/dev/random: WFH

;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution

For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.

Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.

As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.

I spent some time in medical school in the late 1980s. (They eventually caught me skulking around in the hall and threw me out.) I don’t remember coronaviruses—orthocoronavirinae, to virologists—being therein addressed as anything serious in terms of human pathology, other than maybe as one of the causes of the common cold. They were mostly associated with birds and bats. That abruptly changed in 2002 with the emergence of the SARS outbreak. Since then, it’s just been one bout of coronaviolence after another, culminating in the present day with the imaginatively named Covid-19. (Imagine if they’d named measles “Morbillivid-54.”) One consequence of this has been a dramatic increase in non-traditional work environments, especially working from home.

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