News

Google Earth Reduced To A Divisive Toy   Wednesday 19 April

The latest version of the once great Google Earth is a disappointment in many respects. It once was a useful tool but version 9 is reduced to a toy complete with a Sesame Street Muppet section. Worse still, it only runs on Chrome. 

Alexa Skill Builder Beta   Wednesday 19 April

Arguably Alexa already has too many skills that nobody wants to make use of for more than five minutes. However, if Amazon can make it easier to create them, perhaps it increases the chance that a really useful one might turn up almost by chance.

GitHub Extends Developer Program   Wednesday 19 April

Membership of the GitHub Developer program used to be restricted to developers with a paid GitHub account. Now it is open to any developer who want to join with a range of levels of membership.

Android Studio Moves Toward Java 8   Tuesday 18 April

Android Studio is making progress to supporting Java 8 after the ambitious, perhaps too ambitious Jack & Jill project was shelved. What does all this mean?

Intel Cancels Developer Forum Permanently   Tuesday 18 April

An announcement the appeared yesterday on the Intel Developer Forum website signals that the event scheduled to take place in San Francisco in August will not take place, nor will there be any future IDFs.

Investigating Bias In AI Language Learning   Monday 17 April

A new study has revealed that AI systems, such as Google Translate, acquire the same cultural biases as humans.While this isn't a surprising finding, it comes as a cause for concern and remedial action.

Viral Video Shows A Swarm Of Robots Sorting Packages   Sunday 16 April

We tend to think of robots as something like the Terminator or Marvin, or at least the popular press does. What is not completely understood is that simpler robots are likely to have as big an effect in the world. Just take a look at how a swarm of simple robots sort 200,000 packages a day.  

AI Poker Player Lengpudashi Sweeps The Board   Saturday 15 April

An AI called Lengpudashi, the latest Poker machine from Carnegie Mellon University, has comprehensively beaten a six-man team led by World Series champion Alan Du to win $792,327 in virtual chips in 36,000 hands over 5 days.  

Test Of Time Award For Classic Paper On Bow-Tie Structure Of The Web   Friday 14 April

Researchers whose work revealed the "bow-tie" structure of the web, thereby improving search engines, have been awarded the third Seoul Test of Time Award at this month's World Wide Web Conference, held in Perth, Australia. 

Django 1.11 Adds Easier Database Indexes   Friday 14 April

Django, the high-level Python Web framework that lets you create dynamic websites, has added new classes to make it easier to create database indexes. 

React 15.5 Gets Ready For Rewrite   Thursday 13 April

There's a new version of React with changes to make the transition to the next major version easier.  React is Facebook’s open source JavaScript library, which lets you describe what you want to render in a declarative way using shared components and elements. 

Speedometer - Meet Google's New JavaScript Benchmark   Thursday 13 April

Benchmarking is both essential and a distortion. The trouble is that once there is a benchmark that anyone pays any attention to, the tendency is to tweak for a high score - even if this results in a poorer real world performance. 

The Core

jQuery UI and Auto-Complete Address Entry   Tuesday 18 April

jQuery UI has a little-known feature that makes interactive auto-complete very easy. In this hands-on tutorial we put it together with the cloud-based Global Express Entry address auto-complete service from Melissa Data to smooth over one of the biggest problems in getting users to sign up.

Babbage's Bag

Recursion   Thursday 13 April

Recursion is often said to separate real programmers from the pack. What is it that makes it so powerful? What is it that makes it so difficult? What is the "shape" of recursion as a flow of control?