IT seems to be growing again. Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending will increase 4.5% this year to $3.68 trillion, driven by artificial intelligence, big data analytics, blockchain technology, and the IoT.
Digital transformations are fashionable. You won’t find an enterprise that isn’t leveraging some combination of cloud, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to better serve customers or streamline operations. But here’s a hard truth about digital transformations: Many are failing outright or are in danger of failing. Typical reasons for failing are not understanding what is digital transformation (different people understand it differently), lack of CEO sponsorship, talent deficiency, resistance to change. Usually a technology-first approach to digital transformation is a recipe for disaster. Truing to just push trough technically unfeasible transformation idea is another way to fail.
The digital era requires businesses to move with speed, and that is causing IT organizations to rethink how they work. A lot of IT is moving off premises to SaaS providers and the public cloud. Research outfit 451 standout finding was that 60 per cent of the surveyed enterprises say they will run the majority of their IT outside the confines of enterprise data centres by the end of 2019. From cost containment to hybrid strategies, CIOs are getting more creative in taking advantage of the latest offerings and the cloud’s economies of scale.
In 2018 there seems to be a growing Software Engineering Talent Shortage in both quantity and quality. For the past nine years, software engineers have been at the top of the hardest to fill jobs in the United States. And same applies to many other countries including Finland. Forrester projects that firms will pay 20% above market for quality engineering talent in 2018. Particularly in-demand skills are data scientists, high-end software developers and information security analysts. There is real need for well-studied, experienced engineers with a formal and deep understanding of software engineering. Recruiting and retaining tech talent remains IT’s biggest challenge today. Most CIOs are migrating applications to public cloud services, offloading operations and maintenance of computing, storage and other capabilities so they can reallocate staff to focus on what’s strategic to their business.
The enterprise no longer is at the center of the IT universe. It seems that reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated and the long and painful decline in PC sales of the last half-decade as tailed off, at least momentarily. As the sales of smartphones and tablets have risen, consumers had not stopped using PCs, but merely replaced them less often. FT reports that PC is set to stage a comeback in 2018, after the rise of smartphones sent sales of desktop and laptop computers into decline in recent years. If that does not happen, then PC market could return to growth in 2019. But the end result is that PC is no longer seen as the biggest growth driver for chip makers. An extreme economic shift has chipmakers focused on hyperscale clouds.
Microservices are talked about a lot. Software built using microservices is easier to deliver and maintain than the big and brittle architectures or old; these were difficult to scale and might take years to build and deliver. Microservices are small and self-contained, so therefore easy to wrap up in a virtual machine or a container (but don’t have to live in containers). Public cloud providers increasingly differentiate themselves through the features and services they provide. But it turns out that microservices are far from being one-size-fit-for-all silver bullet for IT challenges.
Containers will try to make break-trough again in 2018. Year 2017 was supposed to be the year of containers! It wasn’t? Oops. Maybe year 2018 is better. Immature tech still has a bunch of growing up to do. Linux Foundation’s Open Containers Initiative (OCI) finally dropped two specifications that standardise how containers operate at a low level. The needle in 2018 will move towards containers running separately from VMs, or entirely in place of VMs. Kubernates gains traction. It seems that the containers are still at the point where the enterprise is waiting to embrace them.
Serverless will be talked about. Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Serverless architectures refer to applications that significantly depend on third-party services (knows as Backend as a Service or “BaaS”) or on custom code that’s run in ephemeral containers (Function as a Service or “FaaS”), the best known vendor host of which currently is AWS Lambda.
Automation is what everybody with many computers wants. Infrastructure automation creates and destroys basic IT resources such as compute instances, storage, networking, DNS, and so forth. Security automation helps keeping systems secure. It bosses want to create self-driving private clouds. The journey to self-driving clouds needs to be gradual. The vision of the self-driving cloud makes sense, but the task of getting from here to there can seem daunting. DevOps automation with customer control: Automatic installation and configuration, Integration that brings together AWS and VMWare, workflows migration controlled by users, Self-service provisioning based on templates defined by users, Advanced machine learning to automate processes, and Automated upgrades.
Linux is center of many cloud operations: Google and Facebook started building their own gear and loading it with their own software. Google has it’s own Linux called gLinux. Facebook networking uses Linux-based FBOSS operating system. Even Microsoft has developed its own Linux for cloud operations. Software-defined networking (SDN) is a very fine idea.
