The Core

Fundamental C - Side Effects, Sequence Points And Lazy Evaluation   Monday 11 February

Operators are one of C's strong points and it is important to know how to use them - but what are side effects and who ordered sequence points!? It all can seem confusing. This extract, from my forthcoming book on programming C in an IoT context, provides a very helpful explanation. 

History

Douglas Engelbart The Man Who Invented The Future
Thursday 07 February

Over 40 years ago a man demonstrated things that were well ahead of their time but now we taken them for granted. Douglas Engelbart may not be as well known as Steve Jobs but he did far, far more for personal computing. 

News

TCAV Explains How AI Reaches A Decision   Wednesday 13 February

Why is it important to understand the inner workings of a neural network? Read on to find out and to be introduced to Google's machine-to-human translator tool, TCAV (Testing with Concept Activation Vectors) 

Android Things Is Now Less Of A Thing   Wednesday 13 February

It is hardly surprising, to me at least, that Android Things is being "refocused". It was unimaginative in the extreme, misunderstood the problems of the IoT and security and was unattractive to anyone knowing Google's tendency to drop projects.

Intiut Hackathon Returns To London   Wednesday 13 February

Intuit's Small Business Hackathon is back in London for the third time and has a prizes of up to £5000 for creating a brand new solution that saves small businesses time or money.

SQLite Introduces Vacuum Into   Tuesday 12 February

The team at SQLite has added a Vacuum Into command that lets you back up a database atomically so that the backup is as small as possible and contains no forensic traces of deleted content.

Athena Query Alterer Open Sourced   Tuesday 12 February

A tool that alerts you if users are running expensive queries on Amazon Athena query engine has been open sourced by the developers.

Computer Science Curriculum From Minecraft   Monday 11 February

Teaching Computer Science at school just got easier as Microsoft is making a 30-hour curriculum, targeted at students in the age range 11 to 16, available as a free download.

Data Studio Adds Interactive Charts   Monday 11 February

The Data Studio team has added a number of new features to allow for faster insights and richer reporting. The improvements include interactive charts, search filters and the ability to embed external data.

The Importance Of Responsive Web Design   Sunday 10 February

The days when we could afford to ignore responsive web design are over. Here's an infographic that summarizes the reasons why we should all be adopting mobile-friendly design.

Computer Analysis Shows Music Getting Angrier   Saturday 09 February

A study of popular music by data scientists, using the IBM Watson Tone Analyzer, has found increasing levels of anger and sadness in the lyrics from the 50s till now.

Emojis 12 Adds An Orangutang   Friday 08 February

This year's crop of emojis has been finalized by the Unicode Consortium. More than 50 have been approved, and when variations for skin tone and gender are accounted for, there are 230 new ones for 2019, bringing the overall total to 3,053.

PWA Becomes TWA And Enters Play Store   Thursday 07 February

If you just got used to PWA becoming the latest buzz word, Google just invented TWA and allowed these web apps into the Play store. Is this the future?

EU Copyright Directive Article 13 Now Worse Than Ever   Thursday 07 February

A compromise between France and Germany over Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive is very likely to be accepted by the European Council tomorrow so that its final trilogue negotiation can take place on Monday 11th February. The only remaining chance to defeat it will then be at a final vote by all MEPs in March or April.

Google Places API Upgraded And Monetized   Thursday 07 February

Google is upgrading the Places API for Android and iOS, and at the same time is deprecating the free Places SDK in Google Play Services, with a full shutdown date of the end of July 2019.