The latest news on technology topics, including operating systems, software, security, mobile, storage and Internet, emerging tech, and technology.

  • C++ creator rebuts White House warning
    on March 18, 2024 at 4:30 pm

    C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup has defended the widely used programming language in response to a Biden administration report that calls on developers to use memory-safe languages and avoid using vulnerable ones such as C++ and C.In a March 15 response to an inquiry from InfoWorld, Stroustrup pointed out strengths of C++, which was designed in 1979. “I find it surprising that the writers of those government documents seem oblivious of the strengths of contemporary C++ and the efforts to provide strong safety guarantees,” Stroustrup said. “On the other hand, they seem to have realized that a programming language is just one part of a tool chain, so that improved tools and development processes are essential.”To read this article in full, please click here

  • Evaluating databases for sensor data
    by Anais Dotis-Georgio on March 18, 2024 at 9:00 am

    The world has become “sensor-fied.”Sensors on everything, including cars, factory machinery, turbine engines, and spacecraft, continuously collect data that developers leverage to optimize efficiency and power AI systems. So, it’s no surprise that time series—the type of data these sensors collect—is one of the fastest-growing categories of databases over the past five-plus years.However, relational databases remain, by far, the most-used type of databases. Vector databases have also seen a surge in usage thanks to the rise of generative AI and large language models (LLMs). With so many options available to organizations, how do they select the right database to serve their business needs?To read this article in full, please click here

  • Open source comes to real-time metering
    by Asay@csoonline.com on March 18, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Once upon a time, few companies needed metering or usage-based billing. This is changing, and fast, as the world shifts toward ever more granular pricing based on consumption. As FirstMark investor Matt Turck expresses it, “The problem is only getting worse as the software industry transitions from subscription-based to consumption-based revenue models. What started as a trickle is becoming mainstream.” First it was the software-as-a-service companies, followed by fintech companies, and now artificial intelligence companies such as Mistral; they all need the same sort of billing infrastructure that powers infrastructure companies like AWS. Sounds simple, right? It’s not. Complexity skyrockets once you need to correctly track the usage of billions of monthly events.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Mechanoid brings Wasm to embedded systems and IoT
    on March 15, 2024 at 4:01 pm

    Mechanoid, an open-source framework for building WebAssembly applications on embedded systems and IoT (internet of things) devices, has been launched by software company The Hybrid Group.The Hybrid Group released Mechanoid 0.1.0 and Mechanoid 0.1.1 this week on GitHub. Developers can try it out now.Mechanoid is intended to ease the task of building applications that are extendable and secure and take advantage of the latest developments in both WebAssembly and embedded development. WebAssembly, or Wasm, is a high-performance binary instruction format that can be produced from JavaScript, Go, Rust, and other programming languages.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Securing Azure Kubernetes with Falco
    on March 15, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Falco, the open-source, cloud-native, runtime security tool, recently graduated from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s incubation program. That means it’s considered stable and ready for use in production environments, including Azure. It joins many of the key components of a cloud-native platform including Helm, Envoy, etcd, KEDA, and Cloud Events.I recently had a conversation with Loris Degioanni, the CTO and founder of cloud-native security company Sysdig and the creator of Falco, about the philosophy behind the project and how it’s being used across Kubernetes applications.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Why public cloud providers are cutting egress fees
    on March 15, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Public cloud providers are often loathed for charging data transfer or “egress fees” for removing data from a specific cloud provider. If you move data out of a cloud provider, there’s a cost; for instance, you move inventory data from an inventory system residing in a public cloud provider to a supply chain system on premises or perhaps even on another public cloud provider.This is the number one complaint about cloud providers that I hear. The fee is thought of as arbitrary and counterproductive to using the cloud with systems that exist outside of a specific provider. In some cases, it’s a reason applications are not in a cloud today.The writing on the wall This customer discontent is not lost on cloud providers, who are initiating a significant shift in their pricing strategies by reducing these charges. Google Cloud announced it would eliminate egress fees, a strategic move to attract customers from its larger competitors, AWS and Microsoft. This was not merely a pricing play but also a response to regulatory pressures, greater competition, and the significantly lower cost of hardware in the past several years. The cloud computing landscape has changed, and providers are continually looking for ways to differentiate themselves and attract more users.To read this article in full, please click here