Memory business boomed in 2017 for both NAND and DRAM. The drivers for DRAM are smartphones and servers. Solid-state drives (SSDs) and smartphones are fueling the demand for NAND. NAND Market Expected to Cool in Q1 from the crazy year 2017, but it is still growing well because there is increasing demand. Memory — particular DRAM — was largely considered a commodity business.
Lots of 3D NAND will go to solid state drives in 2018. IDC forecasts strong growth for the solid-state drive (SSD) industry as it transitions to 3D NAND. SSD industry revenue is expected to reach $33.6 billion in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 14.8%. Sizes of memory chips increase as number of layer in 3D NAND are added. The traditional mechanical hard disk based on magnetic storage is in hard place in competition, as the speed of flash-based SSDs is so superior
There is search for faster memory because modern computers, especially data-center servers that skew heavily toward in-memory databases, data-intensive analytics, and increasingly toward machine-learning and deep-neural-network training functions, depend on large amounts of high-speed, high capacity memory to keep the wheels turning. The memory speed has not increased as fast as the capacity. The access bandwidth of DRAM-based computer memory has improved by a factor of 20x over the past two decades. Capacity increased 128x during the same period. For year 2018 DRAM remains a near-universal choice when performance is the priority. There is search going on for a viable replacement for DRAM. Whether it’s STT-RAM or phase-change memory or resistive RAM, none of them can match the speed or endurance of DRAM.
PCI Express 4.0 is ramping up. PCI-standards consortium PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group) has ratified and released specifications for PCIe 4.0 Specification Version 1. Doubling PCIe 3.0’s 8 GT/s (~1 GB/s) of bandwidth per lane, PCIe 4.0 offers a transfer rate of 16 GT/s. The newest version of PCI Express will start appearing on motherboards soon. PCI-SIG has targeted Q2 2019 for releasing the finalized PCIe 5.0 specification, so PCIe 4.0 won’t be quite as long-lived as PCIe 3.0 has been. So we’ll See PCIe 4.0 this year in use and PCIe 5.0 in 2019.
USB type C is on the way to becoming the most common PC and peripheral interface. The USB C connector has become faster more commonplace than any other earlier interface. USB C is very common on smartphones, but the interface is also widespread on laptops. Sure, it will take some time before it is the most common. In 2021, the C-type USB connector has almost five billion units, IHS estimates.
It seems that the after-shocks of Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities on processors will be haunting us for quite long time this year. It is now three weeks since The Register revealed the chip design flaws that Google later confirmed and the world still awaits certainty about what it will take to get over the silicon slip-ups. Last pieces of farce has been that Intel Halts Spectre, Meltdown CPU Patches Over Unstable Code and Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticises Intel’s ‘garbage’ patches. Computer security will not be the same after all this has been sorted out.
What’s Next With Computing? IBM discusses AI, neural nets and quantum computing. Many can agree that those technologies will be important. Public cloud providers increasingly provide sophisticated flavours of data analysis and increasingly Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Central Banks Are Using Big Data to Help Shape Policy. Over the past few years, machine learning (ML) has evolved from an interesting new approach that allows computers to beat champions at chess and Go, into one that is touted as a panacea for almost everything. 2018 will be the start of what could be a longstanding battle between chipmakers to determine who creates the hardware that artificial intelligence lives on.
ARM processor based PCs are coming. As Microsoft and Qualcomm jointly announced in early December that the first Windows 10 notebooks with ARM-based Snapdragon 835 processors will be officially launched in early 2018, there will be more and more PCs with ARM processor architecture hitting the market. Digitimes Research expects that ARM-based models may dominate lower-end PC market, but don’t hold your breath on this. It is rumoured that “wireless LTE connectivity” function will be incorporated into all the entry-level Window 10 notebooks with ARM processors, branded by Microsoft as the “always-connected devices.” HP and Asustek have released some ARM-based notebooks with Windows 10S.
