I did not have time to post my computer technologies predictions t the ends of 2016. Because I missed the year end deadline, I though that there is no point on posting anything before the news from CES 2017 have been published. Here are some of myck picks on the current computer technologies trends:
CES 2017 had 3 significant technology trends: deep learning goes deep, Alexa everywhere and Wi-Fi gets meshy. The PC sector seemed to be pretty boring.
Gartner expects that IT sales will growth (2.7%) but hardware sales will not have any growth – can drop this year. TEKsystems 2017 IT forecast shows IT budgets rebounding from a slump in 2016, and IT leaders’ confidence high going into the new year. But challenges around talent acquisition and organizational alignment will persist. Programming and software development continue to be among the most crucial and hard-to-find IT skill sets.
Smart phones sales (expected to be 1.89 billion) and PC sales (expected to be 432 million) do not grow in 2017. According to IDC PC shipments declined for a fifth consecutive year in 2016 as the industry continued to suffer from stagnation and lack of compelling drivers for upgrades. Both Gartner and IDC estimated that PC shipments declined about 6% in 2016.Revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased 10.8 per cent year over year in the third quarter of 2016. Only PC category that has potential for growth is ultramobile (includes Microsoft Surface ja Apple MacBook Air). Need for memory chips is increasing.
Browser suffers from JavaScript-creep disease: This causes that the browing experience seems to be become slower even though computer and broadband connections are getting faster all the time. Bloat on web pages has been going on for ages, and this trend seems to continue.
Microsoft tries all it can to make people to switch from older Windows versions to Windows 10. Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses as malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10. Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Microsoft: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Windows 10. On February 2017 Microsoft stops the 20 year long tradition of monthly security updates. Windows 10 “Creators Update” coming early 2017 for free, featuring 3D and mixed reality, 4K gaming, more.
Microsoft plans to emulate x86 instructions on ARM chips, throwing a compatibility lifeline to future Windows tablets and phones. Microsoft’s x86 on ARM64 Emulation is coming in 2017. This capability is coming to Windows 10, though not until “Redstone 3″ in the Fall of 2017.
Parents should worry less about the amount of time their children spend using smartphones, computers and playing video games because screen time is actually beneficial, the University of Oxford has concluded. 257 minutes is the time teens can spend on computers each day before harming wellbeing.
Outsourcing IT operations to foreign countries is not trendy anymore and companied live at uncertain times. India’s $150 billion outsourcing industry stares at an uncertain future. In the past five years, revenue and profit growth for the top five companies listed on the BSE have halved. Industry leader TCS too felt the impact as it made a shift in business model towards software platforms and chased digital contacts.
Containers will become hot this year and cloud will stay hot. Research firm 451 Research predicts this year containerization will be US $ 762 million business and that Containers will become 2.6 billion worth of software business in 2020. (40 per cent a year growth rate).
Cloud services are expected to have 22 percent annual growth rate. By 2020, the sector would grow from the current 22.2 billion to $ 46 billion. In Finland 30% of companies now prefer to buy cloud services when buying IT (20 per cent of IT budget goes to cloud).Cloud spend to make up over a third of IT budgets by 2017. Cloud and hosting services will be responsible for 34% of IT budgets by 2017, up from 28% by the end of 2016, according to 451 Research. Cloud services have many advantages, but cloud services have also disadvantages. In five years, SaaS will be the cloud that matters.
When cloud is growing, so is the spending on cloud hardware by the cloud companies. Cloud hardware spend hits US$8.4bn/quarter, as traditional kit sinks – 2017 forecast to see cloud kit clock $11bn every 90 days. In 2016′s third quarter vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 8.1 per cent year over year to $8.4 billion. Private cloud accounted for $3.3 billion with the rest going to public clouds. Data centers need lower latency components so Google Searches for Better Silicon.
The first signs of the decline and fall of the 20+ year x86 hegemony will appear in 2017. The availability of industry leading fab processes will allow other processor architectures (including AMD x86, ARM, Open Power and even the new RISC-V architecture) to compete with Intel on a level playing field.
USB-C will now come to screens – C-type USB connector promises to really become the only all equipment for the physical interface.The HDMI connection will be lost from laptops in the future. Thunderbolt 3 is arranged to work with USB Type-C, but it’s not the same thing (Thunderbolt is four times faster than USB 3.1).
World’s first ‘exascale’ supercomputer prototype will be ready by the end of 2017, says China
It seems that Oracle Begins Aggressively Pursuing Java Licensing Fees in 2017. Java SE is free, but Java SE Suite and various flavors of Java SE Advanced are not. Oracle is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licences – six years after it bought Sun Microsystems. Huge sums of money are at stake. The version of Java in contention is Java SE, with three paid flavours that range from $40 to $300 per named user and from $5,000 to $15,000 for a processor licence. If you download Java, you get everything – and you need to make sure you are installing only the components you are entitled to and you need to remove the bits you aren’t using.
Your Year in Review, Unsung Hero article sees the following trends in 2017:
- A battle between ASICs, GPUs, and FPGAs to run emerging workloads in artificial intelligence
- A race to create the first generation of 5G silicon
- Continued efforts to define new memories that have meaningful impact
- New players trying to take share in the huge market for smartphones
- An emerging market for VR gaining critical mass
Virtual Reality Will Stay Hot on both PC and mobile.“VR is the heaviest heterogeneous workload we encounter in mobile—there’s a lot going on, much more than in a standard app,” said Tim Leland, a vice president for graphics and imaging at Qualcomm. The challenges are in the needs to calculate data from multiple sensors and respond to it with updated visuals in less than 18 ms to keep up with the viewer’s head motions so the CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, sensor fusion core, display engine, and video-decoding block are all running at close to full tilt.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Cautious on PC Consumption
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331267&
Intel Corp. Thursday (Jan. 26) reported fourth quarter 2016 revenue and profit that beat analysts’ expectations on sales growth in computing, data center chips and Internet of Things (IoT) chips. The company also delivered a forecast for the first quarter that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations and announced it would increase its capital spending outlay for 2017.
