Mindless appeal to authority? I don't think that's how the fallacy really works. It's pretty much the authority that seems to disagree with your sentiment, that is if we can agree that Torvalds still knows what he's doing. Him not sharing your skepticism is a valid argument. The point being that instead of giving weight to our distant feelings, maybe we could just pause and be more curious as to why someone with much closer involvement would not share them. Why should we care more about the opinions of randos on hn?