There's a new version of CockroachDB that has updates for developers, better security and new features including support for storing and indexing spatial data using Postgre PostGIS-compatible SQL syntax.

TypeScript has been updated with new checking flags, editor productivity updates, and speed improvements, alongside new features including support for temporal literal types.

The Open Source Security Foundation has recently launched three brand new and free courses on Secure Software Development, which are hosted on edX.

Watching two robot arms play diabolo is enough to induce diabolo envy in anyone who has ever experimented with this type of toy. The good news is that Omron is going to release the simulation model, dataset and control algorithm so that others robot arms can be trained to do similar juggling feats.

Our weekly digest lists the week's news, new titles added to our Book Watch Archive and our weekly book review. This week's featured articles are an extract from JavaScript Bitmap Graphics with Canvas about drawing Bezier curves by Ian Elliot and the history of the UK 1970's Big Board Computers.

When OpenCV launched a Computer Vision contest earlier this year, it expected to award three prizes, totalling $6,000. The competition was so popular that it has now announced six winners who share $12,000. It also plans further contests with "10X times rewards".

Microsoft has announced details a new Hour of Code lesson. In "A Minecraft Tale of Two Villages!" the task will be to bring two villages together with the power of code, learning and practicing inclusion and empathy along the way.

Servo, the open source project initiated at Mozilla to create a high-performance browser engine designed for both application and embedded use, is joining the Linux Foundation.

The Android Platform is migrating from its current build systems (Soong and Make) to Bazel. While components of Bazel have been already checked into the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source tree, this will be a phased migration over the next few Android releases. 

Last month Nvidia unveiled plans to build a supercomputer intended for AI research in health care. This prompts us to look at AI's potential role in health care and how it is already being used.

The majority of US schools still do not teach Computer Science, despite the concerted efforts of Code.org Advocacy Coalition. On the other hand, a lot of progress has been made and the number of students taking the AP Computer Science exams has "skyrocketed".

Python, of course. What comes as a surprise is the size of the margin between Python and the rest of the pack. The other unexpected finding is that JavaScript doesn't even make it into the top 10. So, what going on?

Angular 11 has been released with updates across the platform including the framework, the CLI and components. More specifically, the new version enforces stricter types and has automatic inlining of fonts.

Modern Android Development (MAD) Skills is a free series of videos and articles by Google that teaches the modern ways of doing development on the Android platform.

Microsoft has released a preview version of Playwright Test Runner, a zero config cross-browser tool providing end-to-end testing for web apps. Features include browser automation for Playwright, Jest-like assertions and built-in support for TypeScript.

This is a good story - a new app allows easier monitoring of diabetes. It is the way that it has been achieved that should give us cause for thought. It reads data from a glucose meter but you can forget bluetooth or wifi - it uses computer vision to read the display just like a human.

Get up to speed on stuff that affects you as a developer by reading about the news and books written by programmers, for programmers. Python and Extreme Programming are the topics of this week's featured articles.

Creator of Python, Guido van Rossum, has joined Microsoft as a Distinguished Engineer in the Developer Division. His stated aim is to make Python better. We can't wait to find out what that results in.