Despite its surprising success with PC processors in the fourth quarter, Intel also tempered its upbeat first quarter forecast with caution. The company said it has a more cautious view of PC consumption trends than third-party market watchers, especially in emerging markets like Russia, China and Latin America. While Intel said it expects high single digit growth in sales to data centers, it is not expecting a sales uptick in the enterprise server or microprocessor segment
Tomi Engdahl says:
Persistent Memory Platform Support Will Take Time
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331257&
Over the last several years, there’s been an increasing overlap between what was traditionally seen as memory and traditionally seen as storage, as well as the increasing use of persistent memory.
EE Times Memory Designline: What are your thoughts on the current JEDEC roadmap for NVDIMMs?
Steve Pawlowski:It’s going to take time. The platform support is coming. It’s good to start with DDR4. When you start talking about NVDIMM-P, in which latency is non-deterministic, there had to be changes made to the DDR4 and the DDR5 protocol, which is at JEDEC right now.
Pawlowski: Intel is doing a good job of building persistent memory files systems, and I think that there are other customers out there doing the same thing. But persistency is really a new concept. So you need to apply new hardware and new capabilities in a manner so that there’s benefit for people willing to use it, put it in their platform, and are willing to spend whatever money they need to in order to make that happen. The idea with persistent memory is that if you can get the cost per bit as good or better as what you can with NAND — although I don’t think anything ever will, as NAND is pretty efficient in terms of cost per bit — or there is a power improvement, you want to make sure that if somebody’s going to put it in their platform, the software they currently have just runs. You want to make sure that, when an application runs and there are some dependencies in terms of latency, they are comprehended by the hardware so things just don’t break.
EE Times:: How conceivable is it that someone might be willing to build entirely new software in order to take advantage of a new architecture?
P: You have to recognize that the market penetration you’re going to get is really very small. That value proposition has to be that there’s nothing there that you are competing with initially, or it has to be so much better that somebody is willing to take that gamble, and your investors are aware that it’s not going be a market sensation overnight.
EE Times: What your thoughts on what will be the non-volatile memory of choice?
Pawlowski: There’s always NAND. You’re taking a huge latency impact, but on a cost-per-bit basis, and the density you can get in on the DIMMs, NAND is an attractive option. Regardless of what technologies come sooner or come later, be it 3D Xpoint or others, you will still see strong support for NAND.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PCI Express 4.0 Draft 0.7 & PIPE 4.4 Specifications – What Do They Mean to Designers?
https://www.synopsys.com/designware-ip/newsletters/technical-bulletin/pcie40-07-dwtb-q117.html?elq_mid=8709&elq_cid=303473
The PCI Express® (PCIe®) standard has long been used in applications like personal computers, networking and workstations. Due to its many benefits such as reliability, low-power, latency and scalable bandwidth from 2.5GT/s to 16GT/s, the specification has evolved to also become prevalent in designs for storage, cloud computing, mobile and automotive. The PCI-SIG announced the latest PCIe 4.0 16GT/s (Gen4) specification in November 2011, but it was almost two years later before work began in earnest. The PCIe 4.0 Draft 0.7 specification was recently released to PCI-SIG members, sparking renewed urgency in System-on-Chip (SoC) designers looking to take advantage of the PCIe 4.0 16GT/s specification.
What is new in PCI Express 4.0 and Draft 0.7
With the Draft 0.7 release, the PCI-SIG process described earlier requires that no new functionality be added, so it’s an excellent time for even the most cautious of early adopters to begin work.
The evolution from PCIe 8GT/s signaling to 16GT/s is similar to that of PCIe 2.5GT/s to 5GT/s– primarily a new speed, negotiated at link initialization. However, in contrast to earlier data rates, getting to PCIe 16GT/s data rates requires a two-stage process. First, the link is brought up to 8GT/s using the familiar 4-phase equalization process, then the same 4-phase process is repeated while running 8GT/s rate to switch to 16GT/s rate.
Immediate Availability of DesignWare IP for PCI Express 4.0 Draft 0.7
The PCI-SIG specification development process freezes functionality at the Draft 0.7, so now is the ideal time to start designing high-performance SoCs using the PCIe 4.0 16GT/s interface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed:
Indian IT-outsourcing giants lose billions in market value following reports of proposal by Rep. Zoe Lofgren that would double salaries required for H-1B visas
Indians Are Freaking Out Over Plans To Change The US Visa System
https://www.buzzfeed.com/pranavdixit/indians-freaking-out-over-plans-to-change-us-visa-system
A proposal to double the salary needed to qualify for skilled worker visas caused Indian outsourcing giants to lose billions in market value on Tuesday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel still banking on data center market
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/12/intel-still-banking-on-data-center-market.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-01-31
According to Bernstein Research estimates, microprocessor gargantuan Intel Corporation’s (NASDAQ: INTC) strengthening commitment in a particular aspect – its data-center business – has resulted in a highly lucrative point.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle co-CEO predicts 80% of corporate data centers will be gone by 2025
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/01/oracle-co-ceo-predicts-80-of-corporate-data-centers-will-be-gone-by-2025.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-01-31
Oracle Corp. co-CEO Mark Hurd said on Tuesday [Jan. 17] that the company expects 80% of corporate data centers to disappear by 2025, as the cloud becomes the primary way that information technology is deployed.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2017/01/17/oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd-says-80-of-corporate-data-centers-gone-by-2025/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elon Musk Thinks We Will Have To Use AI This Way To Avoid a Catastrophic Future
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/01/31/2053234/elon-musk-thinks-we-will-have-to-use-ai-this-way-to-avoid-a-catastrophic-future?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Elon Musk has long said that artificial intelligence will have to augment human abilities, rather than compete with them, in order to avoid a portentous future. He has been active in trying to find ways to evaluate and reduce potential risks posed by AI.
Elon Musk thinks we will have to use AI this way to avoid a catastrophic future
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/31/elon-musk-thinks-we-will-have-to-use-ai-this-way-to-avoid-a-catastrophic-future.html
Elon Musk has long said that artificial intelligence will have to augment human abilities, rather than compete with them, in order to avoid a portentous future.
He has been active in trying to find ways to evaluate and reduce potential risks posed by AI.
