12 - 18 July, 2018

News

VIM In The Browser - The Magic of WASM   Wednesday 18 July

No this is not some JavaScript mock-up of VIM, this really is the original real VIM compiled to WASM and then loaded into a browser. It doesn't get more authentic or crazy than this. It is the shape of things to come.

Visual Studio IntelliCode Infers C# Coding Conventions   Wednesday 18 July

The Visual Studio IntelliCode Extension has been updated to add 'coding convention inference' for C#.  In other words, the extension can look at your existing coding conventions and create a configuration file that best matches the way your code looks.

Sharpen Your Hacking Skills With CTFLearn   Wednesday 18 July

CTFlearn began as a simple project by the members of a local school's CTF club in order to have a playground for testing their skills. V2 of the site is currently undergoing a beta, but is available to the public. Let's find out what this revamped version has to offer.

Hadoopi - Raspberry Pi Hadoop Cluster   Tuesday 17 July

There's an updated version of Hadoopi, a Hadoop distribution for the Raspberry Pi. Hadoopi supports various components of the Hadoop ecosystem including HBase, Hive, and Spark. The new release has wired networking (for improved performance and reliability) plus the addition of metrics collection with Prometheus and visualisation of those metrics in Grafana dashboards.

Bootcamp Or College - Which Should You Choose?   Tuesday 17 July

For the professional programmer getting a good job is a prime concern. But what constitutes a good job? Which is more likely to impress the - college or bootcamp? And which is the better preparation for real world work?

Google Maps API Changes Billing Rules   Monday 16 July

Google has changed the pricing and access model for its Google Maps Platform APIs. From July 16, users will have to pay more for map accesses, and all projects will have to have an official API key linked to a credit card.

Raspbian Gets A Setup Wizard   Monday 16 July

Raspbian, the main OS for the Raspberry Pi range, has just got easier to use, and this is important even if you have no interest in the Pi.

Neural Networks Learn To Remove Noise Without Seeing A Good Image   Sunday 15 July

Don't you just hate film grain? Except, of course, when you don't and set it as a special effect on your digital camera. NVIDIA now has a tool that will remove grain, noise and all manner of defects, and the amazing part is that it learned how to without seeing a clean image. How?

A New Type Of Drone   Saturday 14 July

We are well beyond peak drone - to be more accurate beyond peak drone videos. There doesn't seem much left to do but find applications. A tricopter is a bit special and interesting to watch.

GitHub Enterprise 2.14 Adds Unified Search   Friday 13 July

GitHub Enterprise has been updated to add unified search and a beta of the Checks API.

Machine Learning Added To Azure HDInsight   Friday 13 July

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Machine Learning (ML) Services 9.3 on Azure HDInsight. The new release has added support for Python, hence the name change from R Server to ML Services.

Guido van Rossum Quits As Python BDFL   Thursday 12 July

Soon after the news of PEP 572 and the turmoil it caused, we now have the announcement that Python's BDFL is taking a permanent vacation from the job. Where now Python?

ONVIF Challenge Winners   Thursday 12 July

The results of the ONVIF Open Source Spotlight Challenge have been announced. The challenge site has details of all the submissions and if you are looking for interesting ways to use security cameras then it's a treasure trove.

Amazon Launches Alexa Skills Kit SDK for Python   Thursday 12 July

Amazon has launched the beta of a Python SDK designed to make it easier to work with Alexa responses and requests. The Python version has the same features as the existing SDKs for Java and Node.js.

The Core

JavaScript Async - Advanced Worker Threads  
Monday 16 July

Worker threads are increasingly important in modern websites as well as web apps because they allow you to do long running tasks without blocking the UI thread. However they don't, as many believe, relieve you of the need to master asynchronous programming. Workers are async too. This is an extract from Ian Elliot's published JavaScript Async: Events Callbacks, Promises & Async/Await.

Babbage's Bag

XOR - The Magic Swap   Friday 13 July

We all know that if you want to swap the contents of two variables you need a third temporary variable to do the job. It's like swapping the contents of two mugs using a third to hold the contents of the first while you pour the second into it. Using a third temporary mug seems inevitable, but you can swap the contents of two variables without a third with the magic XOR swap.