  • BrandPost: The future of cloud security: Top trends to watch in 2024
    by Brand Post on March 14, 2024 at 6:21 pm

    2023 was an eventful year for cloud security. We saw multiple high-profile incidents, such as the discovery of a far-reaching zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit file transfer server application and a rise in attackers targeting cloud credentials for lateral movement. Across the board, over half (58%) of companies experienced cloud-based phishing attacks in 2023, and 30% reported targeted attacks on their cloud infrastructure. There was also an increase in new attack tactics targeting DevOps pipelines and cloud storage solutions as threat actors continued “shifting left” earlier in the application lifecycle.To read this article in full, please click here

  • How to use the REPR design pattern in ASP.NET Core
    on March 14, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Design patterns have evolved to address problems that are often encountered in software applications. They are solutions to recurring problems and complexities in software design. We’ve discussed many design patterns here including the specification pattern, the unit of work pattern, the null object pattern, the options pattern, the flyweight pattern, the command pattern, the interpreter pattern, and the singleton pattern.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Open source is not insecure
    by Dan Lorenc on March 14, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Frank Crane wasn’t talking about open source when he famously said, “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.”But that’s a great way to summarize today’s gap between how open source is actually being consumed, versus the zero trust patterns that enterprises are trying to codify into their DevSecOps practices.Every study I see suggests that between 90% and 98% of the world’s software is open source. We’re all taking code written by other people—standing on the shoulders of giants—and building and modifying all that code, implicitly trusting every author, maintainer, and contributor that’s come before us.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Feds seek attestation on secure software
    on March 13, 2024 at 9:54 pm

    The US federal government has released a software attestation form intended to ensure that software producers partnering with the government leverage minimum secure development techniques and tool sets.The form was announced March 11 by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which developed the form with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The form identifies minimum secure software development requirements a software producer must meet and attest to meeting. Software requires attestation if it was developed after September 14, 2022. Software developed prior to this date requires attestation if it was modified by major version changes after September 14, 2022. Attestation also is required if the producer delivers constant changes to the code.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Visual Studio taps more GitHub Copilot capabilities
    on March 13, 2024 at 8:18 pm

    Microsoft has released a second preview of Visual Studio 2022 17.10, featuring GitHub Copilot integrations for generating pull request descriptions and explaining commits.Introduced March 12, Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 2 can be downloaded from the Visual Studio website. This planned update to Microsoft’s flagship IDE enables developers to generate a first draft of a pull request description driven by GitHub Copilot analysis of all changes in a pull request. Developers will get assistance in providing context to colleagues for their reviews and an added benefit of ensuring they are including the right changes in a pull request, Microsoft said.To read this article in full, please click here

  • OutSystems unveils no-code AI Agent Builder
    on March 13, 2024 at 3:50 pm

    Low-code development platform provider OutSystems has released AI Agent Builder, a no-code tool for building custom generative AI agents using large language models (LLMs) from Azure OpenAI or Amazon Bedrock.To read this article in full, please click here

  • New AI assistant threatens software engineering jobs
    on March 13, 2024 at 1:29 pm

    San Francisco-based startup, Cognition AI, is trying to completely rehaul the software engineering landscape through its new AI assistant, Devin. The AI assistant can plan and execute complex engineering tasks, learning from its experiences and rectifying mistakes along the way. Equipped with essential developer tools like a shell, code editor, and browser, Devin operates within a sandboxed compute environment, mirroring the setup of a human developer.Devin stands out due to its ability to actively collaborate with users during software development, Cognition AI said in a blog post. This includes providing real-time progress updates, accepting feedback, and working together to make design choices. Overall, Devin acts as a seamless partner in the software development process, the company claimed.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Complexity bad: An interview with HTMX creator Carson Gross
    by mtyson@edit.com on March 13, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Carson Gross is the creator of HTMX and Hyperscript, the mind behind The Grug Brained Developer, a professor of software engineering at Montana State University, and co-author of Hypermedia Systems. It was a pleasure to pick Carson’s brain about the impetus behind projects like HTMX and Hyperscript, the failures of REST, why JavaScript is here to stay, and much more.To read this article in full, please click here