Musk said in response to a comment that ensuring AI augments human abilities is “critical to the future of humanity.”
Musk recently told a Twitter user that there may be an announcement “next month” regarding such as device, which Musk has called, in the past, a neural lace.
But what is a neural lace?
The actual details are a mystery
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Apple-recommended LG UltraFine 5K Display doesn’t operate well near routers, dropping connections or freezing connected Macs; LG acknowledges the issue
LG UltraFine 5K Display, Apple’s external monitor solution, can become unusable when near a router
https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/30/lg-ultrafine-5k-display-router-disconnecting/
Apple discontinued its Thunderbolt Display last summer after five years on the market, and now Apple recommends the LG UltraFine 5K Display ($974 through March 31, regular $1299.99) for new MacBook Pro customers. While the industrial design doesn’t match Apple’s hardware, the UltraFine 5K screen is Retina resolution like 5K iMacs and connects using the new Thunderbolt 3 I/O.
LG UltraFine 5K Display has a critical usability issue, however, that doesn’t affect other external monitors: the hardware can become unusable when located within 2 meters of a router.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple began developing a new low-power ARM-based chip last year for Macs, which will work alongside Intel’s chipset and handle “Power Nap” duties, more — A part built with ARM Holdings is used in keyboard’s Touch Bar — New design could help improve battery life in MacBook laptops
Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-01/apple-developing-new-mac-chip-in-test-of-intel-independence
Apple Inc. is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel Corp. processors, according to people familiar with the matter.
It’s built using ARM Holdings Plc. technology and will work alongside an Intel processor.
Although Apple only accounted for 7.5 percent of worldwide computer shipments in the fourth quarter, according to data from IDC, the Mac line has long set the standard for design and component improvements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bridging the Visibility Gap – The Key to Cloud Success
http://www.securityweek.com/bridging-visibility-gap-key-cloud-success
The landslide shift to the cloud has continued at a rapid pace over the last year. According to the SANS Institute, about 70 percent of companies are now using cloud-based architectures and/or applications. In fact, Cisco predicts that over half (56 percent) of all cloud workloads will be in the public cloud by 2019. IT has evidently accepted that the cloud is here to stay despite long-standing fears about security, lack of visibility, and a shortage of control that the cloud instigates—reflecting that elastic flexibility and cost savings win in the end.
However, the move to the public cloud can be cause for concern. There should never be such a thing as blind trust, which often happens with public clouds due to their inherent lack of transparency. Businesses need to, and should, be able to monitor their public cloud environments with the same robustness and vigor they apply to their on-premises and private cloud environments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Reportedly Working On a ‘Lightweight Version of Windows’ Known As ‘Cloud Shell’
https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/17/01/26/2030201/microsoft-reportedly-working-on-a-lightweight-version-of-windows-known-as-cloud-shell
Last week, details emerged of Microsoft’s plans to develop a single, unified, ‘adaptive shell’ for Windows 10. Known as the ‘Composable Shell’, or CSHELL, the company’s efforts were said to be focused on establishing a universal Windows 10 version with a standardized framework to scale and adapt the OS to any type of device, display size or user experience, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, consoles, large touchscreens, and more.
Today, Petri reported that Microsoft is working on a new shell for Windows known as ‘Cloud Shell’.
Microsoft working on Cloud Shell, a ‘lightweight Windows version for modern computing world’
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-working-on-cloud-shell-a-lightweight-windows-version-for-modern-computing-world
Last week, details emerged of Microsoft’s plans to develop a single, unified, ‘adaptive shell’ for Windows 10. Known as the ‘Composable Shell’, or CSHELL, the company’s efforts were said to be focused on establishing a universal Windows 10 version with a standardized framework to scale and adapt the OS to any type of device, display size or user experience, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, consoles, large touchscreens, and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Sweeney Dislikes Windows 10 Cloud Rumors, Calls OS ‘Crush Steam Edition’
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/02/01/2016203/tim-sweeney-dislikes-windows-10-cloud-rumors-calls-os-crush-steam-edition?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
The rumor that Microsoft is building a version of Windows 10 that can only install apps from the Windows Store has drawn criticism before it’s even official. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney took to Twitter to attack the operating system. Although its real name is named Windows 10 Cloud, he’s dubbing it “Windows 10 Crush Steam Edition.” Sweeney is convinced that Microsoft wants to exercise total control over the Windows platform and destroy Valve’s Steam.
Tim Sweeney dislikes Windows 10 Cloud rumors, calls OS “Crush Steam Edition”
Epic Games founder doesn’t want a Windows that only installs apps from the Store.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/tim-sweeney-unhappy-about-windows-10-cloud-rumors-calls-os-crush-steam-edition/
Sweeney is convinced that Microsoft wants to exercise total control over the Windows platform and destroy Valve’s Steam. Last year, Sweeney attacked the Universal Windows Platform API. He claimed (incorrectly) that third-party stores such as Steam would be unable to sell and distribute UWP games, leaving them at a disadvantage relative to Microsoft’s own store. He followed this statement with the claim that Microsoft would systematically modify Windows so as to make Steam work worse and worse, such that gamers grow tired of it and switch to the Windows Store.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How bimodal IT is helping companies hire and retain workers
http://www.cio.com/article/2985258/it-strategy/how-bimodal-it-is-helping-companies-hire-and-retain-workers.html
Bimodal IT is a fairly new concept, but if you embrace it you can empower your workforce. With the right employees in the right work environment, risk takers and more traditional IT pros are much less likely to butt heads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bimodal IT: A two-pronged approach to delivering innovation and maintenance
http://www.cio.com/article/2984916/leadership-management/bimodal-it-a-two-pronged-approach-to-delivering-innovation-and-maintenance.html
One group is tasked with keep-the-lights-on functions, the other on business-advancing tasks. Is this new setup the answer to IT’s dual responsibilities?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on ‘core scenarios’
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/02/our_strategy_for_visual_basic_has_shifted_microsoft_to_focus_on_core_scenarios/
Microsoft program manager Mads Torgersen has posted about the company’s programming language strategy, stating that the plan for Visual Basic has shifted from co-evolution with C# to a focus on “core scenarios”.
