News

Today Chrome Marks HTTP As Not Secure  
Wednesday 25 July

A milestone ... but not the one you might think. Today someone took control of the web in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. 

Udacity Launches School of Data Science   Wednesday 25 July

Udacity has opened the doors on its new School of Data Science. This has two learning paths, with and without programming. The first step on the programming path is a brand new program at beginner level that covers the fundamentals of Python, SQL and GitHub. But you can dive in at intermediate or advanced level if you already have the pre-requisites. 

Google Launches Blockchain ToolKit   Wednesday 25 July

Google has announced partnerships with two blockchain toolkit providers to give developers working on Google Cloud a way to build and test blockchain apps. 

ACM Revises Code of Ethics   Tuesday 24 July

The ACM has updated its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, which is considered the standard for the computing profession, and has been adopted by computing professionals, organizations and technology companies around the world. 

MongoDB 4 Released   Tuesday 24 July

MongoDB 4 has been released with support for multi-document ACID transactions. The popular document database had some support for ACID transactions at the document level in earlier versions, but until now not for multi-document transactions. 

Python The Future Of Programming?   Monday 23 July

Bettridge's law of headlines suggests that the answer is no, but in this case it might be yes - as long as you don't look too far into the future. The Economist, a much admired publication, has an article about Python and world domination. It's interesting to see how other people see us. 

Bing Adds Intelligent Code Search   Monday 23 July

There's a new search option in Bing called Code Sample Answer that you can use to find code that matches what you ask for in a question. You describe the code you're looking for, and it is extracted from an article and placed in the requested programming language. 

Is Google's Fuchsia OS Destined For Android?  Friday 20 July

Insiders on the Fuchsia team, a new OS that Google is keeping under wraps, have leaked some interesting hints as to what and why it is all about. The one fact here is that there is no official word from Google. 

Apache Phoenix Now HBase 2.0 Compatible   Friday 20 July

Apache Phoenix 5.0 has been released. This is a major version upgrade to bring the compatibility for HBase to 2.0+, and to support Apache Hadoop 3.0. 

Android's Uncertain Future   Thursday 19 July

We were already concerned about the impact on the future of Android of the still ongoing Oracle v Google lawsuit. Now Google has been fined €4.3 billion ($5 billion) by the European Commission for breaking its antitrust regulation and If it doesn't comply with the EU's strictures within 90 days, it will face a daily fine of $15 million.  Can Android emerge unscathed?  

Periscope Data In Collaboration With SageMaker
Thursday 19 July

A new machine learning product that makes use of Amazon SageMaker has been announced by Periscope Data. The system is currently in beta. 

The Core

Serverless Real-time Notifications for Web Apps in AWS   Monday 23 July

Using Serverless solutions for real-time communication for web apps solves many challenges. Implementing scalability, reliability and fault tolerance while dealing with WebSocket connections are few of them. When implementing real-time web applications, there are two services provided by AWS - AWS AppSync and AWS IoT. Each of these services has applicability for different use cases based on the features and pricing model they offer.

Projects

How To Draw Einstein's Face Parametrically  
Thursday 19 July

There are some amazing math artworks on Wolfram Alpha. I was captivated by parametric equations that draw the faces of well known people and all using a few Sin functions. How is this achieved? It seems like a lot of work to go to if the curves are constructed by manual trial and error. The good news is that they are not - we show you how using Wolfram and Python.