News

Intel's New Joule In The Crown   Wednesday 17 August

I couldn't resist the headline, but the news is perfectly serious. IoT hardware is becoming more and more like a full desktop computer. Move over Arduino, the Intel Joule might well crush you with its processing power. 

Revised Apache Spark MOOC   Wednesday 17 August

The online course on Big Data Analysis from BerkeleyX on the edX platform started a re-run this week with a new focus. It now teaches students to program using Spark's Machine Learning pipelines and DataFrames.

Hollerith Census Machine - A Milestone In Big Data Big   Tuesday 16 August

August 16, 1890 was the date on which the US Census Bureau announced that the US population was 62,662,250. It was the first time that machinery was used to automate the process and the use of Hollerith Machines saved $5 million or more.

Go 1.7 Goes Faster and in More Directions   Tuesday 16 August

An updated version of Go has been released with support for IBM z Systems, and improvements to the compiler.

Devs Exploring Emerging Technologies   Monday 15 August

Statistics from the latest State of the Developer Nation reveal that over 40% or developers and now involved in data science or machine learning, while almost a quarter are getting into virtual or augmented reality.

Amazon Introduces Kinesis Analytics   Monday 15 August

Amazon has launched a service for querying streaming data using standard SQL to help developers create apps that analyze real-time data without the need to use specialist languages and techniques such as those in Apache Storm.

One App For 1000+ Dancing Robots To Take World Record   Sunday 14 August

Over a 1000 sub-knee-high robots controlled by a single mobile phone have danced their way to a Guinness World Record in Qingdao, China, The mystery is where are they now and how can we buy them?

Adblock Versus Facebook - Programming Wars Made Real   Saturday 13 August

Adblockers are either the savior or the nemesis of the web depending on what side of the fence you are on. But who could resist the spectacle of Facebook taking on Adblock Plus.

Can AI Change the Face of Cyber Security?   Friday 12 August

Researchers at CSAIL are working on an artificial intelligence platform that is already capable of detecting 85% of cyber attacks  and provides a glimpse of a future where humans may no longer be needed to defend business systems. How much responsibility can be given over to ‘robots’ to do the work of security professionals?

Mozilla Funds PyPy In Latest Round Of Open Source Funding   Friday 12 August

Mozilla is giving $200,000 to Baroque Software to work on PyPy, specifically to implement support for Python 3.5. Eight other open source projects also shared $385,000 in the recent round of funding.

The Weekly Top 10: CMS and SharePoint   Thursday 11 August

This week's round up of interesting posts from external sites has resources  for those working with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento and Sharepoint developers.

Wolfram Mathematica 11   Thursday 11 August

The latest version of Mathematica and the Wolfram language have been released with 555 new functions, support for 3D printing, more for machine learning and neural networks, and even data on Pokemon. For traditional users there are improvements in calculus. 

The Core

C Sockets - No Need For A Web Server!   Monday 15 August

While advising on how to put together a C data collection program,  I was part of a conversation that suggested that to host a web page of results we need to install Apache. No way! 

How-To Guide to Crowdtesting   Thursday 11 August

Crowdsourced testing is an innovative approach to testing that utilises a crowd that represents a digital product’s target audience to perform testing. It can be applied to both waterfall and agile testing methods but differs from traditional methods. This guide from Testbirds discusses how integrate it into the development cycle with ten key points.