Paul Krill, Author at NetworkingNexus.net

Paul Krill

Author Archives: Paul Krill

Microsoft: We will democratize AI

Is artificial intelligence and conversational computing the next great frontier in IT? Microsoft believes so; the company is bullish on AI and is doubling down on opportunities it sees for the technology.At an event in San Francisco, Microsoft paraded a multitude of technologies focusing on bots, the Cortana personal digital assistant, and application development in these realms. "Our goal here is democratizing AI so that we make AI available for everyone," including developers, consumers, and businesses, said Harry Shum, executive vice president in Microsoft's AI and Research Group.[ The InfoWorld review: TensorFlow shines a light on deep learning. | Start here with TensorFlow. | Get a digest of the day's top tech stories in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ] The company officially introduced its Zo chatbot, an AI-driven, English-speaking conversation partner that is a follow-up to Tay, which had been contorted into misuse and abuse. More than 115,000 people have already been using Zo, according to Microsoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Expect a new Swift upgrade this spring

Swift 3.1, a limited-focus upgrade to Apple's general purpose systems language, is due next spring, with a few enhancements to the language itself as well as to the Swift Package Manager and Swift on Linux. Source compatibility with Swift 3.0 also is a key goal.Apple detailed goals for the language in a recent bulletin, but the company already is looking past this upgrade to Swift 4, which is planned for late 2017, according to Apple's Ted Kremenek, release manager for Swift 3.1.[ InfoWorld's quick guide: Digital Transformation and the Agile Enterprise. | Download InfoWorld’s essential guide to microservices and learn how to create modern web and mobile applications that scale. ] "To meet this goal, Swift 3.1 will include changes in mainline development, i.e. the master branch, only until January 16," Kremenek said. "After that date, there will be a 'bake' period in which only select, critical fixes will go into the swift-3.1-branch and move master on to Swift 4 development."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle cuts management, messaging specs in Java EE 8

Oracle is making good on plans to cut management and messaging improvements from the next version of enterprise Java.The company is axing Management 2.0 and Java Message Service (JMS) 2.1 from the Java EE 8 road map. Also, Oracle is investigating a possible transfer of the MVC functionality planned EE 8 to another community member or organization.[ The big 4 Java IDEs reviewed: See how Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, and IntelliJ IDEA stack up. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] "These changes are consistent with the revised Java EE road map presented at the JavaOne 2016 conference in September, in which Oracle proposed to remove these JSRs from Java EE 8," Oracle's David Delabassee noted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Disney’s best releases may be its open source tools

While most people associate Disney with Mickey Mouse, animation, and amusement parks, the company is forging a path in the open source software realm, encouraging contributions from its developers and releasing software of its own.Not surprising, several projects involve images, such as the OpenEXR high-dynamic-range image file format developed by Disney subsidiary Industrial Light and Magic. Others are less image-focused, including Munki, a set of tools to help MacOS X admins manage software installs and removals.[ Get the most out of collaborative programming with InfoWorld’s 20 essential pointers for Git and GitHub. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld’s Application Development newsletter. ] The company’s GitHub repo highlights its Open Source Program, through which it encourages Disney developers to tap open source software, contribute to open source projects, and release what they create to the open source community at large. Disney’s GitHub repo “features” a few homegrown open source projects in particular, including Universal Scene Description (USD), which Disney notes as being the core of Pixar’s 3D graphics pipeline.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ex-Facebook, Dropbox engineers offer debugging as a service

A group of former Facebook and Dropbox engineers is developing a service for debugging complex systems and answering ad hoc questions in real time.Honeycomb, currently in an open beta cycle, is a SaaS platform that reduces MTTR (mean time to repair) for outages and degraded services, identifies bugs and performance regressions, isolates contributing factors to failures, and reproduces user bug reports.[ Find out how to get ahead with our career development guide for developers. | The art of programming is changing rapidly. We help you navigate what's hot in programming and what's going cold. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] The collective debugging skills of teams would be captured and preserved, according to the project website. Rather than relying on a dashboard, Honeycomb is for interactive debugging.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ex-Facebook, Dropbox engineers offer debugging as a service