Torgersen outlines the strategy for the three pure .NET languages, C#, VB, and F#. C#, says Torgersen, is used by millions and will keep evolving as a “state-of-the-art programming language”. F# is used by “tens of thousands” and will be “the best tooled functional language on the market”. VB, though, is mostly used for Windows Forms applications (plus a few ASP.NET Web Forms), and by new developers, many of whom switch to C# when they discover its richer ecosystem.
Microsoft is therefore no longer keeping C# and VB in rough parity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox fail: Layoffs kill Mozilla’s push beyond the browser
https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-layoff-firefox-device-relevance/
The nonprofit is cutting about 50 people after struggling to extend the influence of its Firefox web browser for PCs.
Unlike what motivates most tech companies, Mozilla’s agenda isn’t to make money but instead to push for an improvement in the web experience. Even if you don’t use Mozilla’s software, anyone who’s used the web has benefited from Mozilla’s role developing new technologies and keeping the browser business competitive.
Mozilla’s great triumph was pushing back against Microsoft’s dominant but stagnant Internet Explorer browser a decade ago, but it has struggled over the last few years. Firefox is virtually absent from phones and tablets, which account for more and more web activity worldwide. Firefox’s share of usage in January dropped to 14.9 percent on personal computers and 6.8 percent on all devices, according to web analytics firm StatCounter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
For $deity’s sake, smile! It’s Friday! Sad coders write bad code – official
Boffins urge bosses to keep their developers cheerful
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/03/dismal_developers_ruin_everything/
Miserable software developers produce miserable software, to the further detriment of organizational productivity and personal health.
Researchers from the University of Stuttgart, University of Helsinki, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have completed a study [PDF] of unhappy programmers, to enumerate the consequences of their sad state.
“Recent literature has suggested that a cost-effective way to foster happiness and productivity among workers could be to limit unhappiness of developers due to its negative impact,” the researchers state in their paper. “However, possible negative effects of unhappiness are still largely unknown in the software development context.”
Ignoring for a moment the bewildering need for “literature” to establish that promoting happiness limits unhappiness, there’s some value in assessing the consequences of demoralized, downtrodden, or otherwise depressed developers.
Unhappy Developers: Bad for Themselves, Bad for Process, and Bad for Software Product
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.02952v2.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs: The time to prepare for the Internet of Things is now
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2017/2/cios-time-prepare-internet-things-now
CIOs plan for IoT
“As a technological turning point, the Internet of Things ranks with the advent of the Internet itself and mobile computing,” writes Hugo Moreno in an article for Forbes. Moreno suggests that the time for businesses to plan for IoT is now. Although he points out “the torrent of data generated by the IoT will make big data look like a trickle in comparison,” he says data science today is mature enough to allow organizations to apply lessons from IoT data to other parts of their business. He writes, “Early adopters stand to reap rewards from this data approach, using it to guide development of next-generation consumer devices and even open up entirely new market segments.”
Trends in tech hiring
Writing for CIO Magazine, Sharon Florentine breaks down the findings from the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Forecast and Local Trends Report. The survey of CIOs revealed that security is top of mind, “with 30 percent of respondents saying ‘maintaining the security of IT systems and safeguarding company information’ was their highest priority.” When it comes to specific skills, the research found that “44 percent are looking for database management skills, 42 percent need desktop support personnel, 42 percent are looking to fill network administration roles and 41 percent need cybersecurity talent.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New, must-read Harvard Business Review articles in February
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2017/1/new-must-read-harvard-business-review-articles-february
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat CIO shares 4 tactics to make the most of your first 100 days on the job
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2017/1/red-hat-cio-shares-4-tips-new-leaders-go-beyond-100-day-plan
Be authentic. I truly believe that no one of us is smarter than all of us working together.
Maintain an outsider’s perspective. Coming into a new role, you have the benefit of being an outsider.
Reflect, but let go of the past. I’ve tried to be cognizant when referring to my professional life before Red Hat. It used to drive me crazy when new people would come in and all they did was talk about what they accomplished in a past organization.
Set the right expectations. Transformation is an overused word, and it can be a scary word for team members to hear. If you make big, master-of-the-obvious comments like, “We’re going to transform the organization,” it just falls on deaf ears. In the long run, making big, sweeping promises and then not keeping them is a lot worse than stating an achievable, clear and authentic vision that is realistic and achievable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ina Fried / Recode:
LG says it will add enhanced shielding to its 5K monitors to prevent interference with nearby wireless routers; existing displays can be retrofitted — The initial models of the fancy display got all glitchy when put near networking gear. — LG has found a fix for a problem that left …
LG has redesigned its 5K Mac monitor so it can handle being placed near a router
The initial models of the fancy display got all glitchy when put near networking gear.
http://www.recode.net/2017/2/3/14496056/lg-redesigned-5k-monitor-glitch
LG has found a fix for a problem that left its high-end Mac monitor unable to work properly when placed within a few feet of a router.
An LG spokesman told Recode that the company is adding additional shielding to newly manufactured models.
“LG apologizes for this inconvenience
Tomi Engdahl says:
You better layer up, Micron’s working on next-generation XPoint
New memory, quad-level cell flash, and increased layering
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/03/micron_working_on_nextgeneration_xpoint/
Micron is working on two next-generation XPoint products, a new memory, and extending 3D flash beyond 64 layers.
At an analysts’ day it talked about its 3D NAND technology development. It is shipping its gen-1 3D NAND with 32 layers and 384Gb die capacity and moving towards its second generation with 64 layers and 256Gb capacity in a 59mm2 die size. More than half its bit output in the second half of 2016 went into 3D NAND, which means planar, 2D NAND is now falling away.
It believes its way of doing 3D NAND, with a CMOS logic layer underneath the NAND cell layers makes its 32-layer technology competitive with 48-layer 3D NAND from other suppliers. This, we assume, means its 64-layer 3D NAND will be better (faster/cheaper/smaller?) than their competitors’.
Micron is starting to develop 64-layer die manufacturing with output shipping starting by the end of this year.
