It seems that PC market seems to be stabilizing in 2016. I expect that the PC market to shrinks slightly. While mobile devices have been named as culprits for the fall of PC shipments, IDC said that other factors may be in play. It is still pretty hard to make any decent profits with building PC hardware unless you are one of the biggest players – so again Lenovo, HP, and Dell are increasing their collective dominance of the PC market like they did in 2015. I expect changes like spin-offs and maybe some mergers with with smaller players like Fujitsu, Toshiba and Sony. The EMEA server market looks to be a two-horse race between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell, according to Gartner. HPE, Dell and Cisco “all benefited” from Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s EMEA x86 server organisation.
Tablet market is no longer high grow market – tablet maker has started to decline, and decline continues in 2016 as owners are holding onto their existing devices for more than 3 years. iPad sales are set to continue decline and iPad Air 3 to be released in 1st half of 2016 does not change that. IDC predicts that detachable tablet market set for growth in 2016 as more people are turning to hybrid devices. Two-in-one tablets have been popularized by offerings like the Microsoft Surface, with options ranging dramatically in price and specs. I am not myself convinced that the growth will be as IDC forecasts, even though Company have started to make purchases of tablets for workers in jobs such as retail sales or field work (Apple iPads, Windows and Android tablets managed by company). Combined volume shipments of PCs, tablets and smartphones are expected to increase only in the single digits.
All your consumer tech gear should be cheaper come July as shere will be less import tariffs for IT products as World Trade Organization (WTO) deal agrees that tariffs on imports of consumer electronics will be phased out over 7 years starting in July 2016. The agreement affects around 10 percent of the world trade in information and communications technology products and will eliminate around $50 billion in tariffs annually.
In 2015 the storage was rocked to its foundations and those new innovations will be taken into wider use in 2016. The storage market in 2015 went through strategic foundation-shaking turmoil as the external shared disk array storage playbook was torn to shreds: The all-flash data centre idea has definitely taken off as a vision that could be achieved so that primary data is stored in flash with the rest being held in cheap and deep storage. Flash drives generally solve the dusk drive latency access problem, so not so much need for hybrid drives. There is conviction that storage should be located as close to servers as possible (virtual SANs, hyper-converged industry appliances and NVMe fabrics). The existing hybrid cloud concept was adopted/supported by everybody. Flash started out in 2-bits/cell MLC form and this rapidly became standard and TLC (3-bits/cell or triple layer cell) had started appearing. Industry-standard NVMe drivers for PCIe flash cards appeared. Intel and Micron blew non-volatile memory preconceptions out of the water in the second half of the year with their joint 3D XPoint memory announcement. Boring old disk disk tech got shingled magnetic recording (SMR) and helium-filled drive technology; drive industry is focused on capacity-optimizing its drives. We got key:value store disk drives with an Ethernet NIC on-board and basic GET and PUT object storage facilities came into being. Tape industry developed a 15TB LTO-7 format.
The use of SSD will increase and it’s price will drop. SSDs will be in more than 25% of new laptops sold in 2015. SSDs are expected to be in 31% of new consumer laptops in 2016 and more than 40% by 2017. The prices of mainstream consumer SSDs have fallen dramatically every year over the past three years while HDD prices have not changed much. SSD prices will decline to 24 cents per gigabyte in 2016. In 2017 they’re expected to drop to 11-17 cents per gigabyte (means a 1TB SSD on average would retail for $170 or less).
Hard disk sales will decrease, but this technology is not dead. Sales of hard disk drives have been decreasing for several years now (118 million units in the third quarter of 2015), but according to Seagate hard disk drives (HDDs) are set to still stay relevant around for at least 15 years to 20 years. HDDs remain the most popular data storage technology as it is cheapest in terms of per-gigabyte costs. While SSDs are generally getting more affordable, high-capacity solid-state drives are not going to become as inexpensive as hard drives any time soon.
Because all-flash storage systems with homogenous flash media are still too expensive to serve as a solution to for every enterprise application workload, enterprises will increasingly turn to performance optimized storage solutions that use a combination of multiple media types to deliver cost-effective performance. The speed advantage of Fibre Channel over Ethernet has evaporated. Enterprises also start to seek alternatives to snapshots that are simpler and easier to manage, and will allow data and application recovery to a second before the data error or logical corruption occurred.
Local storage and the cloud finally make peace in 2016 as the decision-makers across the industry have now acknowledged the potential for enterprise storage and the cloud to work in tandem. Over 40 percent of data worldwide is expected to live on or move through the cloud by 2020 according to IDC.
Open standards for data center development are now a reality thanks to advances in cloud technology. Facebook’s Open Compute Project has served as the industry’s leader in this regard.This allows more consolidation for those that want that. Consolidation used to refer to companies moving all of their infrastructure to the same facility. However, some experts have begun to question this strategy as the rapid increase in data quantities and apps in the data center have made centralized facilities more difficult to operate than ever before. Server virtualization, more powerful servers and an increasing number of enterprise applications will continue to drive higher IO requirements in the datacenter.
Cloud consolidation starts heavily in 2016: number of options for general infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services and cloud management software will be much smaller at the end of 2016 than the beginning. The major public cloud providers will gain strength, with Amazon, IBM SoftLayer, and Microsoft capturing a greater share of the business cloud services market. Lock-in is a real concern for cloud users, because PaaS players have the ancient imperative to find ways to tie customers to their platforms and aren’t afraid to use them so advanced users want to establish reliable portability across PaaS products in a multi-vendor, multi-cloud environment.
Year 2016 will be harder for legacy IT providers than 2015. In its report, IDC states that “By 2020, More than 30 percent of the IT Vendors Will Not Exist as We Know Them Today.” Many enterprises are turning away from traditional vendors and toward cloud providers. They’re increasingly leveraging open source. In short, they’re becoming software companies. The best companies will build cultures of performance and doing the right thing — and will make data and the processes around it self-service for all their employees. Design Thinking to guide companies who want to change the lives of its customers and employees. 2016 will see a lot more work in trying to manage services that simply aren’t designed to work together or even be managed – for example Whatever-As-A-Service cloud systems to play nicely together with their existing legacy systems. So competent developers are the scarce commodity. Some companies start to see Cloud as a form of outsourcing that is fast burning up inhouse ITops jobs with varying success.
There are still too many old fashioned companies that just can’t understand what digitalization will mean to their business. In 2016, some companies’ boards still think the web is just for brochures and porn and don’t believe their business models can be disrupted. It gets worse for many traditional companies. For example Amazon is a retailer both on the web and increasingly for things like food deliveries. Amazon and other are playing to win. Digital disruption has happened and will continue.
Windows 10 is coming more on 2016. If 2015 was a year of revolution, 2016 promises to be a year of consolidation for Microsoft’s operating system. I expect that Windows 10 adoption in companies starts in 2016. Windows 10 is likely to be a success for the enterprise, but I expect that word from heavyweights like Gartner, Forrester and Spiceworks, suggesting that half of enterprise users plan to switch to Windows 10 in 2016, are more than a bit optimistic. Windows 10 will also be used in China as Microsoft played the game with it better than with Windows 8 that was banned in China.
Windows is now delivered “as a service”, meaning incremental updates with new features as well as security patches, but Microsoft still seems works internally to a schedule of milestone releases. Next up is Redstone, rumoured to arrive around the anniversary of Windows 10, midway through 2016. Also Windows servers will get update in 2016: 2016 should also include the release of Windows Server 2016. Server 2016 includes updates to the Hyper-V virtualisation platform, support for Docker-style containers, and a new cut-down edition called Nano Server.
Windows 10 will get some of the already promised features not delivered in 2015 delivered in 2016. Windows 10 was promised coming to PCs and Mobile devices in 2015 to deliver unified user experience. Continuum is a new, adaptive user experience offered in Windows 10 that optimizes the look and behavior of apps and the Windows shell for the physical form factor and customer’s usage preferences. The promise was same unified interface for PCs, tablets and smart phones – but it was only delivered in 2015 for only PCs and some tablets. Mobile Windows 10 for smart phone is expected to start finally in 2016 – The release of Microsoft’s new Windows 10 operating system may be the last roll of the dice for its struggling mobile platform. Because Microsoft Plan A is to get as many apps and as much activity as it can on Windows on all form factor with Universal Windows Platform (UWP), which enables the same Windows 10 code to run on phone and desktop. Despite a steady inflow of new well-known apps, it remains unclear whether the Universal Windows Platform can maintain momentum with developer. Can Microsoft keep the developer momentum going? I am not sure. In addition there are also plans for tools for porting iOS apps and an Android runtime, so expect also delivery of some or all of the Windows Bridges (iOS, web app, desktop app, Android) announced at the April 2015 Build conference in hope to get more apps to unified Windows 10 app store. Windows 10 does hold out some promise for Windows Phone, but it’s not going to make an enormous difference. Losing the battle for the Web and mobile computing is a brutal loss for Microsoft. When you consider the size of those two markets combined, the desktop market seems like a stagnant backwater.
