I was merely observing that allowing "rm -rf /" to work is prohibited, not that it was impossible in general to break a computer...

Actually, it's precisely defined. POSIX requires rm to ignore an argument which is the root directory.

People who can't feel pain aren't necessarily insensitive to temperature, or other pain-associated senses like pressure. This depends upon what neural pathways are effected by whatever disorder the person has.

Some people won't reflexively snatch their hand away, because it doesn't hurt, but will still be aware that their hand is "too hot", based on previous experience of how hot their hand can safely be.

Aside: People insensitive to pain and temperature often die of fever at a young age because their body doesn't know to sweat.

Orbital mechanics does not work that way. Expense doesn't simply scale with distance.

Getting to LEO requires ~10km/s of delta-v, whilst going from there to L4/5 requires an additional ~4km/s, which could be undertaken using highly fuel efficient ion or VASIMR engines.

The fuel required to for the second leg of the journey wouldn't be more than a single percent of the total fuel for the trip, which could take a few months.

If you want to get there really quickly you could do it in nine days using traditional chemical engines, at the expense of three times the fuel. You might reasonably do that for light but perishable things like fresh food or astronauts.

Sure, if you mine it and dump it all on the market at once.

In reality, anyone able to pull off a commercially viable asteroid mining operation probably has enough savvy that they wouldn't just flood the market: they'd control the supply to keep prices just below that of available terrestrial sources.

This is really no different from De Beers controlling the price of diamonds, or OPEC controlling the price of oil.

Citation needed.

The bug report was that XDG_RUNTIME_DIR was cleared when su was run in "login" mode, not when it was run in environment-preserving mode.

pam_systemd correctly preserves XDG_RUNTIME_DIR when it is run in environment-preserving mode.

When run in login mode - where su's manpage says leads to an environment which inherits only TERM - it doesn't inherit XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.

Lennart said that it wasn't clear what su should do in this situation. Actually, it's quite clear. su - must construct an environment containing only TERM, HOME, SHELL, USER, LOGNAME, and PATH. That's been the case since UNIX SVR4, at the latest.

So, per su's manpage it must not set XDG_RUNTIME_DIR in login mode, even though setting it would probably be useful behaviour. This is the bit where su is a broken concept: it is required not to produce an authentic login environment even if you ask it for one. If that doesn't quality as confusing, I don't really know what does.

Somehow Lennart refusing to modify pam_systemd so that su no longer behaves as manpages have promised it does since at least 1988 is interpreted as Lennart having no respect for Unix tradition. Just another anti-Lennart circle-jerk.

Rocket exhausts are not "virtual". They very much exist.

What has Rider Bills ever done to you?

What on Earth does the NY Post think "secret" means? Not only does the administration admit they're making this database, they've said it will be partially open to the public. That isn't a secret database. That's the opposite of a secret database.

You might have more of a point if this were true.

6c is the wrong clause.

6b is the clause which initially gives one the right to distribute object code without source, and must be accompanied by an offer to give (or make available) the source to "anyone who possesses the object code".

6c permits you to distribute object code you received under clause 6b without taking on responsibility for providing the source.

Is this true on London Overground trains? On the trains I take in the south, the plugs are clearly labelled as only for mobile phones or laptops.

Uh, no. That's already illegal.

The proposed changes to the law are sufficiently broad as to potentially make it illegal for me to notify a non-US software vendor about a security flaw I found in their software when probing it on my own computer.

GSL is GPL on all platforms, so what could that have to do with Linux's suitability for development?