So you should be able to fit more of them in an SSD, PCIe or M.2 flash drive and have a higher capacity device. Storage BU chief Darren Thomas talked about 8TB 2.5-inch SSDs.
Interestingly, WD has claimed its BICS3 64-layer 3D NAND (256Gb capacity) has the smallest die size in the industry
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mehedi Hassan / MSPoweruser:
Early build of Windows 10 Cloud leaks; the lightweight OS can only run UWP apps from Windows Store, could lead to cheaper devices to compete with Chromebooks
Early version of Windows 10 Cloud leaks (screenshots)
https://mspoweruser.com/early-version-of-windows-10-cloud-leaks/
Microsoft is working on a new Cloud SKU for Windows 10 which is expected to be Redmond’s next take on Chromebooks. As it was recently reported by several publications, Windows 10 Cloud would be a lightweight version of Windows, possibly for Microsoft’s Windows 10 on ARM plans.
An early version of Windows 10 Cloud has been leaked online which gives us a tiny glimpse at what Microsoft is cooking up at Redmond. An ISO of a Windows 10 Cloud build was leaked by Twitter user @adguard, which you can actually install today. Needless to say, we wouldn’t recommend installing it on an actual machine, so make sure to install it on a virtual machine instead.
As previous reports indicated, Windows 10 Cloud will only allow users to run Universal Windows Platform apps from the Windows Store.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Inside Playbook
Why IT Automation is Becoming a Business Necessity
https://www.ansible.com/blog/it-automation-as-business-necessity?sc_cid=701600000011jJaAAI
Tomi Engdahl says:
Javapocalypse soon! Oracle warns devs to bin plugins, fast
The last browser to support NPAPI plugins – Firefox 52 ESR – should appear in March
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/06/javapocalypse_now_oracle_warns_devs_to_bin_plugins_fast/
Oracle’s warned developers who still expect browsers to run code developed for Java plugins to get busy finding an alternative.
The developers behind all major browsers have decided the NPAPI framework invented last millennium by Netscape has had its day, because there are now better ways to do multimedia and other fun stuff inside a browser. Chrome therefore binned plugins in 2015, IE gave up ages ago, the fat lady sang at Opera during 2016 and Safari has stopped bothering too.
Firefox 52, due in March, will be an ESR release and will include NPAPI plugin support, so will run Java plugins. But once support for that browser expires in early 2018, it’ll be game over for applets.
JDK 9 is due in the middle of 2017 and will deprecate plugins. So Java developers really have no excuse to find alternative arrangements ASAP.
There’s one exception to Firefox’s plans: Adobe’s colander-coded Flash, which Mozilla will support out of the belief the web won’t be as much fun without it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tails Linux farewells 32-bit processors with imminent version 3.0
Security-centric distro also has some fixes in new version 2.10
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/06/tails_privacy_linux_farewelling_32bit_processors_from_30/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla To Drop Support For All NPAPI Plugins In Firefox 52 Except Flash
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/02/04/2323204/mozilla-to-drop-support-for-all-npapi-plugins-in-firefox-52-except-flash?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
The Netscape Plugins API is “an ancient plugins infrastructure inherited from the old Netscape browser on which Mozilla built Firefox,” according to Bleeping Computer.
Starting March 7, when Mozilla is scheduled to release Firefox 52, all plugins built on the old NPAPI technology will stop working in Firefox, except for Flash, which Mozilla plans to support for a few more versions. This means technologies such as Java, Silverlight, and various audio and video codecs won’t work on Firefox.
These plugins once helped the web move forward, but as time advanced, the Internet’s standards groups developed standalone Web APIs and alternative technologies to support most of these features without the need of special plugins.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney Thinks High Schools Should Let Kids Take Coding In Place of Foreign Languages
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/05/2143240/disney-thinks-high-schools-should-let-kids-take-coding-in-place-of-foreign-languages?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Florida lawmakers are again proposing a contentious plan that would put coding and foreign language on equal footing in a public high school student’s education. Under a proposed bill students who take two credits of computer coding and earn a related industry certification could then count that coursework toward two foreign language credits.
Computer coding as a foreign language? Florida lawmakers again push the idea
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article130772249.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Virtual Reality Market To Grow When Hardware & Content Cost Less
What to expect at Mobile World Congress
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331258&
What will the tipping point be for mass adoption of virtual and augmented reality? This year’s Mobile World Congress has some clues.
The potential growth of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) won’t be realized until there is more content available. People are not jumping to buy VR headsets and, despite the efforts of some vendors promoting them and bundling them with other devices, the sales of headsets and other VR devices has been slow.
While VR headsets hold tremendous potential, only 12 million were sold in 2016, mostly inexpensive units to use with smartphones. This year, new devices arriving from several manufacturers, and faster, cheaper, video processors, could boost VR to the masses.
The real size of the VR market is difficult to estimate. According to a July article in Fortune: “Analysts are divided over how quickly virtual reality will catch on. At the high end, 20 million units could be sold this year [2016], including all types of VR headsets and accompanying controllers and accessories, according to market research firm Tractica”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablet fate is sealed
In October-December, which sold five tablet was Apple’s iPad. iPad Pro is a great device, but goes on forever expensive, and is therefore unable to revive Apple’s tablet sales.
Samsung in the fourth quarter sold 8.1 million tablets, which is a million fewer than a year earlier. Smaller manufacturers Amazon, Lenovo and Huawei’s sales increased slightly, but not a small success is not hard on the tablet market, the overall decline.
Market growth would require that a lower price would clearly tilt the unit responsible for the performance. That has not happened. Cheap devices are based on cheaper, less powerful components
It is very difficult to find a cheap Android tablet that would work smoothly and quickly.
Another problem with tablets is the development of modern laptops. Many devices are 2-in-1 hybrids
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/5781-tabletin-kohtalo-on-sinetoeity
Tomi Engdahl says:
Olimex Announces Their Open Source Laptop
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/05/olimex-announces-their-open-source-laptop/
A few months ago at the Hackaday | Belgrade conference, [Tsvetan Usunov], the brains behind Olimex, gave a talk on a project he’s been working on. He’s creating an Open Source Hacker’s Laptop. The impetus for this project came to [Tsvetan] after looking at how many laptops he’s thrown away over the years. Battery capacity degrades, keyboards have a fight with coffee, and manufacturers seem to purposely make laptops hard to repair.