Older Windows versions will not die in 2016 as fast as Microsoft and security people would like. Expect Windows 7 diehards to continue holding out in 2016 and beyond. And there are still many companies that run their critical systems on Windows XP as “There are some people who don’t have an option to change.” Many times the OS is running in automation and process control systems that run business and mission-critical systems, both in private sector and government enterprises. For example US Navy is using obsolete operating system Microsoft Windows XP to run critical tasks. It all comes down to money and resources, but if someone is obliged to keep something running on an obsolete system, it’s the wrong approach to information security completely.
Virtual reality has grown immensely over the past few years, but 2016 looks like the most important year yet: it will be the first time that consumers can get their hands on a number of powerful headsets for viewing alternate realities in immersive 3-D. Virtual Reality will become the mainstream when Sony, and Samsung Oculus bring consumer products on the market in 2016. Whole virtual reality hype could be rebooted as Early build of final Oculus Rift hardware starts shipping to devs. Maybe HTC‘s and Valve‘s Vive VR headset will suffer in the next few month. Expect a banner year for virtual reality.
GPU and FPGA acceleration will be used in high performance computing widely. Both Intel and AMD have products with CPU and GPU in the same chip, and there is software support for using GPU (learn CUDA and/or OpenCL). Also there are many mobile processors have CPU and GPU on the same chip. FPGAs are circuits that can be baked into a specific application, but can also be reprogrammed later. There was lots of interest in 2015 for using FPGA for accelerating computations as the nest step after GPU, and I expect that the interest will grow even more in 2016. FPGAs are not quite as efficient as a dedicated ASIC, but it’s about as close as you can get without translating the actual source code directly into a circuit. Intel bought Altera (big FPGA company) in 2015 and plans in 2016 to begin selling products with a Xeon chip and an Altera FPGA in a single package – possibly available in early 2016.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning will be talked about a lot in 2016. Neural networks, which have been academic exercises (but little more) for decades, are increasingly becoming mainstream success stories: Heavy (and growing) investment in the technology, which enables the identification of objects in still and video images, words in audio streams, and the like after an initial training phase, comes from the formidable likes of Amazon, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others. So-called “deep learning” has been enabled by the combination of the evolution of traditional neural network techniques, the steadily increasing processing “muscle” of CPUs (aided by algorithm acceleration via FPGAs, GPUs, and, more recently, dedicated co-processors), and the steadily decreasing cost of system memory and storage. There were many interesting releases on this in the end of 2015: Facebook Inc. in February, released portions of its Torch software, while Alphabet Inc.’s Google division earlier this month open-sourced parts of its TensorFlow system. Also IBM Turns Up Heat Under Competition in Artificial Intelligence as SystemML would be freely available to share and modify through the Apache Software Foundation. So I expect that the year 2016 will be the year those are tried in practice. I expect that deep learning will be hot in CES 2016. Several respected scientists issued a letter warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) in 2015, but I don’t worry about a rogue AI exterminating mankind. I worry about an inadequate AI being given control over things that it’s not ready for. How machine learning will affect your business? MIT has a good free intro to AI and ML.
Computers, which excel at big data analysis, can help doctors deliver more personalized care. Can machines outperform doctors? Not yet. But in some areas of medicine, they can make the care doctors deliver better. Humans repeatedly fail where computers — or humans behaving a little bit more like computers — can help. Computers excel at searching and combining vastly more data than a human so algorithms can be put to good use in certain areas of medicine. There are also things that can slow down development in 2016: To many patients, the very idea of receiving a medical diagnosis or treatment from a machine is probably off-putting.
Internet of Things (IoT) was talked a lot in 2015, and it will be a hot topics for IT departments in 2016 as well. Many companies will notice that security issues are important in it. The newest wearable technology, smart watches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce - it learns from its users, and generate appropriate responses in real time. Interest in Internet of Things (IoT) will as bring interest to real-time business systems: Not only real-time analytics, but real-time everything. This will start in earnest in 2016, but the trend will take years to play out.
Connectivity and networking will be hot. And it is not just about IoT. CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets. The interest will affect job markets: Network jobs are hot; salaries expected to rise in 2016 as wireless network engineers, network admins, and network security pros can expect above-average pay gains.
Linux will stay big in network server marker in 2016. Web server marketplace is one arena where Linux has had the greatest impact. Today, the majority of Web servers are Linux boxes. This includes most of the world’s busiest sites. Linux will also run many parts of out Internet infrastructure that moves the bits from server to the user. Linux will also continue to rule smart phone market as being in the core of Android. New IoT solutions will be moist likely to be built mainly using Linux in many parts of the systems.
Microsoft and Linux are not such enemies that they were few years go. Common sense says that Microsoft and the FOSS movement should be perpetual enemies. It looks like Microsoft is waking up to the fact that Linux is here to stay. Microsoft cannot feasibly wipe it out, so it has to embrace it. Microsoft is already partnering with Linux companies to bring popular distros to its Azure platform. In fact, Microsoft even has gone so far as to create its own Linux distro for its Azure data center.
Web browsers are coming more and more 64 bit as Firefox started 64 bit era on Windows and Google is killing Chrome for 32-bit Linux. At the same time web browsers are loosing old legacy features like NPAPI and Silverlight. Who will miss them? The venerable NPAPI plugins standard, which dates back to the days of Netscape, is now showing its age, and causing more problems than it solves, and will see native support removed by the end of 2016 from Firefox. It was already removed from Google Chrome browsers with very little impact. Biggest issue was lack of support for Microsoft’s Silverlight which brought down several top streaming media sites – but they are actively switching to HTML5 in 2016. I don’t miss Silverlight. Flash will continue to be available owing to its popularity for web video.
SHA-1 will be at least partially retired in 2016. Due to recent research showing that SHA-1 is weaker than previously believed, Mozilla, Microsoft and now Google are all considering bringing the deadline forward by six months to July 1, 2016.
Adobe’s Flash has been under attack from many quarters over security as well as slowing down Web pages. If you wish that Flash would be finally dead in 2016 you might be disappointed. Adobe seems to be trying to kill the name by rebranding trick: Adobe Flash Professional CC is now Adobe Animate CC. In practive it propably does not mean much but Adobe seems to acknowledge the inevitability of an HTML5 world. Adobe wants to remain a leader in interactive tools and the pivot to HTML5 requires new messaging.
The trend to try to use same same language and tools on both user end and the server back-end continues. Microsoft is pushing it’s .NET and Azure cloud platform tools. Amazon, Google and IBM have their own set of tools. Java is on decline. JavaScript is going strong on both web browser and server end with node.js , React and many other JavaScript libraries. Apple also tries to bend it’s Swift programming language now used to make mainly iOS applications also to run on servers with project Perfect.
Java will still stick around, but Java’s decline as a language will accelerate as new stuff isn’t being written in Java, even if it runs on the JVM. We will not see new Java 9 in 2016 as Oracle’s delayed the release of Java 9 by six months. The register tells that Java 9 delayed until Thursday March 23rd, 2017, just after tea-time.
Containers will rule the world as Docker will continue to develop, gain security features, and add various forms of governance. Until now Docker has been tire-kicking, used in production by the early-adopter crowd only, but it can change when vendors are starting to claim that they can do proper management of big data and container farms.
NoSQL databases will take hold as they be called as “highly scalable” or “cloud-ready.” Expect 2016 to be the year when a lot of big brick-and-mortar companies publicly adopt NoSQL for critical operations. Basically NoSQL could be seem as key:value store, and this idea has also expanded to storage systems: We got key:value store disk drives with an Ethernet NIC on-board and basic GET and PUT object storage facilities came into being.
In the database world Big Data will be still big but it needs to be analyzed in real-time. A typical big data project usually involves some semi-structured data, a bit of unstructured (such as email), and a whole lot of structured data (stuff stored in an RDBMS). The cost of Hadoop on a per-node basis is pretty inconsequential, the cost of understanding all of the schemas, getting them into Hadoop, and structuring them well enough to perform the analytics is still considerable. Remember that you’re not “moving” to Hadoop, you’re adding a downstream repository, so you need to worry on systems integration and latency issues. Apache Spark will also get interest as Spark’s multi-stage in-memory primitives provides more performance for certain applications. Big data brings with it responsibility – Digital consumer confidence must be earned.
