News

Mozilla Gives Up On Firefox OS   Wednesday 09 December

Mozilla has just announced in vague terms that it isn't going to be pushing Firefox OS any more. This isn't a huge surprise given the way things were, and are, going. What does the future now hold?

Computer Science Education Week Now Big Event   Wednesday 09 December

December 9th is Grace Hopper's birthday and it falls in Computer Science Education Week - the week in which in 2015 millions of school students around the world will experience an Hour of Code. This year other big names are getting involved.

Microsoft Open Sources Chakra JavaScript Engine   Wednesday 09 December

Microsoft may well be open sourcing something on an almost daily basis, but why the Chakra JavaScript engine?

Advance Your Career As a Web Developer With Udacity and Google   Tuesday 08 December

Enrollment opens today for Udacity's latest nanodegree. If you want to get hired as a Senior Web Developer, join the first cohort of students to follow a curriculum devised in conjunction with Google.

Even Adobe Is Giving Up On Flash   Tuesday 08 December

Perhaps the headline is a little unfair, but Adobe is making it very clear that the future lies elsewhere and this degree of clarity should be applauded.

Google Gears Up To Sell AI Vision   Monday 07 December

Google just announced a limited preview of its Cloud Vision API and moved a step closer to making money out of its AI efforts.

HoloLens - What Would You Like To See Built?   Monday 07 December

Microsoft Hololens won't start to ship until next year but already it has a thriving community of developers who want to use it. Now Microsoft has launched a new website to asking devs community to submit ideas for the holographic apps, one of which will be built by Microsoft.

Looking Into Sidef   Monday 07 December

Sidef is a modern, yet experimental, dynamic, object-oriented programming language with an expressive grammar, embracing a new programming style, taking the best from languages like Ruby, Go, Perl 6 and JavaScript. Version 2.11 was recently released.

Google's Santa Tracker Introduces Coding Lab   Sunday 06 December

Google's Santa Tracker has a new feature - Code Lab - where you'll find an introduction to coding that is suitable for the very young.

A SAT Based Game   Saturday 05 December

The Boolean Satisfiability problem or SAT is the best known NP Complete problem. It is fairly easy to understand if you have some knowledge of Boolean logic but now we have a simple game that helps you really get inside what is going on. 

PHP 7 Released   Friday 04 December

PHP 7 has been released and is generally available. The new version uses a different engine to achieve better performance, and has an upgraded core interpreter. 

Apple Open Sources Swift 2   Friday 04 December

Apple's new language is now all grown up and ready to make its way onto other platforms. Does this mean that Swift has a future as a universal language? 

Let's Encrypt Now In Public Beta   Thursday 03 December

Let's Encrypt is entering Public Beta today and signing up is free. The project is a a joined initiative by the non-profit entity Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) and the Linux Foundation, that aims to make the web a safer place by helping people set up encryption on their websites easily and without the usual hassle.

State of Software Security   Thursday 03 December

Veracode's report State of Software Security, launched today, focuses on application development and reveals that apps written in web scripting languages have a far higher prevalence rate of SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting those written in .NET or Java.

The Core

Exploring Edison - I2C Measuring Temperature And Humidity   Monday 07 December

Using I2C devices is fairly easy once you have successfully used one - and hence know what information you need and what to look for in a working system. In this chapter we use the HTU21D temperature and humidity sensor as a case study of I2C in action - it also happens to be a useful sensor.

eBooks

Exploring Repayment Loans   Friday 04 December

Repayment loans are the subject of the last of three chapters of Janet Swift's Financial Functions with a Spreadsheet which look at the effects of regular cashflows.