LWN: Comments on "FOSDEM keynote causes concerns"

Speech opportunity.

ghodgkins — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 22:42:44 +0000

Re insults, I would guess Heretic_Blacksheep was referring to the phrase "hurr durr," which when used in a quote implies (at best) that the quoted speaker is a "stereotypical idiot."

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hurr_durr

Keynotes

jsakkine — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 15:08:38 +0000

2025 will be The Year of Keynotes ;-)

When the comedy writes itself.

He could pay people for their work

alltheseas — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:47:20 +0000

> And that said, as others already pointed out, Dorsey, as a person, never participated in any Foss community.

This is false. Dorsey participates in the FOSS nostr community. Via nostr Dorsey has demonstrated he is looking to give back to FOSS communities.

Dorsey attending FOSDEM is a vote of confidence in the FOSS approach, and FOSS contributors.

It is extremely strange y'all are trying to scare away a potential ally who can help further FOSS contributors passion and vocation.

I feel entitlement-vibes

laurent.pinchart — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:07:12 +0000

As far as I understand, one of the key reasons why the FOSDEM takes place on the first weekend of February is because the ULB campus is free of classes on the week before, as students are on a break after an intensive period of exams. This gives the organizers time to setup everything for the conference. Moving it to spring would be quite difficult, if not impossible (assuming of course it stays organized at the ULB, moving to a different venue would be an entirely different question).

It stops here

corbet — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 15:13:22 +0000

What part of "this is off-topic, please stop" is hard to understand here?

This article is now moderated; the bar for any new comments will be quite high.

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 15:10:23 +0000

I am cognisant of the editors warnings, but I want to make a factual correction:

> the evidence that they help prevent an infected person from spreading it is apparently quite strong.

This is incorrect. We have primary R(C)?CT evidence for protective effect on wearers, and enough of it for Cochrane to have been able to conduct their systematic reviews - though, the body of data there is still, by their standards, poor. We do NOT (TTBOMK) have any substantive evidence for this novel "source control" theory (i.e., that even if they do not protect wearer, they protect others) for masks. I.e., we don't even have any RCT.

Post the talk notes beforehand

leigh — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 15:08:55 +0000

There’s a lot of assumptions being made about the content of his talk based on the title. While I’m in agreement with those who are skeptical and don’t think it would’ve necessarily been appropriate to have him speak, perhaps the discussion could’ve been better informed (and less inflammatory) if he’d ’open sourced’ his talk before he gave it, giving everyone an opportunity to see what he had to say.

Stop this

corbet — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:35:43 +0000

Wol, you know that this is far off-topic for LWN. Why do we have to continue asking you to stop drawing out this kind of conversation? Don't do this, please.

I feel entitlement-vibes

jzb — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:33:11 +0000

This is getting off-topic and unnecessarily heated. Let's end the COVID threads here -- all of them.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Wol — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:24:20 +0000

> > Your immunity is as good as it's going to get really, modulo senescence.

> This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection.

And that's ill-informed arrogance.

The reason the common cold (AND CoVid!) is usually harmless is because it is so common. It comes round every few months in a slightly new variant and re-infects you. And because your body remembers the old variant it fights the new one off with ease. So your natural immunity IS as close to perfect as it can get. The virus is constantly changing, your immunity is constantly changing, there's a balance that shifts back and forth.

HINT: Even when CoVid was brand new, one of the factors that helped it spread so fast, was because the MAJORITY of victims did not know they'd been infected. It was just the unfortunate older people who got hit so hard because it was too different from anything they'd ever met before.

Cheers,

Wol

I feel entitlement-vibes

Wol — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:17:16 +0000

> So... efficacy: Questionable at best. No statistically significant effect in systematic reviews of the data. To be weighed against /definite/ harms. That can NOT be a basis for policies that /impose/ on people.

Efficacy at WHAT? Protecting the wearer? Or protecting other people?

Part of the see-sawing in the UK was the belief by the medical profession that CoVid wasn't air-born - as a result of a half-remembered TB study from a century before, that explicitly said its conclusions were specific to TB and should NOT be used for anything else.

And the above WHAT question - masks do not protect the wearer! But the evidence that they help prevent an infected person from spreading it is apparently quite strong. If you're infected, you shouldn't go out. But if do go out you should wear a mask. Not for your sake, but for other peoples'. And the face shields apparently, while a very good comforter, are pure ineffective placebo at both tasks.