IT security continues to be a huge issue in 2016. You might be able to achieve adequate security against hackers and internal threats but every attempt to make systems idiot proof just means the idiots get upgraded. Firms are ever more connected to each other and the general outside world. So in 2016 we will see even more service firms accidentally leaking critical information and a lot more firms having their reputations scorched by incompetence fuelled security screw-ups. Good security people are needed more and more – a joke doing the rounds of ITExecs doing interviews is “if you’re a decent security bod, why do you need to look for a job”
There will still be unexpected single points of failures in big distributed networked system. The cloud behind the silver lining is that Amazon or any other cloud vendor can be as fault tolerant, distributed and well supported as you like, but if a service like Akamai or Cloudflare was to die, you still stop. That’s not a single point of failure in the classical sense but it’s really hard to manage unless you go for full cloud agnosticism – which is costly. This is hard to justify when their failure rate is so low, so the irony is that the reliability of the content delivery networks means fewer businesses work out what to do if they fail. Oh, and no one seems to test their mission-critical data centre properly, because it’s mission critical- So they just over-specify where they can and cross their fingers (= pay twice and get the half the coverage for other vulnerabilities).
For IT start-ups it seems that Silicon Valley’s cash party is coming to an end. Silicon Valley is cooling, not crashing. Valuations are falling. The era of cheap money could be over and valuation expectations are re-calibrating down. The cheap capital party is over. It could mean trouble for weaker startups.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Movidius to Push AI at Edge of Network
Surveillance camera deal with Hikvision
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330663&
Movidius, a leading embedded computer-vision processor company, soon to be acquired by Intel Corp., has agreed with China’s Hikvision to penetrate artificial intelligence (AI) deeper into surveillance cameras.
The deal put Movidius in a direct contact with Hikvision (pronounced high-K vision), a Chinese company not only known as a major factor globally in the surveillance market, but also for its expertise in advanced visual analytics.
In a phone interview with EE Times, Movidius CEO, Remi El-Ouazzane, said, “Deploying Artificial Intelligence at the edge [of the network] is becoming a massive trend.”
Movidius, which has played a key role behind Google’s Project Tango, has been promoting its ultra low-power vision processing SoC in a number of embedded systems. The company has set its sights on accelerating the adoption of deep learning in a host of applications, including security cameras, drones and augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), as El-Ouazzane explained.
Ranked No.1 in scene classification at ImageNet 2016
The deal with Hikvision is geared toward driving Movidius’ embedded vision processor into the world of security cameras.
Sense, assess and decide
Embedded systems, capable of actions such as “to sense, assess and decide,” will only grow further, explained Movidius CEO El-Ouazzane.
Along with this growth, the industry has an increasing number of tech companies “trying to attack ‘Deep Learning’ from different layers and come up with new SoC platforms,” he observed.
Considering the performance level required for neural network applications in a power-constrained environment, embedded vision processing needs a special, purpose-built architecture, El-Ouazzane explained. This trend is amplified by Moore’s Law which has recently shown signs of slowing down, he added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel reports better-than-expected earnings as data center chips grow 13% to $4.5 billion
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/10/intel-reports-better-than-expected-earnings-as-data-center-chips-grow-13-to-4-5-billion.html
Intel reported third-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates, driven by revenues from data center chips and the Internet of Things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital and IoT will increase investment in software
The majority of large enterprises in research and product development is intended for the development of software and a variety of service ideas, occurs PwC’s publication of the Report on the Global Innovation 1000. According to Finland has reached six companies. The share of software and services to increase the digitalisation and IoT solutions.
Major global companies spend on R & D budgets on the ever-growing share of software development. Most of this very trend is in North America, told US-based consulting firm PwC report.
” Software enable all sectors of new business models, and, inter alia, by means of the Internet of Things (IoT), companies can combine their products, customers and producers, says Tuomas Törmänen, PwC Strategy & Sector.
Software and dotting the share of services throughout the product development grew globally by 54 per cent to 59 per cent from 2010 to 2015. By 2020, the figure will rise to 63 per cent, so the share of manufactured products in the future is only just over a third of product development.
Software is needed to maintain competitiveness.
Worldwide software-related R & D grew by 65 percent from 2010 to 2015, 86 billion to $ 142 billion. Most of the fastest displacement of investments to software in North America.
” For Business we need more experts to develop software to analyze the data and produce platforms for the collection and analysis of data more efficient, ‘
Mapping also shows that by 2018 the health sector becomes the industries largest R & D investor.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/10/26/digi-iot-nostavat-ohjelmistopanostuksia/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The first commercial Linux for forthcoming ARM servers
ARM wants to seriously capture shares particularly-controlled servers, Intel’s x96 processors. German Linux distributor SuSE has now launched the first commercial Linux operating system on future ARM servers.
It is a 64-bit ARM v8-A architectures optimized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server software.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5292:ensimmainen-kaupallinen-linux-tuleviin-arm-palvelimiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benchmark Battle October 2016: Chrome Vs. Firefox Vs. Edge
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/10/25/2050229/benchmark-battle-october-2016-chrome-vs-firefox-vs-edge
Tomi Engdahl says:
French Football League announce new partnership with EA Sports
http://www.skysports.com/esports/news/34214/10623862/french-football-league-announce-new-partnership-with-ea-sports
The French Professional Football League has announced a partnership with EA Sports to launch the first European eSports football league – e-Ligue 1.
The league will use EA Sports’ FIFA 17 as the game for its competition, with each of the 20 football clubs in Ligue 1 sponsoring two FIFA players to compete.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Look at Microsoft’s Fancy Surface Studio All-in-One PC
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/look-microsofts-fancy-surface-studio-one-pc/
Microsoft unveiled a new all-in-one touchscreen desktop computer at its media event in New York today. The Surface Studio is alarmingly thin and objectively beautiful, but its most unique trait is that the whole screen tilts down on a four-point hinge to become a tabletop touchscreen PC. It doesn’t tilt down totally flat, but it sits at about a 20 degree angle, which seems like a natural amount of tilt for drawing, drafting, and swiping things around on the screen.
Pricing starts at $2,999.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fujitsu seeks PC exit, finds willing buyer in Lenovo
But can they fund the deal?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/27/fujitsu_lenovo_pc_takeover_talks/
Fujitsu is in talks with Lenovo to offload its PC arm to its Chinese rival.
If the talks are successful, Fujitsu will continue to sell and support own-brand PCs, designed and made by Lenovo.
The two companies are looking to the Development Bank of Japan to bankroll the deal.
Fujitsu is currently the 10th biggest PC manufacturer in the world. The company transferred its Japan PC business into a new subsidiary called FCCL, in February 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Acer will all ship VR headsets for your PC starting at $299
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/hp-dell-lenovo-asus-and-acer-will-all-ship-vr-headsets-for-your-pc-starting-at-299/
Microsoft is currently holding a press conference in New York. The company is focusing a lot on 3D and all sorts of realities, from augmented reality to virtual reality. As part of this big push, Microsoft announced that it is partnering with five different brands that will all ship VR headsets for the next Windows 10 update.
Microsoft said that HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Acer are all working on tethered VR headsets for your PC with six degrees of freedom sensors. It means that you won’t need external sensors or a big room like with the HTC Vive. And these headsets will start at $299.
Watch out, Oculus and HTC as OEMs are coming after you. Microsoft and its partners are quickly turning VR headsets into commodity items. And this could be a breath of fresh air for virtual reality as a whole.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Mozilla announces Project Quantum, an effort to develop a faster browser engine that will power Firefox beginning in 2017 — Mozilla hopes to speed up its browser so much by the end of 2017 that the today’s complex, interactive websites will feel completely different.
Firefox Quantum project aims for a radically faster web
https://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-quantum-mozilla-faster-web-gecko-engine/
Mozilla hopes to speed up its browser so much by the end of 2017 that today’s complex, interactive websites will feel completely different.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jason Costa / GGV Capital:
Comparing how Twitter and Slack managed their API ecosystems, and why Twitter, which let developers replicate core functionality, stumbled — Opening up an API is a big commitment, one that needs to be managed well over time in order to ensure a healthy and thriving ecosystem.
