'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."'
-- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/11/03/2230223
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'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.'
-- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/11/03/1646236
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'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.'
-- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/11/03/2012226
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'Incognito Mode for Google Maps is rolling out to Android users to
prevent your search queries and real-time tracked location from being
recorded onto your Google account. Engadget reports:
It's not something you'll want to use all the time as some features
will be disabled, and it's important to note that it doesn't turn off
all tracking. The places you go won't be saved to your Location
History (if you have that enabled), your searches won't be saved to
your account and it won't use your information to personalize the
experience. Still, you could be tracked by internet service providers,
other apps, or if you're using Assistant and other Google services.
Similar to incognito on Chrome, it's more useful as a depersonalized
look at recommendations than as a full-fledged privacy protector, and
a way to make sure that whatever you're searching for in this instance
doesn't affect your recommendations later -- don't worry, we're not
judging. '
-- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/11/01/0112223
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