Cheers,
Wol

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 12:04:00 +0000

> Neither of these things really kick in fast enough to prevent viruses that replicate in the respiratory tract from getting in there, replicating, then going straight back out to infect someone else. That sort of immunity is very hard to attain, which is why no covid vaccine to date prevents transmission, and why the common cold is so incredibly hard to stop.

There is /some/ evidence that nasal spray vaccinations have a degree of better efficacy for preventing covid infection than injected vaccinations. There are many different kinds of T-cells, and 1 variant is specific to the mucosa - a kind of front-line of defence, at the point of entry for respiratory infections. Nasal spray vaccines appear to stimulate immune responses in those mucosal cells a little bit better than muscular injections.

Been a while since I read into this though, and the evidence base was still preliminary and weak/suggestive at that point. I have not followed evidence since, and I do not know if stronger evidence now exists and if so whether it confirms or contradicts the earlier. (I don't think nasal spray covid vaccinations are widely used yet (??), in which case there is unlikely to be any strong evidence yet either).

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:56:25 +0000

Oh, "immune imprinting" and "original antigenic sin" are interesting terms to search for in your favourite tool to google scholarly articles - and then follow the thread of higher-prominence citing articles. There's a body of work on this in immunology predating 2020, and so generally free of the politicised stuff post-20, and it's interesting and informative.

Complexity. Trade-offs. They abound.

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:46:30 +0000

Another factor is the imprinting if you keep being exposed to the same antigen. Your humoral immune system works on a form of rapid evolution, where B-cells (which later will produce antibodies, when stimulated) are "trained" and selected for in germinal nodes/centres (GCs). Your B cells go through rapid evolution in the GC, to try adapt to antigen collected in the GCs, with a selection pressure applied (at least in part) by T-cells. Different lines of B cells in the GCs will evolve to recognise different features of an antigen - it's a stochastic learning process. You end up with different lines of B-cells that have been trained to recognise different parts of different antigens _in different ways_.

There is evidence that repeated exposure to the same antigen will lead to this system becoming very specifically trained to that antigen - "imprinting". With rapidly evolving pathogens, with rapidly varying antigens, this is not per se a benefit.

E.g., (and without making a specific point about any particular disease), repeated immunisation with a vaccine that contains (or causes the manufacture of) 1 specific, unchanged, antigenic protein of a pathogen, is likely to lead to a population of B cells with a stronger bias towards that antigenic protein (kind of like doing ML with a large data-set except it's strongly biased to one feature). Yet, if that pathogen evolves rapidly in the wild it is likely to lead to mutations in that antigenic protein so as to evade those immune responses trained to that old version of that protein.

It is probably better to train your immune system with a /spectrum/ of antigens. Not just 1 protein from 1 version of a pathogen that was in the wild 3+ years ago (and has evolved numerous new, slightly different, lineages since). The literature suggests this is the case across a number of diseases, where we have some data on repeat exposure to unchanged v evolved antigens (be they from vaccinations or infection). That is NOT to say there is no value in immunisation by vaccination! But it does suggest there may be /diminishing/ value - even sometimes negative value - in repeated vaccination with old antigens (in the general sense). There is /some/ evidence in the literature this may be the case for ever-repeating covid19 vaccinations (all in the west present a subunit protein of the spike, with a very infrequently updated version of it). In tandem with vaccinations, we all are anyway - unavoidably - exposed to the full pathogen, through minor infections, when it comes to highly infectious respiratory pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, so we will still get that wide exposure.

Then there are also T-cells, which directly kill pathogens, and also help mediate B-cell evolution. Some will last you pretty much a lifetime, as you say.

Things here are fascinatingly complex. There are many systems and interactions. There are trade-offs. Sadly, clever people on both sides prioritise politics over educating themselves and reading actual scientific information - instead getting their knowledge largely from popular political media, which is nearly always laughably simplified to point of just being incorrect - and that's true be it "Colbert" or "Fox News".

There is far too much knee-jerk idiocy on /both/ sides.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

jhe — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:42:52 +0000

It doesn't need to be an assault. It is already a big amount of mental stress if strangers paintball or spray your house. This has happened before.

Whatever, if y'all are sure that Drew got this situation under control, I'll shut up about it.

I feel entitlement-vibes

bluca — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:30:52 +0000

> Depends on the vaccine. They did super with smallpox (and would do the same with measles if it wasn't for the conspiracy nutcases).

Yeah totally, was talking about the covid ones exclusively

I feel entitlement-vibes

nix — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:18:20 +0000

(Taken to email to try to rectify some of the backwards assumptions in that reply, such as that "the common cold" is a type of virus rather than a description of symptoms...)