GitHub’s 7 top productivity tools for programmers

GitHub's 7 most popular productivity tools for programmersImage by Wikipedia; pixabayBorn of ingenuity -- or, in some cases, laziness -- programming tools created by developers for developers have become an essential component of modern software development. Developers seeking to enhance their productivity or simply cut down on keystrokes have enjoyed a boon of possibilities thanks to open source repo host GitHub.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

With help from Docker, Google’s Go jumps in popularity

Google's Go language, which anchors projects like Kubernetes and Docker, keeps climbing the charts in language popularity.Ranked 65th a year ago in the Tiobe Index of language popularity, it has climbed to 16th this month and is on track to become Tiobe's Programming Language of the Year, a designation awarded to the language with the biggest jump in the index.[ Find out how to get ahead with our career development guide for developers. | The art of programming is changing rapidly. We help you navigate what's hot in programming and what's going cold. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] "Google's Go language seems to be unrivaled, probably boosted by the immense popularity of Docker, the container application that is written in Go," said a report accompanying the index, which gauges popularity based on a formula assessing searches on languages in popular search engines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft opens up its ‘million dollar’ bug-finder

Microsoft is previewing a cloud-based bug detector, dubbed Project Springfield, that it calls one of its most sophisticated tools for finding potential security vulnerabilities.Project Springfield uses "whitebox fuzzing," which uncovered one-third of the "million dollar" security bugs during the development of Windows 7. Microsoft has been using a component of the project called SAGE since the mid-2000s to test products prior to release, including fuzzing both Windows and Office applications. [ From Docker containers and Nano Server to software-defined storage and networking improvements, Windows Server 2016 is packed with great additions: Get the scoop on Windows Server 2016 from InfoWorld. | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with the Windows Report newsletter. ] For this project, SAGE is bundled with other tools for fuzz testing, featuring a dashboard and other interfaces that enable use by people without an extensive security background. The tests are run using Microsoft's Azure cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft opens up its ‘million dollar’ bug-finder

Microsoft pursues .Net development unity with .Net Standard

Microsoft is looking to provide "one library to rule them all." With .Net Standard, developers only have to master a single base library to reach multiple .Net platforms.The company on Monday shed further light on its plans for .Net Standard, which is intended to enable code-sharing between applications. .Net Standard features a set of APIs for .Net platforms to implement. It is intended as a replacement for Microsoft's Portable Class Libraries going forward, and will serve as tooling for building multi-platform .Net libraries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flash vs. HTML5: The last stand

Believe it or not, Flash still has an ardent fan club. The once-ubiquitous media player for browsers has taken its lumps, thanks in large part to security issues. However, diehards remain in Flash’s corner in its battle with HTML5, despite the sense that Flash may be on the ropes, as HTML5 continues to close any functionality gaps it might have had with its proprietary predecessor.Occupy HTML5, a Facebook page that pitches itself as “The movement to rid the world of HTML purism,” is one such outlet taking up Flash’s mantle. The page stresses it “is not an anti-HTML5 movement, but rather an opposition to purism, biased supremacy, and corporate bullying.” Flash, Occupy HTML5 says, is mature. “It's supported by all major desktop browsers. It's stable when used properly. If not, it crashes a lot, just like every other technology.” The page, which has more than 700 Likes, was created by ardent Flash advocate Stephane Beladaci, who said recently he has been planning to relaunch the site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

3 new programming languages: What their creators say

With hundreds of programming languages already in existence, why invest the considerable effort in creating a new one? For developers of three newfangled open source languages -- Coconut, Crystal, and Oden -- the answer is simply that, in programming, there are always new niches to fill and new needs to be met.Scratching the proverbial itch and unwilling to settle for existing tools that they found somewhat lacking, these developers set out to build their own languages, driven by specific goals. For Coconut, which compiles to Python, it’s all about bringing functional programming to the Python language. Crystal is devoted to combining multiple programming capabilities. And the driving force behind the development of Oden is filling in some capabilities absent from Google’s popular Go language.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. developers have the numbers, but China and Russia have the skills

