News

XANDEM RF Tomography A New Approach To Home Security   Wednesday 16 December

You may have noticed that a weak WiFi signal can be completely wiped out by people moving around. Now this irritation has been turned into a sensor grid that can locate people within your home. 

GCHQ Open Sources Gaffer   Wednesday 16 December

A graph database developed by the UK communications agency and optimized for retrieving data on nodes of interest has been made available on Github. 

NORAD Santa Tracker Celebrates Sixty Years   Wednesday 16 December

The 2015 NORAD Santa Tracker is now live and its updated graphic notes the fact that this is its 60th Anniversary. Microsoft is hoping that the popularity of this website will entice users to upgrade to Windows 10.

Microsoft Wins ImageNet Using Extremely Deep Neural Networks   Tuesday 15 December

While just about everyone else is forming foundations and institutes to further AI, some researchers are actually getting on with doing it. This year's ImageNet competition has been won by Microsoft, which comes as something of a surprise. 

Win New Arduino MKR1000   Tuesday 15 December

Arduino has announced a new IoT device and a teamed up with Microsoft to give away 1,000 units to makers who submit ideas for how to use it. 

AI Goes Open Source To The Tune Of $1 Billion   Monday 14 December

AI is a hot topic and it is clear that it could be an engine for great good or great evil depending on who or what controls it. OpenAI is a new non-profit that aims to put the control back in the people's hands. 

Does Syntax Coloring Work?   Monday 14 December

Programmers divide into opposing camps: the hair-shirt-wearing one claims "I don't need no IDE" and at the other extreme the plea is "give me all the tools you can!" What you feel about syntax coloring probably depends on which group you gravitate to. Now we have some, long overdue, research that gives us some hard facts to argue about. 

TypeScript 1.7   Monday 14 December

TypeScript, an extension for JavaScript that was originally developed by Microsoft but now resides on Github with a wider range of developers, was recently updated. TypeScript 1.7 brings with it support for ES6 async functions.

Create Your Favourite Actor From Nothing But Photos   Sunday 13 December

Graphics techniques are becoming so sophisticated that it really does seem like magic is being done. Now a team of researchers has implemented a way of constructing a 3D model of a well known actor and using it to create scenes they never played in.

Integrating EDSAC   Saturday 12 December

EDSAC, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, was originally built immediately after World War II at  the University of Cambridge, England. It is now being re-built at the UK's National Museum of Computing, with components being worked on by volunteers with skills and knowledge from their careers in the UK's computer industry.

Mozilla Distributes Funds To Open Source   Friday 11 December

The first set of awards in the Mozilla Open Source Support have been announced. The program was launched with an initial allocation of $1million and seven projects have shared $503,000. 

Android Studio 2.0 Preview Now With Emulator   Friday 11 December

The first preview of Android Studio 2.0 didn't ship with the new Android emulator that promised to make such a difference to to the process of creating Android apps. Now it does. 

IBM Drops Hairdryer   Thursday 10 December

IBM has dropped its #HackAHairDryer campaign introduced to attract more women to technology.

Quantum Physics Is Undecidable   Thursday 10 December

There are many supposedly real world applications of computability, but most of them are theoretical and don't apply to situations we are likely to encounter. Now we have a result which proves that a very simple question in quantum mechanics is undecidable.

DARPA Funding For Robotics Fast Track   Thursday 10 December

DARPA's latest initiative to promote the development of robotic hardware and software, called  Robotics Fast Track , is making awards up to $150,000. The proposals accepted so far favor universities and companies, but individuals and small teams are being encouraged to apply, with a preference for projects that are open source.

Professional Programmer

Reading Your Way Into Big Data   Monday 14 December

This addition to Programmer's Bookshelf is a roadmap of the reading required to take you from novice to competent in areas relating to Big Data, Hadoop, and Spark. 

Deep Teaching   Thursday 10 December

Computer Science Education week and the Hour of Code is a good time to consider what teaching programming and computer science is really all about. It is time we turned from shallow teaching to deep teaching.