A Tale of 2 API Platforms
https://medium.com/ggv-capital/a-tale-of-2-api-platforms-39f8dfd77436#.qvxjwyel3
Opening up an API is a big commitment, one that needs to be managed well over time in order to ensure a healthy and thriving ecosystem. If a company is still in the throes of developing a product strategy and business model, it’s worth waiting to offer a highly accessible, external API. It’s better to understand first where you’re going as a company, and then enable a massive network of partnerships to accelerate your product in that direction, with complementary experiences. If your company is thinking about offering a public API, this post is for your consideration. Let’s take a look at Twitter and Slack to illustrate the ways this can play out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
IBM execs say years of huge investments in Watson, which employs 10K people, are yielding profitable opportunities in markets like healthcare and manufacturing
IBM Is Counting on Its Bet on Watson, and Paying Big Money for It
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/technology/ibm-is-counting-on-its-bet-on-watson-and-paying-big-money-for-it.html?_r=0
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the CMO, CIO and CDO can join forces to drive digital innovation
http://www.cio.com/article/3130816/csuite/how-the-cmo-cio-and-cdo-can-join-forces-to-drive-digital-innovation.html
Without a shared vision and active collaboration between executives, your business’s talent, resources and goals remain fragmented – and ultimately, innovation efforts will suffer.
Chief information officers and other business technology leaders are frequently reminded to break down silos around IT, integrating the department into the firm by partnering with managers and listening more directly to end user feedback. Even so, many firms continue to tolerate siloed decision-making in the C-suite, with effects that closely parallel the challenges commonly seen with isolated IT departments.
Increasingly, IT leaders must adjust to a new normal. According to this Building Digital Organizations report by my organization, CompTIA, only 19 percent of companies say IT owns the entire technology budget. As other business functions take command of the technology they want in their work routines, CIOs and other chief executives must work together to chart a course for their organization’s digital future.
Without a shared vision and active collaboration between executives, your business’s talent, resources and goals remain fragmented — and ultimately, innovation efforts will suffer. Rather than managing your business function’s digital resources in solitude or attempting to impose your will on the organization, all executives must form a united front to accelerate their technological evolution.
Building a shared vision
Business departments are largely reflections of their leaders, and this is doubly true with regard to technology decisions. Even minor discord between two business heads could lead their respective departments to invest in disparate technologies, introducing obstacles to compatibility and efficiency, and at worst obstructing collaboration between teams.
Fostering better communication
Unified digital decision-making doesn’t happen overnight. Most C-suites must develop a new process to discuss technology-based challenges and opportunities.
Fusing data, marketing and IT
It’s important for the entire C-suite to collaborate with regard to digital innovation, but an even closer dynamic must be forged between the CIO, CDO and CMO. Across industries, IT, data and marketing are becoming interdependent functions — and their shared success depends on the quality of their leaders’ communication.
Even in forward-thinking marketing departments that already use and collect vast amounts of customer information, there’s tremendous value in CIO, CMO and CDO teamwork.
Pushing the digital revolution
Many organizations have already taken the first steps to unifying IT with the other business units. Now is the time to take the next step and break down barriers to C-suite collaboration, particularly between CMOs, CIOs and CDOs, to enable greater transformation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to get IT and HR on the same page
If your company views HR and IT as two separate departments, it might be time to reevaluate your thinking.
http://www.cio.com/article/3135261/relationship-building-networking/how-to-get-it-and-hr-on-the-same-page.html
Digital transformation has eliminated a lot of the daily grunt work associated with the human resources role. Perry Oostdam, co-founder and CEO of Recruitee says that HR used to be a department bogged down by paperwork, but the automation of things like payroll, salary records and benefits has taken away much of the mundane work, and freed up HR pros to focus on more strategic initiatives and analytics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: What Training Helps Older Programmers Most?
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/16/10/31/0327247/ask-slashdot-what-training-helps-older-programmers-most
Comments:
Most programmers I know can pick up a new tech in about two weeks and be average at it automatically then gain mastery of it over time. There’s no need to have a tutorial because there are plenty out there already.
Older programmers know the basics and they know how to learn new technologies. Matter of fact, that’s precisely what they know. Those who don’t move into management before they become “older programmers”.
There’s always a need for better learning tools. But tools for “old programmers” doesn’t make any more sense than tools for female coders.
You should ask “I’ve got this bunch of folks with 10-40 years experience. How do I make them most productive?”
I’ve been around for, jeez, 38 years now. I’m really good at C, C++, Java, RTOS systems, embedded systems, device drivers, talking to hardware in general, and meeting avoidance. I’m not good at “team building”, “Agile development”, “Synergy”, “open office”, “ping pong”, “free cokes”.
Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll give you feedback on how reasonable your desires are. I listen to you, you listen to me, you give me a nice quiet place to work, and stuff happens.
I am shocked at the number of 20 somethings that are a decade or more out of date. I am not talking about jumping on the latest and greatest, node.go or whatever, but simply aren’t using the latest version (often off by years) of their existing tools. I am not talking religious wars such as C++ vs Java, but programmers who aren’t using testing, not using any code analysis tools, not using patterns properly, using globals like they were bicyclist in a performance enhancing drug mart, and all the usual bad practices.
Then to make it worse they will use “modern” techniques like they are some magic spell. If you way-over apply the technique, then it will magically make up for the lousy choice in just about everything else. Let’s use multi inheritance OOP on our single SQL call to the single table in the single database. Or let’s use the factory pattern for what should have been a single function that takes one parameter.
I am not leaving older programmers out of this. Usually there are subtle differences. They don’t realize that things have massively changed in the last 10 years. Threads aren’t bad, the GPU can do stuff, disk is pretty much free, don’t conserve memory in your single purpose server with 32GB and your application is only using 2.
My advice for any programmer, young or old, is to be flexible. A great choice may not really be the great choice, it may be an illusion. So be prepared to change. And experiment. Lots and lots of experiments. Try out new languages. Try out new datastores. Try out new OSs. Try out new IDEs. If you see the cool kids doing something that requires a fundamental new skill that you don’t have, then learn the fundamental new skill. With ML you need linear algebra and some calculus to really get to the meat of the subject. So learn the libraries and if they seem like your future, learn the fundamentals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat CEO: Linux Is Now The ‘Default Choice’ For The Cloud
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/10/30/0046248/red-hat-ceo-linux-is-now-the-default-choice-for-the-cloud
Speaking at the “All Things Open” conference, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst remembered when Linux “was just a ‘bunch of geeks’ getting together figuring it all out on an 8286 chip” 25 years ago.
“It went from being kind of a hacker movement to truly what I’ll say [is] a viable alternative to traditional software,” Whitehurst says, adding that Red Hat was a part of that push. Over the years, it came out from under the radar, being what Whitehurst calls “the default choice for a next-generation of infrastructure,”
Red Hat CEO: ‘All things open’ isn’t just about technology
http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/10/26/red-hat-ceo-all-things-open-isnt-just-about.html
Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Raleigh-based open-source technology firm Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), says the world – not just technology companies – are shifting toward “open.”
“It went from being kind of a hacker movement to truly what I’ll say a viable alternative to traditional software,” Whitehurst says, adding that Red Hat was a part at of that push. Over the years, it came out from under the radar, being what Whitehurst calls “the default choice for a next-generation of infrastructure,” particularly when it comes to cloud architectures. “Companies are competing around communities.”
He points to Google, Microsoft and Facebook, all having open sourced their machine learning systems.
“They recognize the company that builds the community around that piece of technology, that technology is going to win,” Whitehurst says. “I think it shows that there’s a growing recognition that the best way to innovate in these very fundamental areas is to do it in the open.”
Whitehurst says “open” isn’t just about software.
“We know that bureaucracies, hierarchies, are really good at driving efficiency,” he says. “They’re not good at innovating.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Nitrous.io, an online development environment and IDE, to shut down November 14; company says it will release open source version of cloud IDE in future
Cloud development platform Nitrous.io shuts down
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/cloud-development-platform-nitrous-io-shuts-down/
Nitrous.io, an online development environment and IDE, today announced that it is shutting down its service on November 14.
The service is now closed for new signups and the team says it will refund any payments made after October 16. Nitrous’ existing users will be able to download their existing data soon.
The team says that it will also soon release an open-source version of its cloud IDE that its users will be able to run on their own servers. It’s unclear when exactly this will happen, though.
Today’s announcement does come as a surprise and clearly caught the company’s customers unaware.
Nitrous.io launched back in 2012 and raised a total of $7.65 million
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC:
IDC: Q3 tablet shipments down 14.7% YoY to 43M, as low-cost detachables, tablets reach record sales; iPad Air, Mini make up over two thirds of Apple’s shipments — The worldwide tablet market continued its slump as vendors shipped 43 million units in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16) …
Low-Cost Detachables and Slates in the Lead as Tablet Market Slump Persists in the Third Quarter, According to IDC
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41885416
The worldwide tablet market continued its slump as vendors shipped 43 million units in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), a year-over-year decline of 14.7%, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. In contrast to the annual decline, 3Q16 shipments were up 9.8% over the second quarter of 2016 as the larger vendors prepared for the holiday quarter.