Counting attendees

smurf — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:10:04 +0000

So how many people even know how to turn off their address randomization so that they *can* be counted reliably? And how many have two devices, or three, vs. how many leave them at home because they don't want their phones to get hacked?

I feel entitlement-vibes

smurf — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:08:32 +0000

> This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection.

… unless you continue to be exposed to low-level background viral load. Granted that this probably is not the case for most of the troglodytes who only leave their cave once a year, for FOSDEM. :-P

> Vaccines do not do great for infection prevention,

Depends on the vaccine. They did super with smallpox (and would do the same with measles if it wasn't for the conspiracy nutcases).

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:05:00 +0000

Authorisation, etc., may be centralised, I thought though you were talking about something connected to funding - free vaccines at pharmacies. If you meant private, sure, that's not "NHS Scotland".

You mentioned "natural immunity", not I. Vaccine immunity fares no better (it physiologically can not do better, for obvious reasons). Your rant there is completely off and disconnected from the body of published evidence - your illiteracy claim has the sense misplaced, if anything. But.. .that's not for LWN.

I feel entitlement-vibes

nix — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:02 +0000

> I am well aware of how the health service works in my country, thank you. Vaccine procurement, authorization, etc, is not devolved, and is largely dependent on the JCVI, so the only thing the SNHS can decide is whether to make them available for free or not and to whom, but private pharmacies can sell it (or not) to paying customers independently of it.

In large parts of England they have elected not to -- the cost of doing so is too high, and it was literally driving pharmacies bankrupt (which you'd think would have made it obvious that there was a lot of demand...). So they almost all stopped. I think last I checked there were two left providing vaccinations in all of Cambridgeshire, both with huge backlogs.

> This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection.

There are two distinct things going on here. Antibody levels drop fast -- this is a *good thing* because if you had the immediate post-infection level of antibodies to every disease you ever caught your blood would be a thick soup at best. The level you get after antibody ramp-up is the level you need to drive out an *established disease*, not defeat a newly-landed one). Antibody levels are really easy to measure, so have got most of the attention.

What probably does not fade so fast is T cell recognition of viral antigens: T cells have a remarkably long life (it can be decades!) and remain receptive as long as they live -- but can be killed off by other things, can go nuts attacking some other disease they are also receptive to and get exhausted doing that, etc. But if they survive all that, they will probably protect you from getting actually killed by covid for a long, long time. Not always -- this is statistical -- but probably.

Neither of these things really kick in fast enough to prevent viruses that replicate in the respiratory tract from getting in there, replicating, then going straight back out to infect someone else. That sort of immunity is very hard to attain, which is why no covid vaccine to date prevents transmission, and why the common cold is so incredibly hard to stop.

But, y'know, it's not just getting killed I want to be protected from! I don't much want to land in bed for three weeks feeling like death either, like I did last time I got covid (let alone the two months of being too enervated to do much work). And *that* is helped by reducing exposure, by, say, getting people who might be infectious to wear masks, or just not going to FOSDEM.

Counting attendees

geert — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:51:46 +0000

(a.o.) MAC address statistics are typically shown in the closing keynote. Random and changing addresses are very popular.

I feel entitlement-vibes

bluca — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:49:36 +0000

> Health is a devolved matter to the Scottish government, so health care is one of the big differences between England and Scotland. Scotland has its own NHS, and it puts more funding into health care, and funds more universal care policies. E.g., prescription medicines are free in Scotland (unlike England).

I am well aware of how the health service works in my country, thank you. Vaccine procurement, authorization, etc, is not devolved, and is largely dependent on the JCVI, so the only thing the SNHS can decide is whether to make them available for free or not and to whom, but private pharmacies can sell it (or not) to paying customers independently of it.

> Your immunity is as good as it's going to get really, modulo senescence.

This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection. Vaccines do not do great for infection prevention, but help MASSIVELY with lowering the severity of the illness if it is caught, and the likelihood of long-term effects such as long covid. Please stop spreading anti-vaxx nonsense on LWN, I'm sure you'll get plenty of "likes" from bots if you instead go do that on twitler or whatever it is called this week.

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:42:04 +0000

Health is a devolved matter to the Scottish government, so health care is one of the big differences between England and Scotland. Scotland has its own NHS, and it puts more funding into health care, and funds more universal care policies. E.g., prescription medicines are free in Scotland (unlike England).

