News

No Vote For Java Module System   Wednesday 10 May

Java 9 stands a chance of being released without its biggest feature - modules - due to a vote by the JCP Executive committee rejecting it by 13 to 10. Interestingly the revolt was mostly led by two companies which have alternative module systems.

Explore Your Favorite Topic With Stack Overflow's Interactive Charting   Wednesday 10 May

Stack Overflow has a wealth of data which reflects the level of interest in programming languages and technologies. Now it has provided a simple to use tool for do-it-yourself exploration and analysis of trends over almost a decade.

Amazon Echo Show - Voice Done Right   Tuesday 09 May

Amazon has just announced another device in its Alexa range. This one has an interesting extras that could make voice interaction far more useful than just a clock radio.

Kivy 1.10 Released   Tuesday 09 May

Kivy 1.10 is a major release of a popular cross-platform open source framework which makes use of OpenGL to create a standardized UI and graphics environment for Python.  

MP3 Free At Last   Tuesday 09 May

Red Hat has announced that Fedora will include official MP3 decoding and encoding. The reason is that MP3 is now patent free - as far as anyone can tell.

Sinatra 2.0 Released   Monday 08 May

The second major release of the domain specific language for creating Ruby applications has been released. Sinatra is an alternative to Rails and other Ruby frameworks but with a different approach and is dependent on the Rack web server interface.

Google AIY Cardboard And Raspberry Pi AI   Monday 08 May

Google has promised to create a number of "reference" kits bringing AI to the masses - called AIY like DIY but for AI. The first is the Voice Kit designed to do the same sort of job as Amazon's Alexa, but using cardboard, sticky tape and a Raspberry Pi. 

NASA High Performance Fast Computing Challenge   Monday 08 May

At first glance the contest NASA has launched to get help in speeding up its computational algorithms seem an interesting challenge. Then you notice it's restricted to US citizens, over 18, and there's an authorization process before you can download the code.

SIGGRAPH 2017 Must View 3-Minute Trailer   Sunday 07 May

This year's SIGGRAPH 2017 preview video is well worth the three minutes it takes to watch.

Red Light Alert! Programmer At Work!   Saturday 06 May

FlowLight provides a signal about a worker's status, switching from green to red when you shouldn't be disturbed by colleages. Having been tested with around 450 employees it appears to work and the majority of users want to continue to use it.

250,000 Pi Zero W Sold   Friday 05 May

In nine weeks the Raspberry Pi Foundation states that it has sold 250,000 Pi Zero W single board computers. This is all the more amazing because the one Zero per order restriction is still in force. This is all very strange.

Minecraft Code Builder In Beta   Friday 05 May

As part of a campaign to expand its share of the educational marketplace, Microsoft has created a new Code Builder tool that works in conjunction with Minecraft Education Edition and also integrates with Tynker, MIT’s ScratchX and the Microsoft MakeCode open source platform.

Web Developer Salaries Revealed   Thursday 04 May

O'Reilly has published the results of a survey of web developers. It's main focus was what web professionals  earn, but along the way it reveals the operating systems, languages and JavaScript frameworks they use.

Top 10 From Around The Web: Python Web Development Resources   Thursday 04 May

Python is an increasingly popular choice for web development. Here's our latest selection of blog posts that might otherwise have escaped your notice, with something of interest to every Python web developer.

Professional Programmer

In Praise of Skeuomorphy   Thursday 04 May

What is skeuomorphy? Why is it essential in any good UI and why is just about everyone abandoning its use after it being the key to UI design for so long?

The Core

Scapegoating Encryption   Monday 08 May

Blaming everything on encryption is a recurring event. Whenever something bad happens that the intelligence services have no control over, it's because the encryption is at fault.