get a letter saying "login to this website and confirm that we have counted everything correctly for you" and then very, VERY rarely do you need to do anything but click "yep, looks fine". Then you either get some money back or have to pay some more.

 

Our system is very automated but I guess that relies on everyone following the same system and reporting everything to the government the same ways.

For example when I drive a mile at work I get some money back from my employer, and some of that money is taxed and some isn't. But all employers (that I know of) have systems where you just type in "I drove this much this week" and then everything gets worked out automatically.