Sources:
Ohjelmistoalan osaajapula pahenee – kasvu jatkuu
PC market set to return to growth in 2018
PC market could return to growth in 2019
PC sales grow for the first time in five years
PCI-SIG Finalizes and Releases PCIe 4.0, Version 1 Specification: 2x PCIe Bandwidth and More
Hot Chips 2017: We’ll See PCIe 4.0 This Year, PCIe 5.0 In 2019
Outsourcing remains strategic in the digital era
8 hot IT hiring trends — and 8 going cold
EDA Challenges Machine Learning
The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018
How to create self-driving private clouds
ZeroStack Lays Out Vision for Five-Step Journey to Self-Driving Cloud
2017 – the year of containers! It wasn’t? Oops. Maybe next year
2018′s Software Engineering Talent Shortage— It’s quality, not just quantity
How Central Banks Are Using Big Data to Help Shape Policy
Digitimes Research: ARM-based models may dominate lower-end PC market
Intel Halts Spectre, Meltdown CPU Patches Over Unstable Code
Spectre and Meltdown: Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticises Intel’s ‘garbage’ patches
Meltdown/Spectre week three: World still knee-deep in something nasty
What’s Next With Computing? IBM discusses AI, neural nets and quantum computing.
PCI Express 4.0 as Fast As Possible
Microsoft has developed its own Linux!
Microsoft Built Its Own Linux Because Everyone Else Did
Facebook has built its own switch. And it looks a lot like a server
Googlella on oma sisäinen linux
Is the writing on the wall for on-premises IT? This survey seems to say so
12 reasons why digital transformations fail
7 habits of highly effective digital transformations
857 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox Drops Support for Windows XP
https://www.securityweek.com/firefox-drops-support-windows-xp
Effective this week, Windows XP is no longer supported by Firefox. More than four years after Microsoft stopped supporting the platform, Mozilla is making a similar move.
Last year, the organization said support for Windows XP was expected to be dropped by June 2018, but the browser developer took a few more months to make that happen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WikiReader – Offline Wikipedia “The Internet without the Internet”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lRI35gKSPA
Remember this? If you can’t, you’re not alone.
The WikiReader was launched with the noble ideal “how can knowledge equal freedom if people need a modem to get it?” but perhaps unsurprisingly it met an ignominious bargain-bin end.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Programming Language Skills Do Employers Want?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/software/what-programming-language-skills-do-employers-want
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Kubernetes is The New Application Server
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/06/28/why-kubernetes-is-the-new-application-server/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Tomi Engdahl says:
DevOps: The consequences of blame
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/consequences-blame-your-devops-team?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
To build a successful DevOps environment, you must eliminate blame. Here’s why—and how to do it.
What about accountability? Avoiding blame does not mean avoiding accountability or consequences. Here are some tips to create an environment in which people are held accountable without blame:
When mistakes are made, focus on what steps you can take to avoid making the same mistake in the future. What did you learn, and how can you apply that knowledge to improving things?
When something goes wrong, people feel stress. Work toward eliminating or reducing that stress. Avoid yelling and putting additional pressure on people.
Accept that mistakes will happen. Nobody—and nothing—is perfect.
When corrective actions are necessary, provide them privately, not publicly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 open source tools for writing a book
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/writing-book-open-source-tools?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
These versatile, free tools are all you need to write, edit, and produce your own books.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Linux Foundation Set to Improve Open-Source Code Security
http://www.eweek.com/security/the-linux-foundation-set-to-improve-open-source-code-security
By: Sean Michael Kerner | August 31, 2018
VANCOUVER, B.C.—The Linux Foundation is set to expand its Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) for improving open-source code security, that was initially setup in the aftermath of the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability in 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds Says Open Source Is the Way to Combat Software Complexity
http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/torvalds-says-open-source-is-the-way-to-combat-software-complexity
By: Sean Michael Kerner | August 31, 2018
At the Open Source Summit, Linus Torvalds the creator of Linux talked about the Linux development process, security challenges and why Linux will prosper even after he no longer has a guiding hand on the operating system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Cloud Lab Environment in a Backpack
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/09/cloud-lab-environment/?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Have you ever thought about having your own cloud environment? A local cloud is one of the best things you can do to better understand all the gears that run inside a highly productive environment. How do I know that? I’ve done it! And I’m ready to show you how I did, and how you can do it too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DevOps lessons learned: What I wish I knew sooner
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/8/devops-lessons-learned-what-i-wish-i-knew-sooner?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Eight DevOps veterans share the one thing they wish they’d learned earlier in their careers. Apply their wisdom to your work
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft ‘Confirms’ Windows 7 New Monthly Charge
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/09/08/microsoft-windows-7-monthly-charge-windows-10-free-upgrade-cost/#20170a2a2db1
Microsoft has always described Windows 10 “as a service” and leaks have already revealed new monthly charges are coming. Of course, for Windows 7 owners this was never something they expected to pay. But times change…
In a new blog post entitled “Helping customers shift to a modern desktop”, Microsoft has announced that it will indeed start charging Windows 7 customers a monthly fee from January 14th 2020, if they want to keep their computers safe.
