Feature Articles

JavaScript Canvas WebGL Convolutions
Ian Elliot

Canvas in WebGL mode provides the ability to perform fast pixel operations. In this extract from a chapter in my new book on JavaScript Graphics we look at how to use the GPU to implement a convolution

You might well think that “chaos” isn’t something that really should be mentioned in the same breath as “computer”, but you’d be wrong. Here's an overview of a  fascinating and disturbing topic and one that every programmer should know something about.

News

Project Reunion To Fix The Windows Divide That Never Should Have Been
20 May | Mike James

BUILD is underway and it's not so much developers, developers developers as it used to be, but it is still of interest. Perhaps the most important announcement is project Reunion, an initiative that could repair the long-term damage to the Windows development environment. 

A survey from Pluralsight into workplace skill development has revealed key disparities between the upskilling needs of employees and the approaches taken by employers. 

Flutter 1.17 includes Metal support for faster iOS performance, new Material components, new Network tracking tooling and is full of fixes - with an unprecedented 6,339 issues closed since the previous stable release. 

Swift 5.3 is nearing completion, and has been updated with the extension of official platform support to include Windows, along with additional Linux distributions. 

Mozilla is calling for applications for three summer programs in its Mozilla Builders Incubator. It has $75,000 each for very early stage startups and $16,000 in funding for projects in its MVP Labs. The third opportunity, its Open Lab, is invite-only among the applicants to the other two and will award ten prizes of $10,000. 

There's a new release of GitHub Desktop with support for tags, meaning developers can create, push, and view tags directly from GitHub Desktop. GitHub Desktop gives developers a way to work with workflows in a desktop environment. 

This year's SIGGRAPH is going to be very different for obvious reasons, but 2020 is still going to be a year with lots of new graphics ideas. The technical papers preview trailer is just out and it's unmissable. 

Open source Python projects are invited to join the early access program for the ActiveState Platform.  The early access program is a prelude to offering free access to the Platform for all qualified open source projects. 

There's a new release of CockroachDB with improvements for developing apps, along with performance and security enhancements. CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database that is cloud native and offers horizontal scalability with no single points of failure. 

The recipient of this year's Knuth Prize is Cynthia Dwork, a computer scientist widely known for the introduction and development of differential privacy, and for her work on non-malleability, lattice-based encryption, concurrent composition, and proofs of work.  

The Linux Foundation has announced that it will host Project OWL’s IoT device firmware effort and is inviting developers worldwide to build mesh network nodes for global emergency communications networks.