An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: Linus Torvalds, Linux's creator, doesn't make speeches anymore. But, what he does do, and he did again at Open Source Summit Europe in Lyon France is have public conversations with his friend Dirk Hohndel, VMware's Chief Open Source Officer. In this keynote discussion, Torvalds revealed that he doesn't think he's a programmer anymore. So what does the person everyone thinks of as a programmer's programmer do instead? Torvalds explained: "I don't know coding at all anymore. Most of the code I write is in my e-mails. So somebody sends me a patch ... I [reply with] pseudo code. I'm so used to editing patches now I sometimes edit patches and send out the patch without having ever tested it. I literally wrote it in the mail and say, 'I think this is how it should be done,' but this is what I do, I am not a programmer." So, Hohndel asked, "What is your job?" Torvalds replied, "I read and write a lot of email. My job really is, in the end, is to say 'no.' Somebody has to say 'no' to [this patch or that pull request]. And because developers know that if they do something that I'll say 'no' to, they do a better job of writing the code."

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"Waymo wants to deploy a robotaxi service for the general public in parts of California as soon as possible," reports the Los Angeles Times. "But that's unlikely, the company says, because California says it has to offer the service for free." Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission allowed driverless "robotaxi" pilot programs in the state but banned permit-holders from charging fares. The ban is considered temporary but has no timeline. Some industry analysts say the uncertainty could put California's reputation as the world leader in driverless technology at risk. The free-or-nothing mandate makes no sense to Waymo, the driverless vehicle arm of Google's Alphabet, or to other driverless vehicle start-ups hoping to establish themselves in a new industry that could produce the biggest change in ground transportation since the invention of the automobile. Waymo requires a "commercial path forward" before it can offer Californians the kind of driverless taxi service it's already running across 100 square miles in Phoenix, according to George Ivanov, Waymo's head of policy development and regulatory initiatives... In July, Waymo began a commission-approved pilot program to ferry Waymo and Google employees and guests through parts of Silicon Valley in driverless cars for free. Waymo doesn't need fare money to fund operations -- Alphabet is an enormous profit machine, and holds more than $100 billion in cash. But Ivanov explained that experimenting with customer response to different fare structures is essential to building out the robotaxi business, which would be like Uber or Lyft but without a human driver.

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"Waymo said that its autonomous vehicles will be used to help shuttle car parts between several AutoNation locations and other repair shops in the Phoenix, Arizona area," reports the International Business Times: While the expanded partnership may not seem like a big deal at first blush, it's important for investors to know that the move is yet another step for Waymo toward the self-driving business-to-business delivery market. While Waymo has received a lot of attention for the company's robotaxis (which currently run in a limited capacity in the Phoenix area), the company has always been clear that the same technology that drives its people-moving vans can be used for delivery of goods as well. Why focus on self-driving vans for package deliveries and autonomous freight trucks? Because the market for B2B deliveries could eventually be as high as $1 trillion, according to Bloomberg. Autonomous vehicle deliveries are being seen as the answer to the growing truck driver shortage in America. Sixty-five percent of the consumable goods in the U.S. are moved via trucks, and the American Trucking Association says that the shortage of long-haul drivers has reached 60,000... With e-commerce still growing quickly, companies of all sizes are trying to find better ways to deliver their merchandise to third-party businesses and customers. And that's what makes Waymo's expanded AutoNation partnership so important. If the company can prove that its autonomous driving vehicles can quickly and reliably perform deliveries over and over again for AutoNation, then other retailers may soon look to the company for their delivery needs.

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Lawyer says offer is in response to Republican efforts, led by President Trump, to unmask the whistle-blower.

Severe economic deprivation in the northern city means locals have little reason to return to normal life.

Protesters gathered at Martyrs' Square following smaller demonstration earlier in the day supporting President Aoun.