That said, the covid vaccines do not prevent infection - past a few months. Also, essentially 100% of people are now vaccinated, multiple times over. Everyone alive - other than some babies and young children - has been exposed to and infected by covid multiple times now. Your immunity is as good as it's going to get really, modulo senescence.

I feel entitlement-vibes

NAR — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:41:52 +0000

I'm pretty sure that a "wear a mask" policy would be at least controversial as the lack of disease policy... I'm afraid catching a cold in winter is practically inevitable if someone goes to crowded spaces (public transport, school, etc.). In a previous decade I was single and rarely used public transport to commute - but nearly every time I did take the tram and underground, I caught cold. Now this problem is solved, the kids bring home all new germs from kindergarten/school, so I don't even need to leave home :-)

One can make precautions like getting vaccinated, wearing a mask or avoiding such places. Maybe the conference could be moved to spring.

Counting attendees

jengelh — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:35:20 +0000

>unclear how many people attend FOSDEM [..there is no..] other way of counting attendees

No way? Count MAC addresses? Passively listen to 802.11 or mobile networks and count station IDs? [If you are completely off line, I guess that's your prerogative, but it probably comes to an insignificant number in the end.]

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:29:03 +0000

> particularly when the policy is as cheap and simple as "please wear a mask, particularly if you're showing disease symptoms".

Firstly, the evidence of efficacy of masks to protect against respiratory illness is not good. The best source of evidence in the field of medical interventions are the systematic analyses of the primary evidence base by the Cochrane Library, and the last 3 or so reviews they have done shows that - over the data from the primary studies - there is not evidence of efficacy (and the data is also poor). Tracy Greenhalgh (a prominent mask supporter), et al, would disagree with how the Cochrane review was framed, but their own systematic analysis came with the same result - no statistically significant protective effect.

Secondly, masks are not harm-free. They impede lip-reading for the hard of hearing (a family of member of mine found the pandemic very difficult for this reason - they rely on lip-reading). They create mountains of plastic waste. They lead to the inhalation of plastic micro-fibres.

So... efficacy: Questionable at best. No statistically significant effect in systematic reviews of the data. To be weighed against /definite/ harms. That can NOT be a basis for policies that /impose/ on people.

He could pay people for their work

geert — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:21:45 +0000

I have learned to ignore keynotes at commercial developer conferences, and move on...
(except for the Fireplace Chat with Linus ;-)

For FOSDEM keynotes, people still care...

I feel entitlement-vibes

paulj — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:21:34 +0000

The 08/09 winter season was worse than either of the "covid pandemic" winters in the UK.

He could pay people for their work

lunaryorn — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 08:33:09 +0000

Do forgive me, but I find this a bit of a simplistic standpoint.

We're not living in Lockean times anymore (if indeed we ever did) where you mixed your labour with nature and extracted your property from the land with your own bare hands, metaphorically speaking. There's no labour theory of property anymore in our complex multi-national, highly specialised societies.

As such, I do not believe in the idea of someone seizing an "opportunity", and I do not think it offers much ground for debate. I'd much rather prefer to debate the economical, regulatory, and financial environment of internet companies, which creates these "opportunities" in the first place, and how it's - in my opinion - exceedingly and unfairly favorable towards these companies, compared to traditional industries.

And that said, as others already pointed out, Dorsey, as a person, never participated in any Foss community.

Speech opportunity.

lyda — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 08:02:45 +0000

Agreed. Folks like Dorsey get lots of opportunities to speak and air their views. Most speakers at FOSDEM do not.

I have no issue with folks like Dorsey attending and listening at events like FOSDEM. I wish more would. They might make better decisions.

He could pay people for their work

lunaryorn — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 08:02:40 +0000

This is about FOSDEM, _the_ social community event for FOSS people who are deeply attached to their FOSS communities. FOSDEM is a community event, first and foremost. It's all about emotions. Emotions are what make people pour in all those countless hours into their favorite projects.

No one would have objected to this keynote if it had been at a commercial developer conference

Speech opportunity.

intelfx — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 03:17:04 +0000

> friendlysock was using one of the many tropes detractors use to derail criticism they don't like (throwing insults trope). It's not that friendlysock is missing the point, they're actively trying to derail criticism.

Criticism of criticism is strictly as valid as the original one. Also, I see no insults in this quote.

I'm not defending Dorsey, but it is disingenuous to label everything you disagree with as "derailment" and downplay opposing viewpoints as something "they don't like".

Speech opportunity.