Now, this do it yourself, Open Source Hardware and hacker-friendly laptop is complete. The Olimex TERES I laptop has been built, plastic has been injected into molds, and all the mechanical and electronic CAD files are up on GitHub. This Open Source laptop is done, but you can’t buy it quite yet; for that, we’ll have to wait until Olimex comes back from FOSDEM.
The design of this laptop is completely Open Source.
As far as specs go, this should be a fairly capable laptop. The core PCB is built around an Allwinner ARM Cortex-A53, sporting 1GB of DDR3L RAM, 4GB of eMMC Flash, WiFi, Bluetooth, a camera, and an 11.6″ 1366×768 display.
TERES I Do It Yourself Open Source Hardware and Software Hacker’s friendly laptop is complete
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source-hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Open Sourcing Made Apache Kafka A Dominant Streaming Platform
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/05/2235238/how-open-sourcing-made-apache-kafka-a-dominant-streaming-platform
Open sourced in 2010, the Apache Kafka distributed streaming platform is now used at more than a third of Fortune 500 companies (as well as seven of the world’s top 10 banks).
Co-creator Neha Narkhede says “We saw the need for a distributed architecture with microservices that we could scale quickly and robustly. The legacy systems couldn’t help us anymore.”
[T]hough Kafka started off as a very scalable messaging system, it grew to complete our vision of being a distributed streaming platform.”
An inside look at why Apache Kafka adoption is exploding
Apache Kafka is booming for several reasons, but developers are perhaps the biggest.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/an-inside-look-at-why-apache-kafka-adoption-is-exploding/
Apache Kafka, the open source distributed streaming platform, is making an increasingly vocal claim for stream data “world domination” (to coin Linus Torvald’s whimsical initial modest goals with Linux). Last summer I wrote about Kafka and the company behind its enterprise rise, Confluent. Kafka adoption was accelerating as the central platform for managing streaming data in organizations, with production deployments of Kafka claiming six of the top 10 travel companies, seven of the top 10 global banks, eight of the top 10 insurance companies, and nine of the top 10 US telecom companies.
I asked Confluent CTO and co-founder Neha Narkhede what was behind these numbers.
Hadoop is too slow
Fitting the needs of modern business
Making money while making friends
Tomi Engdahl says:
Western Digital Unveils First-Ever 512Gb 64-Layer 3D NAND Chip
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/02/06/212219/western-digital-unveils-first-ever-512gb-64-layer-3d-nand-chip
As great as these solid state drives are now, they are only getting better. For example, SATA-based SSDs were once viewed as miraculous, but they are now looked at as slow — PCIe-based NVMe drives are all the rage. To highlight the steady evolution of flash storage, Western Digital today unveiled the first-ever 512 gigabit 64-layer 3D NAND chip. “The launch of the industry’s first 512Gb 64-layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world’s first 64-layer architecture in July 2016.
Western Digital unveils first-ever 512 gigabit 64-layer 3D NAND chip
https://betanews.com/2017/02/06/western-digital-512-gigabit-64-layer-3d-nand-chip/
“The launch of the industry’s first 512Gb 64-layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world’s first 64-layer architecture in July 2016. This is a great addition to our rapidly broadening 3D NAND technology portfolio. It positions us well to continue addressing the increasing demand for storage due to rapid data growth across a wide range of customer retail, mobile and data center applications,” says Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, memory technology, Western Digital.
Western Digital further explains that it did not develop this new technology on its own. The company shares, “The 512Gb 64-layer chip was developed jointly with the company’s technology and manufacturing partner Toshiba.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s a Flink-off: Hazelcast launches own big data munching distributed processing engine
Brilliant, it’s about jolly time someone invented one of those
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/07/hazelcast_launches_own_distributed_processing_engine/
In-memory computing hopeful Hazelcast is launching Hazelcast Jet, a distributed processing engine for the streams of big data which the business expects will be pouring into enterprises soon.
Hazelcast’s eponymous in-memory data grid is based on commodity hardware rather than expensive proprietary Oracle Exadata boxes, and will be providing storage functionality for Jet. With both computation and storage kept in-memory, Hazelcast hopes to achieve high speed and low latency.
Apache Flink-competitor Jet, which the company has licensed as per Apache 2.0, aims to perform parallel execution to enable data-intensive applications to operate in “near real-time”.
Unlike Hadoop and Spark, which run from OS processes, Hazelcast Jet doesn’t demand operations maintain a whole separate infrastructure. Jet can execute both batch and stream-based data processing applications, which the company believes there to be much market hunger for, especially with applications that require near real-time workloads from sensor updates in IoT architectures (house thermostats, lighting systems), through to in-store e-commerce systems as well as social media platforms.
https://flink.apache.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
RethinkDB Gets Acquired By the Cloud Native Compute Foundation; Joins the Linux Foundation
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/02/06/195250/rethinkdb-gets-acquired-by-the-cloud-native-compute-foundation-joins-the-linux-foundation
The Cloud Native Compute Foundation (CNCF) today announced that it has acquired the RethinkDB copyright and assets, including its code, and contributed it to The Linux Foundation.
https://www.rethinkdb.com/
RethinkDB pushes JSON to your apps in realtime.
When your app polls for data, it becomes slow, unscalable, and cumbersome to maintain.
RethinkDB is the open-source, scalable database that makes building realtime apps dramatically easier.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI Beats Poker Pros: Skynet Looms
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/07/ai-beats-poker-pros-skynet-looms/
There have been a few “firsts” in AI-versus-human gaming lately, and the computers are now beating us at trivia, chess and Go. But in some sense, none of these are really interesting; they’re all games of fact. Poker is different. Aside from computing the odds of holding the winning hand, where a computer would obviously have an advantage, the key to winning in poker is bluffing, and figuring out when your opponent is bluffing. Until recently, this has helped man beat the machine. Those days are over.
Chess and Go are what a game theorist would call games of perfect information: everyone knows everything about the state of the game just from looking at the board, and this means that there is, in principle, a best strategy (series of moves) for every possible position.
