After weeks of tease, creator of Android Andy Rubin has unveiled a new smartphone: The Essential Phone. The phone is being introduced as part of Rubin’s latest company, Essential. According to Rubin, the belief behind Essential is that devices should be personal property, play well with others, shouldn’t become outdated, and should assist the user.
“So why did I create Essential? Well, my hardware engineers wanted me to talk about how we are bringing real passion and craftsmanship back into this category. My software engineers wanted me to talk about our vision for making all devices, even those we don’t make ourselves, play well together. My partners wanted me to talk about how we are using methods that could change how successful technology companies are built forever,” Rubin wrote.
More information about the phone can be found here.
Delphix’s State of Test Data Management
Delphix announced a State of Test Data Management (TDM) survey, which revealed improved data quality is a major factor in faster application development. The report also found respondents with the ability to bring high quality software to market faster had a better chance of survival in today’s software economy.
“Application development teams need fast and reliable test data for their projects. Yet many are constrained by the speed, quality, security, and costs of moving data across environments,” said Iain Chidgey, vice president of sales international at Delphix. “Since it takes significant time and effort to move and manage data, developer environments can take days or weeks to provision. In turn, this places a strain on operations teams and creates time sinks, ultimately slowing down the pace of application delivery.”
Other key features include 45% of respondents are taking steps to improve their TDM, and 43% are confident it will improve in the next year.
IBM’s new cybersecurity initiative
IBM Security announced a new initiative to address the cybersecurity worker storage problem. The company will work with new programs and partnerships that promote a “new collar” cybersecurity workforce strategy. Current initiatives include: a collaboration with the Hacker Highschool project; continued investment in education, training and recruitment; and best practices on how organizations can rethink their own cybersecurity talent models.
“The cybercrime landscape is evolving rapidly, yet many organizations are still approaching their cybersecurity education and hiring in the same way they were 20 years ago,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, general manager of IBM Security. “The truth is that many of the critical cybersecurity roles we need to fill don’t require a traditional four-year technical degree. Industry leaders need to take an active part in resolving the talent issues we’re facing, by investing in new models and extending the pipeline to focus on hands-on skills and experience over degrees alone.”
Developers introduce Nile.js
Nile.js is a new peer-to-peer live video streaming library designed to handle scaling, developed by software engineers Derek Miranda, Kevin Qiu, and Justin Pierson. It uses the power of WebTorrent, which is a distributed file delivery protocol inspired by BitTorrent. Using WebTorrent as the means of broadcasting the stream makes for a better fit than implementing WebRTC peer connections, according to a Nile.js blog.
According to its GitHub page, “Nile.js utilizes Express middleware and socket.io to receive torrent information, broadcast it to as many clients it can comfortably handle who will then send it out to the rest of the clients.” The Nile.js team would like other developers to try out the library and build upon the project.