While the United States and India may have lots of programmers, China and Russia have the most talented developers according to a study by HackerRank, which administers coding tests to developers worldwide.The study looked at the results of 1.4 million of HackerRank's coding test submissions, called "challenges," during the last few years. "According to our data, China and Russia score as the most talented developers. Chinese programmers outscore all other countries in mathematics, functional programming, and data structures challenges, while Russians dominate in algorithms, the most popular and most competitive arena," said Ritika Trikha, a blogger at HackerRank.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s .Net Framework will get its own Patch Tuesday

Microsoft in October is introducing .Net Framework Monthly Rollup to provide security and quality updates to its programming model for Windows. The move aligns with the Windows Monthly Rollup, which does the same thing for the Windows OS.Both rollups were unveiled on Monday and will be available on Patch Tuesday each month, according to Microsoft.[ Solve your Win10 installation headaches with our Windows 10 Installation Superguide. Download it today! | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with the Windows newsletter. ] "The .Net Framework Monthly Rollup is a single install that updates each supported .Net Framework version on a machine to its latest respective update level," said Microsoft's Stacey Haffner. "Each monthly rollup supersedes the last one, so you if you've missed the last few months of updates, you only need to install the latest rollup to update to the latest update level." The rollup installs only security and reliability updates, not a new version of .Net Framework.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s .Net Framework will get its own Patch Tuesday

Microsoft cranks up encryption in .Net Framework

Microsoft has released .Net Framework 4.6.2, tightening security in multiple areas, including the BCL (Base Class Library). The new version also makes improvements to the SQL client, Windows Communication Foundation, the CLR (Common Language Runtime), and the ASP.Net web framework.The security focus in the BCL impacts PKI capabilities, and X.509 certificates now support the FIPS 186-3 digital signature algorithm. "This support enables X.509 certificates with keys that exceed 1024-bit," Microsoft's Stacey Haffner said. "It also enables computing signatures with the SHA-2 family of hash algorithms (SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512)."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft cranks up encryption in .Net Framework

Exclusive: Oracle to reboot Java EE for the cloud

Oracle’s intentions for the future of Java EE have been cloudy, to say the least.Rumored to have put the project on the back burner, Oracle has weathered a storm of complaints over its stewardship of enterprise Java, with two separate organizations considering plans to move Java EE forward without Oracle. Rather than let Java EE wither, Oracle is instead looking to reboot the platform to better accommodate where enterprises are headed, particularly to the cloud, said a high-ranking Oracle official in response to recent criticism.[ The big 4 Java IDEs reviewed: See how Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, and IntelliJ IDEA stack up. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] In an exclusive interview this week, Oracle’s Thomas Kurian, president of product development, emphasized ambitious intentions to modernize the server-side platform, for which Oracle is gathering feedback now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft reveals big plans for .Net Core

As part of a road map for its open source .Net Core runtime, Microsoft is planning more APIs, an upgrade to the F# language, and expanded processor and Linux support..Net Core, a multi-platform, modular subset of the .Net Framework programming model, was released as a 1.0 version late last month, along with ASP.Net Core 1.0 Web application framework.[ Free tools! Get the most out of Windows with 15 open source tools for system admins. | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with InfoWorld's Windows newsletter. ] "This release will bring back many of the missing APIs in .Net Core, including networking, serialization, data, and more," said Microsoft's Scott Hunter, a member of the .Net engineering team. "These APIs will be part of .Net Standard 2.0, which will be released at the same time, resulting in APIs being consistent across .Net Framework, .Net Core, and Xamarin." The APIs will make it easier to write portable code that can run on major .Net platforms, targeting .Net 2.0 standard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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