Heretic_Blacksheep — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 01:57:50 +0000

I'd argue that if Dorsey's speech had been less self congratulatory on the surface and more about the financial end of getting open source funded and its potential gotchas it would have been more on point for community oriented FOSS conferences like FOSDEM. FOSDEM is more about social networking and increasing the visibility of small projects or hard problems and solutions that may benefit wider audiences irrespective of corporate or government interests. One of those hard problems is financial backing.

That's not how the speech title comes across. To me, Dorsey was intending to talk about exploitation of open source concepts and work product in the typical corporate speak: free labor and ideas from the commons for a better bottom line. This makes it inappropriate for any grass roots open source conference and more appropriate for astroturfed corporate cheer leading conferences.

So to me, the Spacecake comment was definitely over the top and rightfully moderated, while friendlysock was using one of the many tropes detractors use to derail criticism they don't like (throwing insults trope). It's not that friendlysock is missing the point, they're actively trying to derail criticism.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

corbet — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:40:07 +0000

The name-calling was definitely part of the decision here; we could have made that more explicit.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

NYKevin — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:03:55 +0000

Let's not be melodramatic here. LWN is within their rights to make reasonable moderation choices about what comments they wish to host on their website. The original comment was at the very least suggesting that a heckler's veto applies to DeVault and LWN should therefore avoid covering him, which is already a problematic argument even if you don't interpret it as a threat of any kind.

But reading it as a threat is not out of the question either. The hypothetical of someone committing an act of violence against DeVault because he wrote something "wrong" on his blog seems (to my mind) so absurd as to be farcical. But if we don't think that's a serious possibility, then that leaves 2½ other readings: The comment can be read as pure trolling (suggesting a danger which does not exist, for the purpose of upsetting people), as a veiled threat (suggesting that the commenter will create the danger), or as an intentionally ambiguous mixture of both. Either way, it does not belong on LWN.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

ballombe — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 23:25:19 +0000

If 'can be read" is the new standard here, I do not feel safe to comment anymore. English is such an ambiguous language that anything that non-native speaker write 'can be read' in a hundred different way.
Context matters. Especially If you allow selective quoting by using ellipsis.

You could just have said, "Calling someone lolcow is offensive and unwelcome on LWN". That does not require 'can be read'.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

smurf — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 22:19:50 +0000

None of the above. The primary question isn't whether some billionaire or other should get the keynote slot, the question is whether their talk (and/or keynote) has enough I'll-go-to-FOSDEM-because-of-this merit to be there in the first place. Which I kindof doubt at this point.

*Then* if I were to decide this I'd balance that merit against the fact that Jack D. has a heap of other venues to spread his opinions around the globe (some of which he sold to a certain somewhat-decent-guy-turned-alt-right-fanatic who shall not be named here), and thus more weight should probably be given to people who don't.

The consideration that mayyybe speakers and/or organizations with more money than most people can even comprehend should be expected to contribute some of that to the event they wish to participate in … well it's in there too but personally I'd put it firmly in third place.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Wol — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 20:49:24 +0000

> I thought it was pretty clear, but I'll elaborate: saying that a person should not be "given visibility...to ensure his own safety" can be read as a veiled threat against them.

And I hate to have to point it out, but it can equally be read as a warning that "you are painting a target on your back".

You are falling into the BBC "balanced coverage" trap. Where people who don't understand what is going on believe that ANY logical argument that makes sense deserves equal coverage. Never mind that some of those arguments clearly belong in some alternate scientific reality.

Which is heaver? A pound of feaathers? A pound of lead? It's obviously a pound of lead, because if you drop them together the lead will hit the ground first.

You're journalists. If you're doing your job PROPERLY you can't jump to conclusions, and I'm afraid I think you have. Yes this could have been a threat. But I don't think so - to me it reads as a clear warning - "you're asking for trouble, AND NOT FROM ME!"

Cheers,
Wol

He could pay people for their work

Wol — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 19:47:28 +0000

And also it's completely missing the point - it's not clear but it looks like twitter provided a SERVICE using FLOSS software, and I get the impression that Dorsey was a willing and full participant in the FLOSS ecosystem. The fact that he then sold his SERVICE-provider company and earned megabucks as a result speaks to his clever business sense, not to any desire (or reality) to take advantage of others.

Again, I get the impression it's just people who lack the ambition, the guts, and the skill to take advantage of an opportunity, who have gone green at the gills because Dorsey has made his own luck.

And at the end of the day, if they can't make money off FLOSS but Dorsey can, good luck to him! As I say, he doesn't appear to have broken any rules, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence he's even betrayed the spirit ... !!! It's just a bunch of detractors consumed by the green-eyed god ...

Cheers,
Wol