Helping customers shift to a modern desktop
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2018/09/06/helping-customers-shift-to-a-modern-desktop/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces Azure DevOps, which will succeed Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure DevOps Server, the successor of Team Foundation Server
Microsoft announces Azure DevOps, will succeed Visual Studio Team Services
https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/10/microsoft-announces-azure-devops-will-succeed-visual-studio-team-services/
Microsoft today announced Azure DevOps, the successor of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS, formerly Visual Studio Online) and Azure DevOps Server, the successor of Team Foundation Server (TFS). The included services “span the breadth of the development lifecycle to help developers ship software faster and with higher quality,” the company promises.
As for pricing, Azure DevOps is free for open source projects and small projects (up to five users). For larger teams, the cost ranges from $30 per month (10 users) to $6,150 per month (1,000 users).
Azure DevOps includes:
Azure Pipelines: CI/CD that works with any language, platform, and cloud. Connect to GitHub or any Git repository and deploy continuously. Azure Pipelines is also now available in the GitHub Marketplace.
Azure Boards: Powerful work tracking with Kanban boards, backlogs, team dashboards, and custom reporting.
Azure Artifacts: Maven, npm, and NuGet package feeds from public and private sources.
Azure Repos: Unlimited cloud-hosted private Git repos for your project. Collaborative pull requests, advanced file management, and more.
Azure Test Plans: All in one planned and exploratory testing solution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CNBC:
Survey of 1,000+ C-level execs finds the majority view lack of access to software developers as a bigger threat to success than lack of access to capital
Tech’s ultimate success: Software developers are now more valuable to companies than money
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/companies-worry-more-about-access-to-software-developers-than-capital.html
A majority of companies say lack of access to software developers is a bigger threat to success than lack of access to capital.
Still, companies are misusing their most important resource, with too many developers tied up in projects designed to prop up legacy systems and bad software, at a cost of $300 billion a year — $85 billion just dealing with bad code.
Correctly deployed, the expertise of software developers could add $3 trillion to global GDP over the next decade.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces Azure DevOps, which will succeed Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure DevOps Server, the successor of Team Foundation Server — Microsoft today announced Azure DevOps, the successor of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS, formerly Visual Studio Online) and Azure DevOps Server …
Microsoft announces Azure DevOps, will succeed Visual Studio Team Services
https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/10/microsoft-announces-azure-devops-will-succeed-visual-studio-team-services/
Emil Protalinski@EPro September 10, 2018 8:00 AM
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Kuo: Expect an Apple Watch with ECG, AirPods 2, and Touch ID MacBook
Microsoft announces Azure DevOps, will succeed Visual Studio Team Services
Siri Suggestions in iOS 12 may wind up being held back by … Siri.
Apple’s iOS 12 Siri Shortcuts will reportedly be limited on iPhone 6
Impossible Aerospace: US-1 Drone
Impossible Aerospace raises $9.4 million, launches drone that flies 2 hours on a single charge
Cisco UCS C480 ML M5 Rack Server – for deep learning (1)
Cisco unveils UCS C480 ML M5, a powerful server for AI
UPCOMING EVENTS
BLUEPRINT: Oct. 9 – 11
VB Summit 2018: The best in AI. An invite-only executive event. Oct. 22 – 23
Microsoft today announced Azure DevOps, the successor of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS, formerly Visual Studio Online) and Azure DevOps Server, the successor of Team Foundation Server (TFS). The included services “span the breadth of the development lifecycle to help developers ship software faster and with higher quality,” the company promises.
Mark Wycislik-Wilson / BetaNews:
Continuous integration and delivery service Azure Pipelines arrives in the GitHub Marketplace and will be free for open source repositories
Azure Pipelines CI/CD service arrives in the GitHub Marketplace
https://betanews.com/2018/09/10/microsoft-azure-pipelines-github-marketplace/
Microsoft today announced the successor to Visual Studio Team Services, Azure DevOps, as well as Azure DevOps Server, replacing Team Foundation Server. As part of this, the company also launched a new CI/CD service called Azure Pipelines which gives developers the chance to build, test and deploy to any platform.