  • How to use uv: A superfast Python package installer
    on March 13, 2024 at 9:00 am

    Of all the criticisms leveled at Python, one of the most valid—and unfortunately long-lived—is the chaotic state of its packaging ecosystem. It’s less of a mess than it used to be, as so memorably illustrated by XKCD, but it’s still hardly ideal. Third parties such as poetry and pipenv have filled the gaps by offering tools that are built atop Python’s existing standards but designed around more elegant workflows.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Rust-based WinterJS web server reaches 1.0
    on March 12, 2024 at 10:30 pm

    WinterJS 1.0, a JavaScript web server written in Rust, has arrived from WebAssembly runtime provider Wasmer.Unveiled March 11, WinterJS 1.0 is described by Wasmer as “the fastest JavaScript web server” and now supports Cloudflare applications and React Server Components. The WinterCG-compatible JavaScript runtime uses the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine to execute JavaScript and Tokio to handle underlying HTTP requests and the JavaScript event loop. WinterCG, which stands for Web-interoperable Runtimes Community Group, is a W3C community group that provides a space for JavaScript runtimes to collaborate on API interoperability.To read this article in full, please click here

  • JetBrains unveils Ktor roadmap
    on March 12, 2024 at 10:00 pm

    JetBrains has unveiled a development roadmap for Ktor, the company’s Kotlin-based framework for building asynchronous client and server applications. Topping the list are OpenTelemetry plugins, gRPC support, simplified dependency injection, and support for managed transactions.JetBrains published the 2024 roadmap for Ktor on March 12. The company said its ongoing plans and goals remain consistent with previous years, and it will strive to keep the framework lightweight, flexible, and transparent.To read this article in full, please click here

  • JetBrains releases security fixes for TeamCity CI/CD system
    on March 12, 2024 at 5:25 pm

    JetBrains has released fixes for two critical security vulnerabilities in its TeamCity On-Premises CI/CD system discovered by cybersecurity company Rapid7.The two vulnerabilities reported in late-February by Rapid7 would enable an authenticated attacker with HTTP(S) access to a TeamCity On-Premises server to bypass authentication checks and gain administrative control. These vulnerabilities affected all TeamCity On-Premises versions through 2023.11.3, but have been fixed in TeamCity On-Premises 2023.11.4. For users unable to update their server to version 2023.11.4, JetBrains also released a security patch plugin.To read this article in full, please click here

  • DBOS Cloud overturns database-on-OS conventions for speed
    on March 12, 2024 at 1:43 pm

    PostgreSQL pioneer Mike Stonebraker and Spark creator Matei Zaharia, along with other computer scientists at MIT and Stanford have come up with a new database-oriented operating system (DBOS) to help development of greenfield web applications.They have set up a company, DBOS Inc., to make the OS available to developers.Its first product, DBOS Cloud, launched Tuesday, is a transactional serverless application platform, also sometimes defined as functions-as-a-service (FaaS). It is offered via Amazon Web Services (AWS) using the open-source virtual machine monitoring service Firecracker and is powered by the DBOS operating system.To read this article in full, please click here

  • Make the most of GPUs for machine learning applications
    by Kevin Cochrane on March 12, 2024 at 9:00 am

    While graphics processing units (GPUs) once resided exclusively in the domains of graphic-intensive games and video streaming, GPUs are now equally associated with and machine learning (ML). Their ability to perform multiple, simultaneous computations that distribute tasks—significantly speeding up ML workload processing—makes GPUs ideal for powering artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The single instruction multiple data (SIMD) stream architecture in a GPU enables data scientists to break down complex tasks into multiple small units. As such, enterprises pursuing AI and ML initiatives are now more likely to choose GPUs instead of central processing units (CPUs) to rapidly analyze large data sets in algorithmically complex and hardware-intensive machine learning workloads. This is especially true for large language models (LLMs) and the generative AI applications built on LLMs.To read this article in full, please click here