News

Python Popular With Hackers   Wednesday 03 October

The latest news of Python's popularity comes from a cyber security software and services company which provides protection to enterprise data and application software. Imperva reports that around 77 percent of all the sites it protects, have been attacked by at least one Python-based tool.  

Google Bans Obfuscated Code - Who's To Judge?   Wednesday 03 October

There are nasty cruel people who say that my code comes out pre-obfuscated. They are wrong of course, but I'm not sure I'd like my chances submitting it to Google for approval as a Chrome extension. 

Apache Kylin 2.5 Adds All-in-Spark Cubing Engine  
Tuesday 02 October

There's a new release of Apache Kylin with improvements including an all-in-Spark cubing engine, and support for using MySQL for the Kylin metastore. 

Amazon Adds Way To Make Money With Alexa Channel   Tuesday 02 October

Amazon has updated the options for making money using Alexa Skills. Amazon Pay for Alexa Skills can be used to set up simple voice purchasing flow to sell goods or services, and there's a developer angle too. It is now generally available to UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and France based merchants and developers as well as in the US. 

MakeCode and CODAL Ease The Way To Programming Electronics   Monday 01 October

Ever wanted to program electronics for either fun or profit but thought that the entry barrier was too high? Are you a teacher, a parent, who wanted to teach kids tangible coding but can't figure out where to start from? If the answer is yes, you'll find MakeCode and CODAL a much more accessible way to break into the world of electronics. 

Java 11 Adds Nestmates   Monday 01 October

Java 11 has been released with nest-based access controls, dynamic class-file constants, and a new garbage collector. 

Deep Angel-The AI of Future Media Manipulation  
Sunday 30 September

Undeniably, we live in the era of media manipulation. Such powerful and accessible tools exist today that nearly everyone can do it. Now add to this collection Deep Angel, an artificial intelligence that can erase objects from photographs and videos. 

aijs.rocks - JavaScript Enabled AI   Saturday 29 September

Is JavaScript eating the world? Yes, with AI being heralded as the next major conquest in the language's boundary expansion.  aijs.rocks is a website that aims to serve this cause by becoming a host to the most inspiring examples of AI & JavaScript from across the web. 

Android Studio 3.2 Released - More Cruft Than Substance   Friday 28 September

Oh well here we go again. Android Studio 3.2 has been released and it has new features to support Android devices. Sometimes it seems like the Android Studio team has forgotten that Android Studio has users, or perhaps they never realized it at all. 

Couchbase Launches JSON Analytics   Friday 28 September

There's a new analytics service for Couchbase that comes with SQL++, a query language framework that can be used to write queries on document-oriented data and the JSON data format. 

Google is 20, GNU is 35; Why No GNUgle?  
Thursday 27 September

This week 20 years ago Google was born in a garage, so fitting in with the Silicon Valley creation story; 35 years ago the GNU open source project was announced. Two great, but very different, events. Time to look back and ask why? 

The Best Numerical Library Comes to Python - NAG For Python   Thursday 27 September

You might think that calling "NAG" the best numerical library is hype, but it has impeccable academic credentials and it has been around for a long time. The fact that NAG is taking Python seriously is as much a validation of the importance of the language as a numerical tool as anything else. 

The Core

JavaScript Async - Consuming Promises  
Monday 01 October

In this chapter of Ian Elliot's book for intermediate JavaScript programmers we look at using Promises to create asynchronous code that is easy to understand and hard for bugs to hide in. 

Babbage's Bag

Introduction to Boolean Logic   Friday 28 September

It may sound like a daunting topic, but Boolean logic is very easy to explain and to understand. It represents the simplest of all the logics and the very basis of computing.