Low-cost (sub-$200) detachables also reached an all-time high as vendors like RCA flooded the market. “Unfortunately, many low-cost detachables also deliver a low-cost experience,” said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers. “The race to the bottom is something we have already experienced with slates and it may prove detrimental to the market in the long run as detachables could easily be seen as disposable devices rather than potential PC replacements.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Minecraft: Education Edition launches in 50 countries and 11 different languages; game costs $5 per user annually or less through volume licensing — Following months of testing and free trials for early adopters, Microsoft announced this morning that its learning-focused version …
Minecraft: Education Edition officially launches
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/01/minecraft-education-edition-officially-launches/
Following months of testing and free trials for early adopters, Microsoft announced this morning that its learning-focused version of the popular Minecraft game, Minecraft: Education Edition, is now available for purchase. The game is available in 50 countries and in 11 different languages, the company said, and will include the Classroom Mode companion app that lets teachers manage settings and interact with students in the game.
Microsoft had first announced its plans to develop a version of the game for educators at the beginning of the year, after acquiring the learning game MinecraftEdu for an undisclosed sum. The company then built upon that library of lessons and activities to develop programs for teachers across a variety of subjects, including STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), history, language, and art, for example.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIT makes neural nets show their work
Computers can now provide both results and their reasoning behind them.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/01/mit-makes-neural-nets-show-their-work/
Turns out, the inner workings of neural networks really aren’t any easier to understand than those of the human brain. But thanks to research coming out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), that could soon change. They’ve devised a means of making these digital minds not just provide the correct answer, classification or prediction, but also explain the rationale behind its choice. And with this ability, researchers hope to bring a new weapon to bear in the fight against breast cancer.
The scientific community has made tremendous strides in developing neural networks, computer systems that are built to operate like the human brain. Researchers have managed to get these systems to beat the world’s best Go players, identify images and shrink their file sizes. Neural networks now power keyboard apps and photo editors. Heck, we’ve even taught them to write like Philip K Dick. Most incredibly, Google recently taught two nets to design their own encryption algorithm.
The problem, however, is that even the researchers that designed these systems aren’t particularly sure how they actually work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco: This $200k UCS S-Series is cheaper than AWS S3 after 13 months
Allegedly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/02/cisco_builds_storage_server_cheaper_to_own_than_amazon_storage/
Cisco has designed a storage server that it claims is 56 per cent cheaper over three years than paying out for Amazon’s S3 service. The networking giant also reckons it’s the first fully modular server architecture in the industry.
The S-Series is designed for data intensive workloads such as big data, streaming media and collaboration applications, and for deploying software-defined storage, object storage, and data protection solutions. Cisco says the boxes will try to access and analyze data quickly to generate results in real time, with unstructured data coming from sources such as the Internet of Things, video, mobility, and collaboration.
Applications processing the data could be recommendation engines, video analytics, diagnostic imaging, streaming analytics, and machine learning. The concept is to analyze the data as close to its arrival as possible, and before it gets punted off to back-end storage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WebAssembly: Finally something everyone agrees on – websites running C/C++ code
Native code spec gets buy-in from major browser makers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/31/webassembly_browser_makers_buy_in/
Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla on Monday announced preview versions of WebAssembly, a low-level safe binary format designed to allow C/C++ code to run in web browsers.
Once WebAssembly, or wasm, matures and appears in browsers, it will allow developers to create native applications, and web applications with native code libraries, that run in browsers to deliver computationally complex content like streaming video, video editing, games, and virtual reality at high frame rates.
Those backing WebAssembly claim the technology runs ~20x faster than JavaScript. Mozilla says its tests show WebAssembly running only 1.13 times slower than native speed.
Similar efforts to make browsers better at handling native application code have been undertaken before, such as Google’s Native Client technology and Mozilla’s asm.js, a reduced set of JavaScript instructions tuned for speed. But these approaches haven’t had broad support from all the major browser makers.
WebAssembly, on the other hand, is driven by the W3C WebAssembly Community Group, and is backed not only by Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, but by Apple.
http://webassembly.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux in 2016 catches up to Solaris from 2004
Veteran dev says timed sampling’s arrival in Berkeley Packet Filter makes Linux 4.9 a match for Solaris’ DTrace
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/01/linux_in_2016_catches_up_to_solaris_from_2004/
In 2004 former Reg hack Ashlee Vance brought us news of DTrace, a handy addition to Solaris 10 that “gives administrators thousands upon thousands of ways to check on a system’s performance and then tweak ….production boxes with minimal system impact”. Vance was excited about the code because “it can help fix problems from the kernel level on up to the user level.”
Vance’s story quoted a chap called Brendan Gregg who enthused about tool after using it and finding “… DTrace has given me a graph of a hundred points that leaves nothing to the imagination. It did more than just help my program, it helped me understand memory allocation so that I can become a better programmer.”
As Gregg explains on his blog, Linux has had plenty of tracing tools for a long time, but they were miscellaneous kernel capabilities rather than dedicated tools and didn’t match DTrace’s full list of functions. But over time developers have worked on further tracing tools and Facebook developer Alexei Starovoitov recently offered up some enhancements to the Linux kernel that Gregg feels mean it now matches DTrace.
DTrace for Linux 2016
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux-2016.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft tweaks TCP stack in Windows Server and Windows 10
Ideas dreamed up by BitTorrent and Google people should speed Windows
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/20/microsoft_tcp_changes/
Microsoft has announced it will add five new features – some experimental – to the TCP stack it will ship in Windows Server 2016 and the Anniversary Update to Windows 10.
Redmond says the following five features will make it into its new TCP stack:
TCP Fast Open (TFO) for zero RTT TCP connection setup. IETF RFC 7413
Initial Congestion Window 10 (ICW10) by default for faster TCP slow start
TCP Recent ACKnowledgment (RACK) for better loss recovery (experimental IETF draft)
Tail Loss Probe (TLP) for better Retransmit TimeOut response (experimental IETF draft)
TCP LEDBAT for background connections IETF RFC 6817
Microsoft says the changes are needed “to reduce latency, improve loss resiliency and to promote better network citizenship.” It’s hard to argue against any of those goals, or the outcomes these additions will allow.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows Server-as-a-service: Microsoft lays out Server 2016′s future
Want to use Nano Server? Software Assurance is non-optional
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/12/microsofts_windows_server_2016_release_plans/
Microsoft has released details of how Windows Server 2016 will be released and maintained, and as with Windows 10 it includes a “Windows as a service” model of frequent operating system updates.
Windows Server 2016 will be launched at the company’s Ignite conference, which runs from September 26 to 30 in Atlanta, Georgia. As with the current release, there will be three editions: Datacenter, Standard and Essentials.
Several things are new, though. One is that Windows Server 2016 will be priced and licensed per core, rather than per physical processor.
Another is that the Datacenter and Standard editions have a new installation option called Nano Server, which is a stripped-down version designed for lightweight virtual machines, or a low-overhead host for virtual machines. Nano Server has no GUI and can only be managed remotely.
There are also changes to the way Windows Server is serviced. Datacenter and Standard can be installed either as Long-Term Servicing Branch (LTSB) – with five years of mainstream support and five years of extended support – or as Current Branch for Business (CBB), in which case you can expect feature updates two or three times a year. These terms are familiar from Microsoft’s Windows 10 release, which follows a similar pattern.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Delayed Ingram Micro sale to Tianjin Tianhai gets green light from US regs
World’s largest tech distie still awaiting approval from Chinese authorities
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/02/ingram_micro_sale_to_tianjin_tianhai_gets_green_light_from_us_regs/
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has approved the $6bn takeover of Ingram Micro, the world’s largest tech distie, by Chinese shipping magnate Tianjin Tianhai.
On Tuesday night, Ingram said the pending acquisition had “received clearance… to proceed with the transaction”. The distributor confirmed it had also been given the green light by antitrust authorities in Austria, Italy, Poland and Slovakia.
This was in addition to the US Federal Trade Commission, the Ministry of Commerce (People’s Republic of China), as well as competition regulators in Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa and Turkey.
