News

Chromebook Tablets - The End of Android?   Wednesday 04 April

By Betteridge's law of headlines the answer should be no, but it all depends on what you mean by Android. The first tablet running Chrome OS is now available from Acer, and it is almost certainly the first of a flood of similar devices.

More AI Training From Microsoft   Wednesday 04 April

A new Microsoft Professional Program in Artificial Intelligence has been announced. It comprises ten required courses, each of which is run on a quarterly basis on the edX platform and requires 8 to 16 hours per week.

Swift Adds More Generics Support   Wednesday 04 April

Swift 4.1 is now officially released. It contains updates to the core language, including more support for generics and new build options, as well as minor enhancements to the Swift Package Manager and Foundation.

ONVIF Challenge Now Underway   Tuesday 03 April

The ONVIF Open Source Spotlight challenge has a $20,000 prize pool for innovative desktop or mobile apps that connect to IP security cameras and help resolve security issues. Qualifying apps will be rewarded with a $250 Amazon gift card or a larger cash prize.

TypeScript Adds Conditional Types   Tuesday 03 April

Support for conditional types has been added to TypeScript 2.8, the language that adds optional static types to JavaScript.

What Attracts Devs To Open Source   Monday 02 April

In an era in which we are becoming more an more reliant on open source software, it is important to know how to  recruit and retain core developers - the ones that are key to a project's survival, sustainability and success. An attempt to do this comes from Brazil to be presented in Sweden.

Mozilla Turns Twenty Years Old   Saturday 31 March

March 31st, 1998 was the date on which the Mozilla Code was made available under the Mozilla Public Licence and the day the Mozilla Project was formally launched.

Festo's Flying Fox And Spider Robots Are Worth Seeing  
Saturday 31 March

It has been a while since we have featured an impressive bio-inspired robot from automation expert Festo, but, wouldn't you know it, two come along at the same time.

Android Development Resources For Free   Friday 30 March

Android development relies on a range of technologies which you need to know something about before you embark on creating your own app. Here's an overview of free resources that can help you. 

Google Is Using AI To Construct Ads   Thursday 29 March

Now we know what Google wants AI for - to make more ads. Well it is one of many things, but one we might not have thought of. Adwords users have been getting emails telling them to expect new ads in their groups and if they don't disable them they will start showing after 14 days.

Apache Releases Trafodion   Thursday 29 March

Apache Trafodion has been moved from incubator status to become a high level project. Trafodion is a webscale SQL-on-Hadoop solution enabling transactional or operational workloads on Apache Hadoop. 

The Core

Programmer's Python - Variables, Objects and Attributes   Monday 02 April

Python is object-oriented. In Python everything is an object, but unless you look carefully you might never see one.In this extract from Mike James' forthcoming book, we take a completely different look at objects in Python.

Axiom Of Choice - The Programmer's Guide   Thursday 29 March

The axiom of choice is the most esoteric math concept you are likely to encounter. You might think it has no relevance to computing, but you would be wrong.