(6.9-4.2)/(2024-2018) = 0.45 “version increments” per year.

4.2/(2018-1991) = 0.15 “version increments” per year.

So, the pace of version increases in the past 6 years has been around triple the average from the previous 27 years, since Linux’ first release.

I guess I can see why 6.9 would seem pretty dramatic for long-time Linux users.

I wonder whether development has actually accelerated, or if this is just a change in the approach to the release/versioning process.

If you include ChromeOS that’s very likely.

You can restrict what gets installed by running your own repos and locking the machines to only use those (either give employees accounts with no sudo access, or have monitoring that alerts when repo configs are changed).

So once you are in that zone you do need some fast acting reactive tools that keep watch for viruses.

For anti-malware, I don’t think there are very many agents available to the public that work well on Linux, but they do exist inside big companies that use Linux for their employee environments. For forensics and incident response there is GRR, which has Linux support.

Canonical may have some offering in this space, but I’m not familiar with their products.

Tbf 500ms latency on - IIRC - a loopback network connection in a test environment is a lot. It’s not hugely surprising that a curious engineer dug into that.

Agreed, and it could definitely make such an assumption. The other aspect that I don’t really get is… if a superintelligent entity were to eventuate, why would it care?

We’re going to be nothing but bugs to it. It’s not likely to be of any consequence to that entity whether or not I expected/want it to exist.

The anthropomorphising going on with the AI hype is just crazy.

Yeah bro but eXpOnEnTiAl ImProVeMeNt bro!

And haven’t you heard of Roko’s basilisk? Better be careful what you say on the cybernets, lest our AGI/ASI overlords of 2026 take a disliking to your commentary regarding their eventual supremacy!

Excuse me while I go back to mining Dogecoin until I can buy enough NFTs to make Elon or Sam Altman notice me.

/s