First off it is to be expected that gas/petrol prices will raise year on year it has done for the past decade and will continue to do so. Was it really such a big surprise to find out that 2012 was the most expensive year for petrol in the USA? Secondly, this highly USA-centric story doesn't compare to the UK, Europe and other regions of the planet. All stories like this do is make some people want to slap Americans for whining about the cost of petrol when in Europe we are more often than not paying double for petrol as referenced in this map. How this made it to the front page I don't know, it's common sense and does not require a notice to the people who actually drive cars as well as being incredibly whiny to the rest of the world.
Well said! In my area of Scotland petrol (gas) averages the equivalent of USD 8.10 per US gallon for unleaded or USD 8.75 for less refined Diesel - and we are supposed to be an oil producing nation. Unfortunately, in the 1970s our wonderful government in London sold off the rights to extract the oil to mostly American oil companies who now sell it back to us at a premium while our government then then taxes it punitively on top.
According to Ted Ts'o's latest update (https://plus.google.com/117091380454742934025/posts) this actually involved a combination of "umount -l" and shutting down while the filesystem was still mounted, and the user also had "nobarrier" set on the filesystem as well as "journal_async_commit".
So it sure looks like the user was playing fast and loose...this is not something that's going to hit your average person.
I noticed this addendum too. Looks to be a very specific (and oddly ill considered) configuration required to trigger the bug. Quite a few other people here are going off on tangents and haven't read the addendum or your comment by the looks of it.
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