In poker, you don’t know the state of the game because you can’t see your opponent’s cards. And when your opponent signals that it has good cards by betting big, your job is to interpret that signal and raise or fold. A good human poker player can get by on defensive play like this, but the really great poker players also know when to bluff.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big blues: IBM’s remote-worker crackdown is company-wide, including its engineers
Not just marketing – Software and Systems must work from city hubs, too
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/09/ibm_workfromhome_cull_companywide/
IBM is forcing more than just its US marketing staff to move to a handful of regional hubs. The crackdown on remote workers and smaller offices also hits engineers and other staffers in America and Europe.
Following The Register’s exclusive report that Big Blue was demanding marketers to work at one of six “strategic” US locations – locations chosen for them by IBM – sources say the “move or leave” program has been and will continue to be applied throughout the tech giant, with at least one other department already implementing the new rules.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15031 for PC
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/02/08/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-15031-pc/#P0b5E7x8qXzFgmP0.97
Tomi Engdahl says:
Narottam Medhora / Reuters:
Nvidia beats estimates with Q4 revenue of $2.17B, up 55% YoY, vs. $2.11B expected, as its GPU sales grow 57% to $1.85B, automotive business up 37.6% to $128M
Graphics-chip maker Nvidia’s revenue beats expectations
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-results-idUSKBN15O2W1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Programming
Slashdot Asks: How Do You Know a Developer is Doing a Good Job?
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/17/02/10/1244250/slashdot-asks-how-do-you-know-a-developer-is-doing-a-good-job
One of the easiest ways to evaluate a developer is keeping a tab on the amount of value they provide to a business. But the problem with this approach is that the nature of software development does not make it easy to measure the value a single developer brings. Some managers are aware of this, and they look at the number of lines of code a developer has written. The fewer, the better, many believe.
the lines of code metric doesn’t work. The notion of a quantifiable metric for evaluating developers is still attractive though.
How Do You Know A Developer Is Doing A Good Job?
http://blog.professorbeekums.com/2017/01/how-do-you-know-developer-is-doing-good.html
Evaluation of developers is an important topic for anyone involved in software development. Many developers care a great deal about career growth or raises at the very least. Managers need to be able to justify decisions around promotions and raises.
It just isn’t practical to attempt to make those kinds of measurements. What we are left with are subjective judgement calls by managers.
The risk with this approach is that the criteria are vague from a developer’s point of view. They can’t really know what their manager is thinking. There is now an incentive to focus on learning to sell themselves to their manager instead of focusing on becoming a better developer.
An attractive solution to this problem are quantitative metrics. If we can’t measure the exact value a developer brings to the company, maybe we can find something we can measure easily that will be a good indicator of value created?
If you paid your developers per line of code, you would reward the inefficient developers.
So the lines of code metric doesn’t work.
Some may argue that you can measure the number of code commits a developer makes. But that just makes it more likely to get lots of really tiny commits that have little to no meaningful changes in them.
Maybe number of bugs fixed is the answer? Software bugs can be complicated though. By tying raises and promotions to bug fixes, you create the incentive for a developer to fix apparent issues while ignoring underlying causes.
The real problem with quantifiable metrics like these is that they change the incentive for a developer. While creating business value is the goal, it can be hard for a developer to make it apparent that they are creating business value. It would be much MUCH easier to just optimize for other quantifiable metrics regardless of whether those metrics bring value to the business or not. This is far from desirable for anyone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most of the Web Really Sucks If You Have a Slow Connection
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/10/1255245/most-of-the-web-really-sucks-if-you-have-a-slow-connection
While it’s easy to blame page authors because there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit on the page side, there’s just as much low-hanging fruit on the browser side. Why does my browser open up 6 TCP connections to try to download six images at once when I’m on a slow satellite connection?
the best current solution for users appears to be: use w3m when you can, and then switch to a browser with ad-blocking when that doesn’t work.
Most of the web really sucks if you have a slow connection
https://danluu.com/web-bloat/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Intel reveals 8th Generation Core microarchitecture will remain on the 14nm process node, making it the fourth generation 14nm chip
Intel Confirms 8th Gen Core on 14nm, Data Center First to New Nodes
by Ian Cutress on February 9, 2017 6:52 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11115/intel-confirms-8th-gen-core-on-14nm-data-center-first-to-new-nodes
A quick news piece on information coming out of Intel’s annual Investor Day in California. As confirmed to Ashraf Eassa by Intel at the event, Intel’s 8th Generation Core microarchitecture will remain on the 14nm node. This is an interesting development with the recent launch of Intel’s 7th Generation Core products being touted as the ‘optimization’ behind the new ‘Process-Architecture-Optimization’ three-stage cadence that had replaced the old ‘tick-tock’ cadence. With Intel stringing out 14nm (or at least, an improved variant of 14nm as we’ve seen on 7th Gen) for another generation, it makes us wonder where exactly Intel can promise future performance or efficiency gains on the design unless they start implementing microarchitecture changes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Valentina Palladino / Ars Technica:
Samsung Chromebook Pro review: solid design, good performance and battery life, but Chrome OS and Android integration isn’t perfect yet
Samsung’s Chromebook Pro gives me hope in Chrome OS—thanks to Android’s help
Review: Chrome/Android integration is on the right track.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/samsungs-chromebook-pro-a-thoughtful-marriage-of-android-and-chrome-os/
The market is about to be flooded with a new wave of Chromebooks, all focused on Android apps. Chrome OS and Android were always meant for different devices, but now OEMs are making Chromebooks that can deliver the best of both worlds. Google’s Play Store has already come to some older Chromebooks, but Samsung’s new Chromebook Plus and Pro models are the first that explicitly play up their Android compatibility.
As one of the first Chrome OS devices built with Android apps in mind, Samsung’s Chromebook Pro is a true two-in-one rather than a laptop.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Hachman / PCWorld:
With PC market in decline, Intel shifts its strategy to “data center first”, using newest manufacturing technologies for server chips like Xeon before PC CPUs
Intel demotes PCs, giving datacenter chips first crack at new technologies
Intel’s following the money into higher-margin businesses.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3168319/components-processors/intel-demotes-pcs-giving-datacenter-chips-first-crack-at-new-technologies.html
With Intel’s forecasts projecting the PC could be the smallest moneymaker five years from now, the company has gone “data center first”—giving Intel’s server business first crack at new manufacturing technologies.
