Shoulders to Stand On
Doghouse – Courage and Imagination
maddog calls for courage and imagination to overcome our prejudices and address the world's perplexing problems.
Today I received news that Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician who performed many of the calculations used by the space program to put people on the moon, has died at the age of 101.
For those of you who did not see the movie Hidden Figures, Ms. Johnson had to fight against both racial and sexual discrimination to have her work accepted in the white male-dominated climate of that day.
I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1950. I saw the "white persons water fountain," the "white persons lunch counter," and the signs that told black people to go to the back of the bus. Even many of our religious leaders told us that the white race needed to "take care of our black brothers and sisters." With all the prejudices that were present at that time, we can appreciate Katherine Johnson's contribution all the more knowing the obstacles she had to overcome. We can also see how the space program benefited from her presence.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.