The modern software development warzone is clearly the mobile device. Microsoft’s acquisition of Xamarin, is a clear sign that that company intends to continue apace with its cross-platform mobile strategy, and also signals that other mobile platforms are just as important to Microsoft as its own largely failed mobile OS. Xamarin’s sweet spot has been … continue reading
Google has announced the release of TensorFlow Serving, a flexible, high-performance and open-source serving system for machine-learning models. The solution was designed for production environments and optimized for TensorFlow, the company’s machine-learning system. “Machine learning powers many Google product features: from speech recognition in the Google app to Smart Reply in Inbox to search in … continue reading
Personal privacy vs. national security. That’s the issue at stake today as the FBI has asked Apple to hack into the phone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack in December. On the face of it, the stance by Apple’s Tim Cook seems genuine enough. People have come to trust … continue reading
It is no surprise that the technology world is dominated by men, or that women are often looked down upon in the workforce. Why? Some contribute this rationale to the way we were brought up (programmable toys are often geared towards boys), and some say it is because women aren’t as confident or don’t speak … continue reading
RethinkDB is an open-source scalable database that makes building modern, real-time apps relatively easy. It does this by utilizing a new database access model that pushes updated query results to applications in real time. With RethinkDB, developers can get a scalable real-time Web app running with fewer engineering resources. In this case, real time means … continue reading
Love is in the air, or at least it is for the month of February. If you’re single and ready to mingle, you’re probably fed up with all the pink and chocolates and coworkers talking about what five-star restaurant they’re going to for Valentine’s Day. Good news is, the Web has been helping people meet … continue reading
A Brooklyn-based corporation everyone knows as Kickstarter has built a global crowdfunding platform that supports all projects from the technical to the super weird and creative. Today, the company has reached 100,000 successfully funded campaigns, despite only being around since 2009. Last night, a photography project called “Falklands/Malvinas: One War, all Wars” became the 100,000th … continue reading
Even before the wave of bad Valley news last night, January made things in the San Francisco Bay Area tense. We’ve been on edge for months here in anticipation of the Super Bowl. Now that those immense proceedings are over, the Bay Area seems to be exhaling a large sigh of relief. Thing is, maybe … continue reading
Add native power to your shared JavaScript codebase with this Apache Cordova plug-in that’s available on GitHub (and is also SD Times GitHub project of the week): Project Ace. Project Ace enables you to easily add native UI and native code to your JavaScript and HTML. It works with Ionic, PhoneGap and all Cordova-based projects. … continue reading
The countdown to Super Bowl 50 has begun. If you are like other sports-loving Americans, you’re probably ironing your jersey, ordering a platter of wings, and inviting all your friends over to shotgun some six packs. If you’re like me, you’re flipping channels to find Animal Planet and waiting for the Puppy Bowl to begin … continue reading
Last week, Google announced that its AI had defeated a 2 dan Go player in Europe. We covered this news, as did many outlets. The news, however, has far greater implications than many outlets let on. This is, perhaps, the largest single advancement in AI development since Marvin Minsky arrived at MIT. Perhaps that’s why … continue reading
Wercker, an automation cloud platform provider, wants to help developers rapidly build and deploy containerized apps and microservices on desktop environments. The company has announced it is open-sourcing its Command Line Interface (CLI) technology for developers. The company hopes the Wercker CLI will empower developers to create workflow capabilities, like attaining better development-production parity and … continue reading
It seems like neural networks are taking over. We see their code open-sourced, they power our self-driving vehicles, we use them as programming assistants, and we’ve even let them rate our selfies. Now, deep neural networks have analyzed 50,000 fonts, just because. The man behind this crazy font fun is Erik Bernhardsson, a CTO at … continue reading
Some time ago, I wrote here about the Habitat project, an effort to relaunch the first massively multiplayer online game. This is an effort led by my non-profit, the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, an all-volunteer videogame museum reopening in Oakland on Feb. 5. Last week, that project made a major stride forward as … continue reading