Azure Pipelines has been launched in the GitHub Marketplace, and it is completely free for open source repositories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Intel acquires San Jose-based NetSpeed Systems, which it had invested in previously, for better tools to make system-on-a-chip designs — Intel today is announcing another acquisition as it continues to pick up talent and IP to bolster its next generation of computing chips beyond legacy PCs.
Intel acquires NetSpeed Systems to boost its system-on-a-chip business
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/intel-acquires-netspeed-systems-to-beef-up-its-system-on-a-chip-business/
Intel today is announcing another acquisition as it continues to pick up talent and IP to bolster its next generation of computing chips beyond legacy PCs. The company has acquired NetSpeed Systems, a startup that makes system-on-chip (SoC) design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property (IP).
SoC is a central part of how newer connected devices are being made. Moving away from traditional motherboards to create all-in-one chips that include processing, memory, input/output and storage is an essential cornerstone when building ever-smaller and more efficient devices. This is an area where Intel is already active but against others like Nvidia and Qualcomm many believe it has some catching up to do, and so this acquisition in important in that context.
“Intel is designing more products with more specialized features than ever before, which is incredibly exciting for Intel architects and for our customers,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)
Chocolate Factory cuts characters from address bar for the sake of brevity (yeah right)
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/07/google_kills_www/
Google Chrome has suddenly stopped displaying www. and m. in website addresses in its URL bar, confusing the heck out of some netizens.
The move apparently cuts down on unneeded “trivial” characters that normies and techies alike shouldn’t, according to the browser’s developers, worry about in 2018.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia launches the Tesla T4, its fastest data center inferencing platform yet
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/12/nvidia-launches-the-tesla-t4-its-fastest-data-center-inferencing-platform-yet/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Nvidia today announced its new GPU for machine learning and inferencing in the data center.
Google, Nvidia said, will be among the first to bring the new T4 GPUs to its Cloud Platform.
Nvidia argues that the T4s are significantly faster than the P4s. For language inferencing, for example, the T4 is 34 times faster than using a CPU and more than 3.5 times faster than the P4.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Employees Are Quitting Over The Company’s Secretive China Search Project
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/google-project-dragonfly-employees-quitting
“If it was true, I was pretty sure immediately I couldn’t continue working there,” one former Google employee told BuzzFeed News.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://blog.trendmicro.com/software-defined-software-the-history-of-software-defined/
Tomi Engdahl says:
THE END OF XEON PHI – IT’S XEON AND MAYBE GPUS FROM HERE
https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/07/27/end-of-the-line-for-xeon-phi-its-all-xeon-from-here/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Temporarily Brings Back the www In Chrome URLs — But Should They?
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/15/0110210/google-temporarily-brings-back-the-www-in-chrome-urls—-but-should-they?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
With the launch of Chrome 69, Google stunned users last week with a surprising decision to no longer display the “www” and “m” part of the URL in the Chrome search bar, but user backlash forced Google to soften its stance. Google’s course reversal, although welcomed by users, is only short term, and the search giant said it will change course once again with the release of the Chrome 70 browser….
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/08/0437229/google-slammed-over-chrome-change-that-strips-www-from-domain-urls
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hooking up brains to machines could be the ‘next big thing’ for gaming
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/09/15/hooking-up-brains-to-machines-could-be-the-next-big-thing-for-gaming/
It may sound like science fiction, but brain-machine interfaces (BMI) will eventually come to our devices. It’s just a matter of time. The technology has been actively researched since 1969, before consumer computers even existed, when a researcher showed that monkeys could amplify their brain signals to control a needle on a dial.
Today, researchers are making strides to bring brain-machine interfaces closer to reality. Stanford researchers successfully created an interface for brain-controlled typing where users simply imagine their own hand movements to move an on-screen cursor, helping paralyzed users communicate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Falling SSD prices to drive greater adoption in notebooks, others
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180913PD210.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Ampere launches its first ARM-based eMAG server processors to challenge Intel, with power efficiency, high performance, and high memory capacity
Ampere launches its first ARM-based server processors in challenge to Intel
https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/18/ampere-launches-its-first-arm-based-server-processors-in-challenge-to-intel/
Ampere is launching two versions of its first ARM-based 64-bit server processor today in a challenge to Intel’s dominance of data center chips.