Tomi Engdahl says:
StatCounter Global Stats:
Mobile and tablet devices, accounting for 51.3% of internet usage worldwide, exceeded the 48.7% by desktop, for the first time in October — – Increased traffic plus Google search rankings stress importance of mobile friendly websites — San Francisco, CA and Dublin, Ireland; 1st November …
Mobile and tablet internet usage exceeds desktop for first time worldwide
http://gs.statcounter.com/press/mobile-and-tablet-internet-usage-exceeds-desktop-for-first-time-worldwide
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI Chip Startup Shares Insights
“Very large” FinFET chip in the works at TSMC
Sorting through the software frameworks
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330739&page_number=2
There is clearly momentum building for writing machine learning software, whether it is to select an individual’s music choices in the cloud or to make decisions embedded in autonomous vehicles. With that momentum is coming the development of a host of proprietary and other API and interface standards and languages albeit that these mainly target the running of neural networks in software on general purpose or graphics processors or FPGAs.
The list of interfaces includes: Google’s Tensorflow, Theano, Torch, Caffe, Microsoft’s Azure, DMTK and CNTK, Veres from Samsung, DSSTNE and many more besides. Are any going to be relevant to Graphcore?
Knowles commented: “We made a very early decision to not introduce a new interface. Our technology is programmed using standard frameworks. We will emphasize TensorFlow and MXnet initially but will be able to address others over time.”
TensorFlow is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communicated between them. MXNet is another open source library for deep learning with broad language input support.
“Fortunately, the world has reached some sort of consensus to use frameworks rather than to invent new languages for machine learning. That means programming can be done in Python and C++ and entered into Tensorflow making it much easier for us to architect hardware,” said Knowles.
Toon added: “Initially the same software can be run on the IPU as on other systems and it will just run faster and more energy efficiently on the IPU. Thereafter more ambitious applications can be attempted.”
Knowles added: “One of the details we can disclose is that we have a software interlayer called Poplar, which is itself a graphic framework that we link to Tensorflow or other frameworks. Poplar does the same job for the IPU that CUDA does for a GPU.”
However, with the machine learning landscape changing so rapidly it remains unclear whether which of a host of startups can intersect with where the market will be in a few quarters time. Such startups include Nervana, acquired by Intel, Wave Computing Inc. KnuEdge Inc., BrainChip Inc. and TeraDeep Inc., amongst others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dave Smith / Business Insider:
Schiller says MacBook Pro lacks an SD card reader because it’s a “cumbersome” slot best left to wireless transfers, but 3.5mm jack is needed for “pro machines”
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/why-iphone-7-wont-have-headphone-port-2016-6/
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Bluemix to offer Intel 3D XPoint-powered cloud in late 2017
First comes a cloud testbed so we can figure out what non-volatile memory is good for
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/04/ibm_bluemix_to_offer_3d_xpointpowered_cloud_in_late_2017/
IBM has quietly revealed that in “In the second half of 2017” its Bluemix cloud will offer “a broad services suite fuelled by Intel Optane”.’
“Optane” is Intel’s official name for 3D Xpoint, its non-volatile memory that’s faster than NAND Flash, persistent and therefore a very interesting alternative to both random access memory and mass storage media. Intel has said it will derive revenue from Optane sales this year, but shipments aren’t expected to flow until early 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: ‘We do not have any plans for a free or consumer offering of Teams’
http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/02/microsoft-we-do-not-have-any-plans-for-a-free-or-consumer-offering-of-teams/
Microsoft today launched a preview of Microsoft Teams, an obvious Slack competitor (even Slack thinks so). The big difference? There’s no free version and no consumer version, and there are no plans to offer either.
Given that Slack still doesn’t have threaded comments while Teams does, our editorial team was naturally interested.
“Teams is available in all our enterprise and small business suites, reaching 85 million monthly active users,” a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. “We do not have any plans for a free or consumer offering of Microsoft Teams.”
That 85 million number refers to last quarter’s earnings report, where Microsoft shared that Office 365 has surpassed 85 million commercial monthly active users. It just so happens that on the same day, Slack shared it had passed 4 million daily users and 1.25 million paying users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
All About Eve
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/05/all-about-eve/
Most programming languages today look fairly similar. There’s small differences, of course (Python using spaces, Ruby and Perl have some odd-looking constructs). In the 1960s and 1970s, though, a lot of programming languages were pretty cryptic. Algol, APL, and LISP are great examples of unusual looking programming languages. Even FORTRAN and PL/1 were hard to read. RPG and COBOL were attempts to make programming more accessible, although you could argue that neither of them took over the world. Most programming languages today have more similarity to FORTRAN than either of those two languages.
A new programming language, Eve, claims to be based on years of research in programming from a human perspective instead of from the computer’s.
Eve: Programming designed for humans
http://www.witheve.com/
Eve is a programming language and IDE based on years of research into building a human-first programming platform. From code embedded in documents to a language without order, it presents an alternative take on what programming could be – one that focuses on us instead of the machine.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Silicon Valley Reels After Trump’s Election
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/technology/trump-election-silicon-valley-reels.html?_r=0
Silicon Valley’s luminaries woke up Wednesday morning to a darkened new global order, one that the ceaseless optimism of their tech-powered visions seemed suddenly unable to conquer.
Across the technology industry, the reaction to Donald J. Trump’s election to the presidency was beyond grim. There was a sense that the industry had missed something fundamental about the fears and motivations of the people who use its products, and that the miscalculation would cost the industry, and the world, greatly.
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
A look at how Donald Trump’s nascent policy platform on tech-related issues, such as immigration, trade, and cybersecurity will affect Silicon Valley — Donald J. Trump is now the President-elect of the United States after one of the most surreal and unlikely campaign victories in American history.
What does a President-elect Trump mean for Silicon Valley? Nothing very good.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/09/what-does-a-president-elect-trump-mean-for-silicon-valley-nothing-very-good/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security Industry Could Light Path for Data Analytics
http://www.securityweek.com/security-industry-could-light-path-data-analytics
A new survey and report shows strong faith but poor confidence in current data analytics. For example, 70% of respondents to the survey believe that analytics are integral to understanding how products are used; 71% to understanding business performance, and 70% to understanding fraud. But at the same time, only 43% are confident in the analytics insights for risk and security; 38% for customer insights; and just 38% for business operations.
“Failing to master analytics will not only make it increasingly hard for organisations to compete,” comments Paul Tombleson, UK head of data & analytics at KPMG, “but will expose their brands to new and growing risks. Seventy percent of UK executives believe that by using data and analytics they expose their organisations to reputational risk.”
KPMG beleives that the low levels of trust might be filtering down from the top of the organization, since nearly half of the respondents do not believe their C-suite executives fully support their organization’s data analytics strategy.
Missing from the report is any indication of the effect of a shortage in skilled data scientists. Data scientists differ from statisticians by requiring experience in machine learning and algorithms; and without them the essential step towards automated data analytics cannot be made. As long ago as 2012, Gartner predicted a shortage of more than 100,000 data scientists by 2020.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AWS: We’re gonna make mobile apps great again with Lambda functions
The best apps will come from America, using Amazon, which will be paying all that tax
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/10/aws_mobile_apps_serverless/
Amazon Web Services is rolling out new Mobile Hub features aimed at simplifying the development of secure mobile apps.
The cloud giant says that its Cloud Logic feature will now let developers create Lambda functions specifically for mobile apps and integrate them with AWS’s API Gateways. This, Amazon claims, should allow for serverless mobile apps to be easily created and tested. Obviously, there will be a server or two involved in the backend but mobile app devs don’t have to worry about setting one up and running it – their code just talks to the API gateway to perform cloud-based processing.
“With Mobile Hub, you don’t have to be an AWS expert to begin using its powerful backend features in your app,” blogged Amazon’s Vyom Nagrani.
“Mobile Hub then provisions and configures the necessary AWS services on your behalf and creates a working quickstart app for you.”
This speeds up the process of developing mobile apps that make use of both serverless functions and APIs, in theory.
Additionally, AWS says it is adding support for an email and password login system on mobile apps with the Cognito account management tool as well as integration with SAML login supporters.
When used together, Amazon believes that the Cloud Logic, email and password login, and SAML support will allow developers to add support for secure mobile logins to their cloud apps – either those hosted in public cloud or a virtual private cloud – with the ability to choose what sign-in method (such as Google or Facebook login) will be offered to end users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Terror plot spy project helps Kinetica crank up database speed
Ingest billions of records per minute with no indigestion
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/10/kinetica_cranks_with_rebel_alliance_gear/
Kinetica presented its in-memory database solution at the recent OpenPOWER European Summit in Barcelona, and served up some benchmark results. You can see the entire presentation in the video below, but here are a few highlights.
