News

The Hour Of Code Needs You   Wednesday 21 October

For the third year running, Code.org is hoping to provide millions of people, particularly school students, with an Hour of Code experience at the beginning of December. Events are being planned across the globe and the call has gone out to experienced programmers to volunteer their expertise.

The Flaw In Every Neural Network Just Got A Little Worse   Wednesday 21 October

Neural networks are performing tasks that make it look as if strong AI, that is machines that think like us, is very possible and perhaps even not that far away. But there is a problem. Recently it was discovered that all neural networks have a surprising capacity for coming to the wrong conclusion.

Who Is Programming The Smart Home?   Wednesday 21 October

Although Smart Home solutions currently only appeal to early adopters and have still to be adopted on a mass market scale, close to 1.5 million developers are already involved in this market sector.

Amazon Strengthens Data Offerings   Tuesday 20 October

Amazon has announced a number of updates to its data services on AWS, including fully managed MariaDB.

TypeScript On Netbeans   Tuesday 20 October

If you really need to put type into JavaScript then TypeScript is a popular option, but many are put off by its Microsoft associations including having to use Visual Studio. Now you can choose to use NetBeans if you want to and stay away from VS. 

Online Introduction to ASP.NET 5   Monday 19 October

 The Microsoft Virtual Academy is offering free training in ASP.NET.

Why Users Uninstall Apps   Monday 19 October

There are loads of apps out there - 1.5 billion in the App Store and 1.6 billion on Google Play - which gives users a vast choice. Once they have downloaded your app you want them not only to use it but to keep it. Here are some interesting statistics about app retention rates and why users ditch them.

Amazon's AWS IoT - Another IoT Backend   Monday 19 October

When it comes to the Internet of Things, it is difficult to go from an ad man's dream to something real, but the one problem we really don't have is implementing a backend. Yet why is it everyone wants to claim the IoT is here because they have invented yet another backend?

Robots Taught To Avoid Faceplants   Sunday 18 October

Although we may find the spectacle of Robots falling down amusing, given the amount of damage such falls cause in expensive machines they are really far from funny.  

Android Easter Eggs Revealed   Saturday 17 October

Each version of Android since Gingerbread has had an easter egg associated with its version number.  Here's a video that looks at this tradition and gets the inside story from its most recent implementer who most recently has put a multiplayer game into Marshmallow.

Intel Launches Curie-Based Arduino 101   Friday 16 October

Intel has partnered with Massimo Banzi to develop an an affordable learning and development board ideal for entry-level makers and education environments based on the tiny-but-powerful Intel Curie module.

Julia 0.4 Released   Friday 16 October

The Julia community has released Julia 0.4.0 with major language refinements and numerous standard library improvements. Julia 0.5.0 is now in preview with nightly builds. It will bring further, and breaking, improvements to core array functionality.

Cardboard Extends Its Reach   Thursday 15 October

Google has announced that its Virtual Reality app Cardboard is now available in 39 languages, in over 100 countries, with developer documentation published in 10 languages. Google has also updated Cardboard's SDK.

New Amazon Elasticsearch Service   Thursday 15 October

 Amazon has announced a fully managed Elasticsearch service, allowing AWS users to launch a scalable Elasticsearch cluster from their AWS Management Consoles.  

Stanford Online MOOC For Sound Synthesis   Thursday 15 October

A course on physics-based digital signal processing starts this week on the Kadenze platform. One of its prerequisites is familiarity with the ChucK programming language - and for that there's another Kadenze course already in progress.

The Core

Exploring Edison - Almost Real Time Linux   Tuesday 20 October

You can write real time programs using standard Linux as long as you know how to control scheduling. In fact it turns out to be relatively easy and it enables the Edison to do things you might not think it capable of. 

eBooks

Effective Interest Rates   Thursday 15 October

In the third chapter of Janet Swift's e-book on using a spreadsheet to take care of your personal and business finances and we explore the the idea of the `effective’ interest rate and introduce the much quoted APR, Annual Percentage Rate..