Intel dominates about 99 percent of the server chip market with its x86-based processors, but Ampere is targeting power-efficient, high-performance, and high-memory capacity features with its Ampere eMAG processors for data centers.
The chips are aimed at hyperscale cloud and edge computing, using the ARMv8-A cores. The chips target big data and in-memory databases.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Braille on a Tablet Computer
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/19/braille-on-a-tablet-computer/
Signing up for college classes can be intimidating, from tuition, textbook requirements, to finding an engaging professor. Imagine signing up online, but you cannot use your monitor. We wager that roughly ninety-nine percent of the hackers reading this article have it displayed on a tablet, phone, or computer monitor. Conversely, “Only one percent of published books is available in Braille,” according to [Kristina Tsvetanova] who has created a hybrid tablet computer with a Braille display next to a touch-screen tablet running Android.
Braille for a New Digital Age
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/tablet-devices-blind-braille.html
When she was a graduate student in her native Bulgaria about five years ago, Kristina Tsvetanova was once asked to help a blind friend sign up online for a class. Understanding why he could not do so opened her eyes to the lag in technological innovation to benefit blind and visually impaired people.
“The shock that my friend couldn’t perform this simple task stayed with me,” Ms. Tsvetanova said in an interview.
Ms. Tsvetanova, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in industrial management and a master’s in engineering, knew that she had stumbled onto an untapped opportunity.
“I realized that there was a gap in the market and a business opportunity in developing technology to provide access to content and services for the blind,” she said. “I am a second-generation entrepreneur, my father taught me to take risks.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/8439-pelottaako-kuvien-varmuuskopiointi-verkkoon-harkitse-omaa-pilvea
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/8435-sovelluksia-ilman-riviakaan-koodia
CRM-sovelluksia kehittävä Salesforce on esitellyt uusia työkaluja Lightning-alustanaansa.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2018/09/20/tekoalyyn-uusi-tyokalu-avoimeen-lahdekoodiin/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top Ten Intel® Software Developer Stories September
https://software.intel.com/blogs/2018/09/12/top-ten-intel-software-developer-stories-september?utm_source=Facebook.com&utm_medium=Social+Media&utm_campaign=AllZones_ASMO_September2018_TopTrendingContentBlog
Tomi Engdahl says:
Federated Data With HyperGraphQL
https://nordicapis.com/federated-data-with-hypergraphql/
Is HyperGraphQL the linked data extension for GraphQL we’ve been waiting for?
Linked data is thus about connecting data in a meaningful way to uncover these additional relations, boosting our understanding and the value of otherwise disparate sources. GraphQL is promising in this regard, but in its basic form is limited only to a singular discrete or collated data set.
Enter HyperGraphQL. Designed to allow for disparate data sets to be combined, compared, and analyzed, HyperGraphQL promises to be the new evolution of GraphQL with combined, linked data at the forefront – but does it deliver on this promise?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Control your data with Syncthing: An open source synchronization tool
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/take-control-your-data-syncthing?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Decide how to store and share your personal information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Sparkling Game Engines – develop great cross-platform games
https://www.linuxlinks.com/sparkling-game-engines-develop-great-cross-platform-games/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla identifies 10 open source personas: What you need to know
https://opensource.com/open-organization/18/9/mozilla-open-archetypes?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
This new report describes the best ways to work with different types of open communities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technical Debt — Threat or Possibility
https://medium.com/wunderdog-technology/technical-debt-threat-or-possibility-81df571118be
Even though technical debt isn’t usually thought of as a similar tool as a mortgage, they have something in common: both can be used to achieve desired goals faster than what would be possible without them. However, there’s also a significant difference between technical debt and a mortgage. With a mortgage, a bank makes sure that the debt is paid back entirely. With technical debt you don’t usually need to pay it off entirely. Actually, often it isn’t even worth it.
In software development all code usually goes through quite a meticulous peer review, which is often even considered an indicator of professionalism.
The valuable functionalities should, of course, be reviewed with care but is it useful to use the same amount of money on the less important functionalities?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla’s Firefox Reality web browser is now available
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/18/mozillas-firefox-reality-web-browser-is-now-available/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Mozilla’s vision of a VR-first web browser is ready for consumers to download and judge.