It’s another sign of massive change within Intel, as the traditional PC business is shoved to the side. In a slide presented during Intel’s investor day on Thursday, the company showed off how the total available market (TAM) for its PC CPU business was just $30 billion or so, less than half that of the data center.
The TAM, as its known, projects the maximum available revenue Intel could pull in if it owned the entire market—which won’t happen. It’s an excellent guide to which segments Intel is prioritizing, however: the data center, non-volatile memory like flash and its new Optane, plus mobile communications and various embedded segments.
Historically, if Intel jumped ahead to a new manufacturing technology, its PC chips would get first crack. Now, Intel’s premium fab lines are reserved for the Xeon and other chips being shipped to cloud providers and the data center.
Intel’s priorities: the cloud, not the PC
Intel’s always had a strong interest in the server market, and a quick look at Intel’s price list shows why: Desktop Core chips command $300 or so apiece, while a single Xeon chip for servers can be priced up to almost $9,000.
That doesn’t mean the PC is dead, but it isn’t commanding the lion’s share of attention at Intel anymore.
Kraznich, though, spoke glowingly of Optane’s desktop future. “Every single gamer is going to want 3D Xpoint,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pew Research Center:
Report documents the views of 1.3K tech experts, scholars, businesspeople, and government leaders on the future of algorithms and their impact on society — Algorithms are instructions for solving a problem or completing a task. Recipes are algorithms, as are math equations. Computer code is algorithmic.
Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age
http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/02/08/code-dependent-pros-and-cons-of-the-algorithm-age/
Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment
Tomi Engdahl says:
Munich to switch from Linux to Windows
The city of Munich is known as one of the first public organization, who moved to information technology in full use linux. Now the city has changed his tune and decided to move to Windows 10 with altogether by 2020.
City of Munich IT issues reflected the committee justifies its decision by the fact that, for example, compatibility with the SAP systems require the use of standard products such as MS Office.
Linux operating system was the official authorities in Munich for 10 years. It was a sharpened version of Ubuntu, which is even called LiMux. Old Windows PC was transferred to the city-linux machine a total of 15 thousand.
According to data from the German turning point came in 2014, when the city got a new mayor. Dieter Reiter wished to city swapping back to Windows.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5828&via=n&datum=2017-02-13_16:49:56&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Guide For Building Rubber Dome Keyboards
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/10/a-guide-for-building-rubber-dome-keyboards/
Let’s talk about computer keyboards for a second. The worst keyboards in the world are the cheap ‘rubber dome’ keyboards shipped with every Dell, HP, and whatever OEM your company has a purchasing agreement with. These ‘rubber dome’ keyboards use a resistive touchpad to activate a circuit, and the springiness of the key comes from a flexible rubber membrane. Mechanical keyboards are far superior to these rubber dome switches, using real leaf springs and bits of metal for the click clack happiness that is the sole respite of a soul-crushing existence. MX blues get bonus points for annoying your coworkers.
Mechanical key switches like the Cherry MX, Gateron, or whatever Razer is using aren’t the be-all, end-all mechanical keyswitch. History repeats, horseshoe theory exists, and for the best mechanical keyswitch you need to go back to rubber domes.
It seems everyone is building their own mechanical keyboards these days, and the recipe is always the same: get a few dozen Cherry MX (or clone) switches, build a PCB, grab a Teensy 2, and use the tmk keyboard firmware. There’s not much to it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Open-Source Graph Engine Takes On Neo4j
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/13/236240/microsofts-open-source-graph-engine-takes-on-neo4j?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Sometimes the relationships between the data you’ve gathered are more important than the data itself. That’s when a graph processing system comes in handy. It’s an important but often poorly understood method for exploring how items in a data set are interrelated. Microsoft’s been exploring this area since at least 2013, when it published a paper describing the Trinity project, a cloud-based, in-memory graph engine. The fruits of the effort, known as the Microsoft Graph Engine, are now available as an MIT-licensed open source project as an alternative to the likes of Neo4j or the Linux Foundation’s recently announced JanusGraph. Microsoft calls Graph Engine (GE) as “both a RAM store and a computation engine.”
https://www.graphengine.io/
Graph Engine
= RAM Store + Computation Engine + Graph Model
Graph Engine (GE) is a distributed in-memory data processing engine, underpinned by a strongly-typed RAM store and a general distributed computation engine.
The distributed RAM store provides a globally addressable high-performance key-value store over a cluster of machines. Through the RAM store, GE enables the fast random data access power over a large distributed data set.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s 2017′s fastest Windows 10 web browser?
In years past, Google Chrome was easily the best. This time around it’s a three-horse race.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/whats-2017s-fastest-windows-10-web-browser/
Last year, Google Chrome was the speediest Windows 10 web browser by a mile. This year, it’s a different story.
So, which is the best? To me, it comes down to Chrome, Edge, or Opera. Since I want one browser for all the operating systems I run and a lot of extensions, Chrome’s my choice. But if pure speed is what you want, Edge or Opera are both good choices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Intel is expecting another ho-hum year for its Data Center Group
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/01/why-intel-is-expecting-another-ho-hum-year-for-its-data-center-group.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-02-14
Heading into 2017, Intel is now expecting revenue growth in the “high single digits” for DCG — well below its previous 15% target, and even lower than the more relaxed “double-digit growth” goal that management has referred to in the past and now appears to aspire to for the future.
Intel faced an interesting business dynamic in 2016. It saw strong growth in “cloud and [communications] service providers,” up 30% year over year in the fourth quarter, but a decline in its “enterprise and government” segments, 7% down in the fourth quarter, partially offset the good news in the other segments.
The problem here is that Intel’s enterprise server chip sales still represent a large portion of the company’s overall DCG revenue, meaning it takes quite a lot of growth elsewhere to allow the business itself to grow.