First, for those of you unfamiliar with Kinetica, the company came out of a US military research project that aimed to identify terrorist types before they could strike
rewriting the database to run in memory and to use the latest accelerators. The end result is a blazingly fast database that can deliver intelligence in near real time.
While the solution runs on x86, it runs particularly well on the OpenPOWER platform, due to its new NVLink GPU interface. So how fast are we talking? Here are a couple of examples:
On a BoundingBox for one billion records, Kinetica was 561 times faster than MemSQL & NoSQL
On a Min/Max with one billion records, Kinetica was 712x faster than MemSQL & NoSQL
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Lubell / Wired:
Some architecture firms are using virtual reality to design buildings, help clients and designers visualize 3D spaces
VR Is Totally Changing How Architects Dream Up Buildings
https://www.wired.com/2016/11/vr-totally-changing-architects-dream-buildings/
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP fight about $11 billion takeover sees former Autonomy executive indicted on felony charges
http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/11/hp-fight-about-11-billion-takeover-sees-former-autonomy-executive-indicted-on-felony-charges/
Hewlett Packard complained bitterly that it had been deceived in its disastrous $11 billion acquisition of enterprise software firm Autonomy in 2011. This week, federal prosecutors echoed that claim, indicting Autonomy’s former chief financial officer on felony fraud charges.
The indictment charges that Sushovan Hussain, “together with others, engaged in a fraudulent scheme to deceive purchasers and sellers of Autonomy securities and HP about the true performance of Autonomy’s business, its financial condition, and its prospects for growth.”
The charges highlight a painful chapter for HP, which had hoped the Autonomy purchase would help transform the company as it struggled with faltering computer gear sales. Instead, it became an embarrassing debacle that spawned multiple lawsuits and a massive settlement with disgruntled shareholders.
After buying the British company, HP was immediately criticized by analysts for paying too much. A year later, HP announced it had written down $8.8 billion of value in Autonomy, more than $5 billion of that because of alleged accounting improprieties and misrepresentation of finances by Autonomy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Java’s Open Sourcing Still Controversial Ten Years Later
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/11/13/0428203/javas-open-sourcing-still-controversial-ten-years-later
Sun Microsystems officially open-sourced Java on November 13, 2006… “The source code for Java was available to all from the first day it was released in 1995,” says [Java creator James] Gosling, who is now chief architect at Liquid Robotics.
While Gosling has taken Oracle to task for its handling of Java at times, he sees the [2006] open-sourcing as beneficial. “It’s one of the most heavily scrutinized and solid bodies of software you’ll find. Community participation was vitally important.”
After a decade, open source Java is still controversial
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3138505/java/open-source-java-at-10-big-benefits-but-detractors-remain.html
Ten years on, Java founder James Gosling sees upside in the open source move, while others believe Sun didn’t go far enough
Java’s original license, Gosling says, allowed people to use the source code internally but not redistribute. “It wasn’t ‘open’ enough for the ‘open source’ crowd,” he says.
IBM at the time wanted Java to be contributed to the Apache Software Foundation, where it would have been distributed under the Apache license. Ultimately, Sun chose to shift Java to the GNU General Public License, which then-Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz called a “momentous” change.
Since the open-sourcing, Sun and, in turn, Oracle (which acquired Sun in early-2010) have remained in the driver’s seat for Java’s evolution, although other parties have contributed to the code.
A former Oracle Java evangelist, however, sees the open source move as watered down.
“Sun didn’t open-source Java per se,” says Reza Rahman, who has led a recent protest against Oracle’s handling of enterprise Java. “What they did was to open-source the JDK under a modified GPL license. In particular, the Java SE and Java EE TCKs [Technology Compatibility Kits] remain closed source.”
This, Rahman says, has been a significant problem for projects like Apache Harmony, as well as for community members that would like to contribute to the TCKs.
“Indeed, Sun retained a lot of control over Java even if the JCP [Java Community Process] is relatively open now,” he says. “In particular Sun and Oracle fully control Java-related intellectual property and copyrights through the JCP.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Supercomputer Aims for Exascale
U.S. effort discloses $34M in software projects
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330795&
U.S. government researchers will spend $34 million on 35 software projects as part of an effort to put in production by 2023 an exascale-class supercomputer. It’s one small step in an initiative eventually expected to cost more than $3 billion to push computing to levels 50 times ahead of their current 20 petaflop systems.
The news comes at a time when China, Europe, Japan and the U.S. are all racing to the next milestone in computer performance. With three projects in China compared to one just getting started in the U.S., “it looks like China will get to an exaflop by 2020…[while the U.S.] will probably reach exascale by 2022-2023,” said Jack Dongarra, co-author of the Top 500 List and a professor at the University of Tennessee working on multiple software projects for the U.S. effort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs: VDI? Maybe, just maybe, it really will be different this time…
Tech bosses endorse thin clients, throw hands in the air over millennials
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/11/register_roundtable_moonshot/
Register Roundtable Sometimes technology visions bubble along under the radar, quite often scorned then, following a change of name or emphasis, ubiquitous. Utility computing became the cloud, and we know how that’s taken off. Groupware became collaboration. Thin clients have morphed into VDI, and… Well, seems like a good time to get a bunch of CIOs together and thrash out just what’s going on here.
So it was that a week or two ago a number of CIOs and other tech bosses came together with the Reg at our hired Soho bunker. The topic of the day was “From Desktop Management to Digital Workplace Delivery”.
Of course, our attendees, with their strong views and years of experience, will always push the agenda to its limits.
One financial industry specialist said his team would make a reasonable effort to support any device a user cared to produce – within reason. In return, users will take a firm “no” for an answer.
Another said: “There’s a general awareness that it’s a very regulated environment with a lot of security needs. Therefore there aren’t that many solutions that can be offered, and the user base are generally acceptant of that.”
It’s Windows all the way
Anyway, those “desktop support groups”. When it comes to the actual desktop, what are they actually supporting? Well, we were shocked, SHOCKED, that it was Windows, overwhelmingly.
“Most people working in offices now have had so much exposure to Windows it’s like a second skin, and when you try and pull it away…” one contributor told us. “When we gave people Macs, some handed them back and said can I have a Toshiba.”
If you find this mind boggling, we’re guessing you aren’t involved with a sales team that lives or dies by its Powerpoint skills.
Of course, running the company on Windows doesn’t mean senior management wants Windows boxes cluttering up the place. One attendee related how the big bosses wanted front-of-house tech to be all sleek Macs to coordinate with the sleek front-of-house staff.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Pioneers Slam $750,000 Settlement for the ‘Man Who Invented Email’
https://gizmodo.com/internet-pioneers-slam-750-000-settlement-for-the-man-1788503950
Two early internet pioneers are expressing sadness and disbelief at the fact that Shiva Ayyadurai, a self-described “world-renowned scientist, inventor, lecturer, philanthropist and entrepreneur” who says he invented “email: the electronic mail system as we know it today,” will receive a $750,000 settlement from Gawker Media, the bankrupt publisher that he sued for defamation earlier this year over a series of stories that, his lawsuit claims, “falsely trace the origin of email and call Dr. Ayyadurai a liar.”
Computer programmer Ray Tomlinson is credited by many experts and historians with developing the technology that we understand today as email. Dave Crocker, who helped write several foundational standards documents about messaging over the internet, told Gizmodo that Ayyadurai’s settlement with Gawker Media represents a victory for a version of the history of email’s development that isn’t supported by evidence
John Vittal, one of Crocker’s co-authors, seconded his frustration. Vittal is best known in the traditional history of email for being the first person to implement “reply” and “forward” functions.
Reached for comment by Gizmodo, Harder issued the following statement on behalf of Ayyadurai:
In 1978, a 14-year old Indian boy from Bombay, India and Newark, New Jersey, was tasked with replicating—in electronic form—a secretary’s office desk for managing the entire system of paper communications (inbox, outbox, folders, address book, attachments, etc.); the electronic system did not exist; young Shiva Ayyadurai created that system; it worked and was a huge success; he named it “email”; he obtained the first U.S. copyright to that invention, and the world’s modern system of electronic mail was born. Dr. Ayyadurai went on to receive four degrees from MIT including a Ph.D
Tomi Engdahl says:
Visual Studio for Mac – Introducing Visual Studio for Mac
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Vk2On-9psscJ:https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/mt790182.aspx+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
At Connect(); in November, Microsoft is launching a preview of Visual Studio for Mac. This is an exciting development, evolving the mobile-centric Xamarin Studio IDE into a true mobile-first, cloud-first development tool for .NET and C#, and bringing the Visual Studio development experience to the Mac.