Firefox Reality is a browser built entirely for virtual reality. While you may have read about desktop Firefox or Chrome adding WebVR support, Firefox Reality is a web browser that you actually use entirely inside a VR headset. You can visit URLs, search things and otherwise browse the 2D and 3D internet within the new browser all without moving a mouse, just your VR hand controller.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 ways DevSecOps changes security
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/devsecops-changes-security
Security must evolve to keep up with the way today’s apps are written and deployed.
There’s been an ongoing kerfuffle over whether we need to expand DevOps to explicitly bring in security. After all, the thinking goes, DevOps has always been something of a shorthand for a broad set of new practices, using new tools (often open source) and built on more collaborative cultures. Why not DevBizOps for better aligning with business needs? Or DevChatOps to emphasize better and faster communications?
Hopefully, someday we will have a world where we no longer have to use the word DevSecOps and security will be an inherent part of all service delivery discussions.
We’ve arguably never done a great job of information security in spite of (or maybe because of) the vast industry of complex point products addressing narrow problems. But we also arguably did a good enough job during the era when defending against threats focused on securing the perimeter, network connections were limited, and most users were employees using company-provided devices.
Those circumstances haven’t accurately described most organizations’ reality for a number of years now. But the current era, which brings in not only DevSecOps but new application architectural patterns, development practices, and an increasing number of threats, defines a stark new normal that requires a faster pace of change.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Carnegie Mellon is Saving Old Software from Oblivion
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/carnegie-mellon-is-saving-old-software-from-oblivion
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Patterson Says It’s Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/hardware/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages
David Patterson—University of California professor, Google engineer, and RISC pioneer—says there’s no better time than now to be a computer architect.
That’s because Moore’s Law really is over, he says: “We are now a factor of 15 behind where we should be if Moore’s Law were still operative. We are in the post–Moore’s Law era.”
When performance doubled every 18 months, people would throw out their desktop computers that were working fine because a friend’s new computer was so much faster.”
But last year, he said, “single program performance only grew 3 percent, so it’s doubling every 20 years. If you are just sitting there waiting for chips to get faster, you are going to have to wait a long time.”
“Revolutionary new hardware architectures and new software languages, tailored to dealing with specific kinds of computing problems, are just waiting to be developed,”
“There are Turing Awards waiting to be picked up if people would just work on these things.”
—David Patterson
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s robot coders step into the future of programming
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/09/17/facebooks-robot-coders-step-into-the-future-of-programming/
Facebook’s Android app recently became one of the first in the world to run software debugged by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Called SapFix, the company describes it as an “AI hybrid tool” that can be used in conjunction with the Sapienz automated Android testing tool originally developed by university researchers but taken in-house by Facebook some time ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SizeCoding.org is a wiki dedicated to the art of creating very tiny programs for the 80×86 family of CPUs. By “very tiny programs”, we mean programs that are 256 bytes or less in size, typically created by members of the demoscene as a show of programming skill.
http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tabs or spaces? Spaces, obviously, but how many?
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/spaces-poll?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
If you’re passionate about code indentation, you’re not alone.
Regardless of where you come down on the spaces versus tabs debate, there’s a related question: If you use spaces, how many do you use, and if you use tabs, what number of spaces do you set to be equivalent to the depth of one tab level?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Sources shed light on how Qualcomm’s nascent server chip unit withered amid Broadcom takeover saga that resulted in cost cuts and key executive departures
How Qualcomm Tried and Failed to Steal Intel’s Crown Jewel
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-20/qualcomm-s-bid-to-chase-intel-in-servers-fell-victim-to-broadcom
In early November, Qualcomm Inc. Chairman Paul Jacobs stood on a stage in the heart of Silicon Valley and vowed to break Intel Corp.’s stranglehold on the world’s most lucrative chip business.
The mobile internet and cloud computing were booming and the data centers running this digital economy had an insatiable thirst for computer servers — and especially the powerful, expensive server chips that Intel churns out by the million. Qualcomm had spent five years and hundreds of millions of dollars designing competing processors, trying to expand beyond its mobile business. Jacobs was leading a coming-out party featuring tech giants like Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., which had committed to try the new gear.
“That’s an industry that’s been very slow moving, very complacent,” Jacobs said on stage. “We’re going to change that.”