On Hackaday's hosting site Hackaday.io, an electrical engineer with a background in semiconductor physics argues that Linux's small market share is due to a lack of marketing: Not only does [Linux] have dominance when raw computing ability is needed, either in a supercomputer or a webserver, but it must have some ability to effectively work as a personal computer as well, otherwise Android wouldn't be so popular on smartphones and tablets. From there it follows that the only reason that Microsoft and Apple dominate the desktop world is because they have a marketing group behind their products, which provides customers with a comfortable customer service layer between themselves and the engineers and programmers at those companies, and also drowns out the message that Linux even exists in the personal computing realm... Part of the problem too is that Linux and most of its associated software is free and open source. What is often a strength when it comes to the quality of software and its flexibility and customizablity becomes a weakness when there's no revenue coming in to actually fund a marketing group that would be able to address this core communications issue between potential future users and the creators of the software. Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE and others all had varying successes, but this illistrates another problem: the splintered nature of open-source software causes a fragmenting not just in the software itself but the resources. Imagine if there were hundreds of different versions of macOS that all Apple users had to learn about and then decide which one was the best for their needs... I have been using Linux exclusively since I ditched XP for 5.10 Breezy Badger and would love to live in a world where I'm not forced into the corporate hellscape of a Windows environment every day for no other reason than most people already know how to use Windows. With a cohesive marketing strategy, I think this could become a reality, but it won't happen through passionate essays on "free as in freedom" or the proper way to pronounce "GNU" or the benefits of using Gentoo instead of Arch. It'll only come if someone can unify all the splintered groups around a cohesive, simple message and market it to the public.

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Caracas' move comes a day after San Salvador expelled diplomats representing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

US State Department warns of new threats in latest country reports on terrorism.

How weeks of anti-government protests in Chile have spurred a movement for greater local democracy.

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: In a move to fight spam and improve the health of the web, Firefox will hide those annoying notification popups by default starting next year, with the release of Firefox 72, in January 2020, ZDNet has learned from a Mozilla engineer. The move comes after Mozilla ran an experiment back in April this year to see how users interacted with notifications, and also looked at different ways of blocking notifications from being too intrusive. Usage stats showed that the vast majority (97%) of Firefox users dismissed notifications, or chose to block a website from showing notifications at all... As a result, Mozilla engineers have decided to hide the notification popup that drops down from Firefox's URL bar, starting with Firefox 72. If a website shows a notification, the popup will be hidden by default, and an icon added to the URL bar instead. Firefox will then animate the icon using a wiggle effect to let the user know there's a notification subscription popup available, but the popup won't be displayed until the user clicks the icon. Mozilla is the first browser vendor to block notification popups by default, according to the article. It's already available in Firefox Nightly versions, but will be added to the stable branch in January. "I think Mozilla's decision is good for the health of the web," Jérôme Segura, malware analyst at Malwarebytes tells ZDNet.

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Johnson blamed Brexit delay on legislators; Brexit Party chief Farage says he will not run for a seat.

The opposition parties march in Islamabad as their Sunday night deadline for Pakistan prime minister's resignation approaches.

The striker was calmed down by teammates and the Italian league match was suspended for four minutes.

"Terminator: Dark Fate once again failed to avoid Judgment Day because audiences just don't care about the Terminator as a brand, an IP or a franchise," writes a box office pundit at Forbes. He points out the newly-released film earned just $10.6 million on its opening day: The sci-fi sequel, directed by Tim Miller, produced by James Cameron, and starring franchise vets Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside newbies Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna, was the third attempt to revive the Terminator series in a decade... Terminator has become a metaphor for itself, with filmmakers trying different things only to face the same outcome: Judgment Day is inevitable. Hollywood may yet figure out that audiences who aren't die-hard sci-fi geeks have little interest in additional Terminator movies... The pitches change, the hooks differ, but the result is always the same. Just because folks liked The Terminator in 1984 and lost their minds over Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 does not mean they have any interest in additional Terminator movies. Just because something was once popular doesn't mean audiences care for a new iteration. The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling. The "this time folks will bite" attitude is what has left theatrical moviegoing in grave peril as streaming and television networks have filled the gap for something beyond cover records of yesterday's former glories. It is one thing to try a reboot, strike out and move on... It is another entirely to take the same dead franchise and presume that the same audiences who said "No, thank you" not once but twice will somehow magically embrace it on the third try. The article harshly concludes that Terminator: Dark Fate is bombing in North America "because audiences didn't want to see it."

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