A New Member of the Visual Studio Family
At its heart, Visual Studio for Mac is a macOS counterpart of the Windows version of Visual Studio. If you enjoy the Visual Studio development experience, but need or want to use macOS, you should feel right at home. Its UX is inspired by Visual Studio, yet designed to look and feel like a native citizen of macOS. And like Visual Studio for Windows, it’s complemented by Visual Studio Code for times when you don’t need a full IDE, but want a lightweight yet rich standalone source editor.
The primary workloads supported by Visual Studio for Mac are native iOS, Android and Mac development via Xamarin, and server development via .NET Core with Azure integration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Packet.net strong-ARMs cloud for $0.005 per core per hour
96-core servers packing 2 Cavium ThunderX CPUs yours for the crunching
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/15/packet_dotnet_arm_cloud/
Packet.net, a bare-metal cloud aimed at developers, has flicked the switch on cloud-running servers powered by a pair of Cavium’s 48-core ARMv8-A ThunderX processors.
CEO Zachary Smith told The Register that the company’s cooked up the cloud for a few reasons. Price is one: Packet will offer ARM cores at a tenth of the price it charges for Intel cores, at US$0.50 per hour per server, or $0.005 per core per hour. Smith thinks that will be a head-turner by itself.
He also thinks developers will appreciate the chance to try native Docker on many-cored machines and appreciate the opportunity an ARM-powered cloud represents as they pursue 100 per cent portable software. He believes open source folk will see the arrival of an ARM-powered cloud as incentive to accelerate cross-platform versions of their pet projects.
Even ARM will benefit, he says, because having a working cloud on the market will give both it and licensees more reason to innovate for the data centre.
ARM’s recent purchaser, SoftBank, recently tipped some money into Packet.net, but Smith swears he’s had a long-term ambition to offer an ARM-powered cloud, if only because he enjoys having multiple ARM server CPU vendors willing to do deals. That kind of competition is not currently possible in the x86 world, at least until AMD returns to servers in 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blueprint
A React UI toolkit for the Web
http://blueprintjs.com/
Blueprint is a collection of React UI components, covering the majority of the common interface elements, patterns and interactions on the Web. Using Blueprint ensures that you’ll end up with an elegant, easy-to-use UI, freeing you to focus on building your product—not the atomic pieces that comprise it.
A React UI toolkit for the Web http://blueprintjs.com/
https://github.com/palantir/blueprint
Blueprint documents
http://blueprintjs.com/docs/
The Blueprint team maintains multiple packages of styles and JavaScript components on NPM (in the scope @blueprintjs).
Blueprint supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE 11, and Microsoft Edge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Neural network standard initiatives launched by industry group
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2016/11/neural-network-standard-initiatives-launched-by-industry-group.html?cmpid=enl_VSD_VSDNewsletter_2016-11-15
The Khronos Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies, has announced the creation of two standardization initiatives to address the growing industry interest in the deployment and acceleration of neural network technology.
First, Khronos created a working group to create an application program interface (API) independent standard file format for exchanging deep learning data between training systems and inference engines. The aim of the Khronos Neural Network Exchange Format (NNEF) is to simplify the process of using a tool to create a network, and run that network on other toolkits or inference engines. This, according to Khronos, can reduce deployment friction and encourage a richer mix of cross-platform deep learning tools, engines, and applications. Work for generating requirements and detailed design proposals for the NNEF is underway
Deep learning for vision processing: In-depth design techniques
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2016/09/deep-learning-for-vision-processing-in-depth-design-techniques.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
3 Possible Reasons for Intel Corporation’s Increased Data-Center Spending
http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/01/3-possible-reasons-for-intel-corporations-increase.aspx
Investments in complementary platform technologies, customized chips for major customers, and specialized workload accelerators all potentially contribute to the company’s increased spending in its data-center biz.
Complementary technologies
The bulk of Intel’s DCG revenue comes from the sale of processors and related chipsets, but the company has been talking up the growing importance of complementary non-processor components to its businesses.
The examples of such technologies that the company routinely cites in investor presentations are 3D XPoint memory modules, silicon photonics, and its proprietary Omni-Path fabric for high-performance computing applications.
More custom processor projects
Analyst Romit Shah recently postulated that part of the spending increases on Intel’s part could be a “defense move” on Intel’s part that could potentially include “more custom projects” in a bid to “stem market share loss.”
Accelerator technologies
Intel has always been good at building very high-performance, power-efficient processors.
Intel has also been more aggressive in pursuing technologies that can be used to dramatically speed up certain specialized workloads, broadly referred to as accelerators.
Accelerators come in many forms, from dedicated hardware integrated into the same chip as the main processor to co-processors that work alongside the main processors. Unsurprisingly, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich thinks that accelerator technologies can help to boost the growth of DCG.
“So we look at those accelerators as enhancing this growth,” Krzanich said on the company’s most recent earnings call. He further went on to claim that Intel has the “widest” portfolio of accelerator technologies, “from FPGAs through the Xeon Phi and then into [application-specific integrated circuit] driven devices.”
Investing now is the right thing to do
The last thing Intel needs is to be caught flat-footed in its data-center business, so investing today to ensure that it’s in a strong competitive position tomorrow is conceptually the right thing to do.
Increased investments do hurt near-term profitability, which stockholders, particularly in businesses as large and mature as Intel, don’t like.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft joins The Linux Foundation as a Platinum member; John Gossman, architect on the Microsoft Azure team, will sit on the foundation’s Board of Directors — At its Connect(); 2016 developer event in New York City today, Microsoft announced it is joining The Linux Foundation.
Microsoft joins The Linux Foundation as a Platinum member
http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation-as-a-platinum-member/
At its Connect(); 2016 developer event in New York City today, Microsoft announced it is joining The Linux Foundation. And the company isn’t joining just to say it did: Microsoft is joining at the Platinum level, the highest level of membership, which costs $500,000 annually. John Gossman, architect on the Microsoft Azure team, will sit on the foundation’s Board of Directors and help underwrite projects.
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit technology group that advances open technology development and commercial adoption, and not just for Linux. It provides tools, training, and events to scale any open-source project. Microsoft already contributes to several of its projects, including Node.js Foundation, OpenDaylight, Open Container Initiative, R Consortium, and Open API Initiative.
Microsoft is pitching the move as its latest effort to work more closely with the open-source community, which it believes will benefit its customers through increased collaboration and innovation. And The Linux Foundation agrees.
“Microsoft has grown and matured in its use of and contributions to open-source technology,” The Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin said in a statement. “The company has become an enthusiastic supporter of Linux and of open-source and a very active member of many important projects. Membership is an important step for Microsoft, but also for the open-source community at large, which stands to benefit from the company’s expanding range of contributions.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google joins the .NET Foundation while Samsung adds .NET support on its Tizen platform — Microsoft is hosting its annual Connect(); developer event in New York today. With .NET being at the core of many of its efforts, including on the open-source side, it’s no surprise that the event …
Google signs on to the .NET Foundation as Samsung brings .NET support to Tizen
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/google-signs-on-to-the-net-foundation-and-samsung-brings-net-support-to-tizen/
Microsoft is hosting its annual Connect(); developer event in New York today. With .NET being at the core of many of its efforts, including on the open-source side, it’s no surprise that the event also featured a few .NET-centric announcements, as well. For the most part, these center around the .NET Foundation, the open-source organization Microsoft established to guide the future development of the .NET Core project.
As the company announced today, Google is now a member of the .NET Foundation, where it joins the likes of Red Hat, Unity, Samsung JetBrains and (of course) Microsoft in the Technical Steering Group.
Google already allows developers on its Cloud Platform to deploy .NET applications thanks to its support for Windows Server, and offers .NET libraries for more than 200 of its cloud services. The company is also an active .NET contributor already.
Samsung, too, is deepening its commitment to .NET by launching support for it on its Tizen platform. As Samsung’s Hong-Seok Kim told me, Samsung was looking for a framework in addition to the web framework and C API that Tizen developers currently use to write their applications. “We looked into alternatives but .NET was superior,”
Given .NET’s existing ecosystem, Samsung surely hopes that this move will also broaden its own Tizen developer ecosystem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Google releases Google Earth VR on the HTC Vive for free and is exploring support for other platforms — A virtual reality version of Google Earth is now available for free on the HTC Vive, letting users explore reconstructed cultural treasures, global landmarks, or (for some) their own homes in VR.
You can now fly around Google Earth in virtual reality
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/16/13643550/google-earth-vr-htc-vive-release