Less than a year later, this once-promising business is in tatters
Most of the key engineers are gone. Big customers are looking elsewhere or going back to Intel for the data center chips they need. Efforts to sell the operation — including a proposed management buyout backed by SoftBank Group Corp. — have failed
The demise is a story of debt-fueled dealmaking and executive cost-cutting pledges in the face of restless investors seeking quick returns — exactly the wrong environment for the painstaking and expensive task of building a new semiconductor business from scratch.
The idea of a Qualcomm server chip business started in late 2012 as the company looked for new markets beyond smartphones. Server processors can sell for more than $10,000 each in a market utterly dominated by Intel. The idea was to get the energy efficient properties of mobile chips into a more powerful design that would appeal to data center owners such as Microsoft and Google that were looking to save on operating costs and needed a balance against Intel in price negotiations.
Qualcomm repurposed its design center in Raleigh, North Carolina, adding engineers from Intel, IBM and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
The 1,000-person team was tasked with creating chips capable of performing some of the toughest jobs in computing, from making complex calculations that predict the weather to mapping the human genome.
Intel rakes in almost $20 billion a year in revenue selling the components.
To break into this business, you can’t just make a good chip. What’s really needed is a road map of future processors that will improve over time dependably.
Just designing a server chip costs hundreds of millions of dollars these days. The last time Intel was seriously challenged was in 2006, when AMD got a fifth of the market. Work began on this AMD server processor in 2000, when Mark Zuckerberg was still a teenager and the word “cloud” referred only to white fluffy things in the sky.
“Qualcomm became more like Broadcom even though the acquisition didn’t happen,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome is a Google Service that happens to include a Browser Engine
https://ha.x0r.be/posts/chrome-is-a-google-service/
Starting with Chrome 69, logging into a Google Site is tied to logging into Chrome.
This is typically the topic where things are complex enough that tweets or 500 character Mastodon toots don’t do it justice. I’d also mention that I prefer to avoid directly linking people’s posts on this, because I dislike the practice of taking discussions out of their original audience and treating them as official or semi-official communications from a given company.
So what changed with Chrome 69
Tomi Engdahl says:
Watt the heck is this? A 32-core 3.3GHz Arm server CPU shipping? Yes, says Ampere
If you’re resisting x86, Lenovo has some current deals for you
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/18/ampere_shipping/
Carlyle Group-backed Ampere Computing, run by ex-Intel president Renée James, says it is, at last, shipping its 64-bit Arm-compatible server processor.
It represents another attempt by the Arm world to grab a chunk of the lucrative data-center server market, which is virtually 100 per cent locked up by Intel and its x86-64 Xeon bruisers.
This plucky upstart will be pitched at the hyperscalers – the cloud world’s Super Eight in the US and China: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and China Mobile. The processor could be used to power their web servers and infrastructure boxes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Gaming FINALLY Doesn’t SUCK!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJUphbYnpg
Tomi Engdahl says:
WLinux Distro for Windows Subsystem for Linux Now Available, openSUSE Call for Hosts
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/wlinux-distro-windows-subsystem-linux-now-available-opensuse-call-hosts-new-firefox-bug
Whitewater Foundry recently launched WLinux, a Linux distribution optimized for use on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Because the distro is created specifically for WSL, it has “sane defaults” and also allows for “faster patching of security and compatibility issues”. You can download it from the Microsoft Store, and it’s currently on sale for $9.99.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://whitewaterfoundry.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Google feature to help bridge the skills gap
http://www.itpro.co.uk/business-strategy/careers-training/31980/google-pathways-skills-gap
‘Pathways’ feature can link job seekers with local training programmes
Google has created a new feature for its search engine to help job seekers find local training programmes and find the skills employers are looking for.
The feature is called ‘Pathways’ and aims to help people find useful information about the skills and training they need for a job and better connect them with local resources that can help them realise those opportunities.
“We want to help people everywhere and believe these opportunities should be more discoverable online,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s Inside the Bad Molex to SATA Adapters (And Possible Failure Modes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyy_WOSdVc
In this video I tear a few apart and see why they catch fire.
Tomi Engdahl says:
My File Server Caught Fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYkof-csPfI
I literally saw this coming, but I’m an idiot and didn’t do anything about it. No real damage, other than the fact that my room smells like fire.
What’s Inside the Bad Molex to SATA Adapters (And Possible Failure Modes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyy_WOSdVc
In this video I tear a few apart and see why they catch fire.