The submitter asked:

"I've been wondering whether there are any feasible and working FOSS and open hardware-based security token generator projects out there"

Is Yubikey open source software and hardware? Because it appears to be neither.

RSA was in the NSA's back pocket. Why wouldn't these people? How can their hardware or software be audited?

I replied to someone who said that "his manner is coarse." They were speaking of Linus's general manner, not his specific conduct in this particular case.

Linus has a long history of name-calling, mocking, ridiculing, etc.

Context.

I replied to someone who said that "his manner is coarse." They were speaking of Linus's general manner, not his specific conduct in this particular case. Linus has a long history of name-calling, mocking, ridiculing, etc. So no, I have not "just learned to read recently" (hello, abuse.) You, apparently, are unaware of something called "context"

His manner is coarse

It's not "coarse", it's abusive. Namecalling, mocking, ridicule, hyperbole. That's abuse.

you must admit that he's gotten the job done. Linux advances on schedule, patches get incorporated, code gets tested, and all proceeds smoothly.

I sacrificed a chicken yesterday and successfully committed code. You must admit that the ritualistic sacrifice got the job done.

("Getting the job done" does not, and has never required being abusive to others. Getting the job done while being abusive is not proof that being abusive is required or even was part of, "getting the job done.")

Strawman argument. Nobody except you has posited that "all opinions are valid", and nobody suggested that criticisms can't be made. You invented that position to attack it.

I specifically said: it's fine to tell people they did something wrong. What you may not do is be abusive.

...the people who deserve the apology are the people who were subject to an abusive tirade.

You can point out someone made a mistake. There's no obligation to be "nice" when doing so. There is an obligation to not be abusive, which is what Linus repeatedly does. Abuse includes mockery, ridicule, name calling, etc.

He's being a bully, pure and simple - using his popularity to shove around others. That should not be tolerated, full stop.

TOR exit nodes are in very short supply, and as a company you already have the protection of incorporation that prevents the biggest fear of exit operators (and the reason there are so few), being caught up in an investigation by police who kick down doors first and ask questions late

LOL....

Clearly you read neither the slashdot text (which says "what should we do with these resources") not "what should we do with this website content." It's not even said that the setup is running a public-facing website, or even a website at all.

The commenter very clearly meant "donate the equipment to us."

Keep everything ready, so you can switch back when the cloud services fail and/or your management team changes.

Did you miss the part about them trying to cut opex? *siiiiiigh*

Even that aside...Maybe the latter, but not the former. One of the most common mistakes of failover environments is using the "old stuff" for failover/backup.

That works great, until you exceed the computing/storage capacity/bandwidth of the original hardware.

Let's say in a year traffic is up 30%. Something goes wrong, big time, with Teh Cloudz. You've done a good job of keeping the old hardware current and replicated. You 'flip the switch'...and the old environment promptly chokes...oops.

Unless you're getting power donated as well, you definitely should not be accepting every machine you can get.

If this stuff more than a few years old, the power bill is going to quickly eclipse the cost differential of better hardware.

Electricity costs vary, but a ballpark of 1 watt/year = $1 is roughly right around here. That doesn't include cooling. A probably conservative but very rough ballpark power estimate would be 3kW for that equipment...I didn't count hard drives, the firewall, the router, etc.

Gas lines need nonconductive sections to protect from becoming long ground loops.

It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.

That's how a friend's father, an eye surgeon, put it.

It doesn't always go right, and (yes, rarely) it goes very wrong. There are no take-backs with the laser surgeries.

If you must, do the surgery that is reversible - they insert a small piece of plastic that corrects the lens shape.

This story was not accepted for publication by Slashdot, and I am submitting it to another venue for consideration. - Bruce