~/devreads

28 Nov 2019

26 Nov 2019

JoJo Swords 1 min read

These days, business performance is measured not in terms of what organizations do, but how their customers feel. This was a key message to emerge from the Thoughtworks ParadigmShift 2019 event in New Orleans, which brought together a global contingent of technology and industry leaders to examine the impacts of technology-driven change.

25 Nov 2019

jonskeet 1 min read

I’ve been immensely privileged to be invited to speak at various international developer conferences, and until now I’ve usually tried to accept the majority of those invitations. I’ve had a wonderful time, and made many dear friends – who I’ve often then caught up with at other events. However, I’ve recently found that travelling has … Continue reading Reducing my…

speaking engagements

Juntao Qiu 1 min read

Pair programming is far more than two developers sitting together and writing code. - Unknown Pair programming Pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. It is a relatively controversial practice among all of the agile methods, if not the most. In fact, only a few teams that adopt it can…

22 Nov 2019

21 Nov 2019

Nick Fitzgerald 31 min read

Multi-value is a proposed extension to core WebAssembly that enables functions to return many values, among other things. It is also a prerequisite for Wasm interface types. Nick Fitzgerald has been adding multi-value support all over the place recently, started with the Rust and WebAssembly toolchain. Next he added support to the Wasmtime runtime, and the Cranelift code generator it’s…

craneliftrustwasmwasm-bindgenwasmtime

1 min read

We’re releasing Safety Gym, a suite of environments and tools for measuring progress towards reinforcement learning agents that respect safety constraints while training.

safety alignment

20 Nov 2019

Rachel Andrew 5 min read

Firefox 71, now available in Developer Edition and Beta, is an exciting release for fans of CSS Layout. Recently, we covered the arrival of subgrid in Firefox, but there is another property that we've also been keeping an eye on. Firefox 71 implements column-span from Multiple-column Layout. In this post Rachel Andrew describes the progress of the Multiple-column Layout specification.…

cssfeatured articlecolumn-spancss layoutmulticol

MapTiler (Jiri Komarek) 1 min read

MapTiler appeared in the Swiss National TV (SRF1 channel) broadcasted in the main Friday news at a prime time.

Rebecca Parsons 1 min read

Choose a number between one and 100 Every organization faces a dilemma when it comes to support for programming languages. On the one hand, there’s an understandable desire to standardize — a set of approved languages can help reign in maintenance costs and long term viability. But equally, many of us recognize the benefits of using whichever language the developer…

Mike Mason 1 min read

The Technology Radar is a snapshot of things that we’ve recently encountered, the stuff that’s piqued our interest. But the act of creating the Radar also means we have a bunch of fascinating discussions that can’t always be captured as blips or themes. Here’s our latest look into what’s happening in the world of software. Race for cloud supremacy resulting…

19 Nov 2019

Michael Stegeman 5 min read

Version 0.10 of Mozilla’s WebThings Gateway brings support for extension-type add-ons. Released last week, this powerful new capability lets developers modify the user interface (UI) to their liking with JavaScript and CSS. We also provide libraries for writing UI extensions in Python or node.js if you prefer. Let us know what you build! The post Creating UI Extensions for WebThings…

featured articleiotmozilla webthingsthings gatewaywot

MapTiler (Martin Elias) 1 min read

MapTiler.nl launched in cooperation with Webmapper in the Netherlands.

Erin Kyle 1 min read

Trust is required to execute transactions, from trading shares to sending money abroad. Intermediaries can profit from this dynamic, in terms of transaction fees and time delays, often at the expense of users. It is all too easy for accounting records of large companies to become convoluted, error prone and subject to fraud and data leaks. Tracking an asset through…

18 Nov 2019

17 Nov 2019

16 Nov 2019

15 Nov 2019

Lee Rong 5 min read

Today, many people with diabetes are choosing to manage their condition using devices called continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). Not only do they replace the need for most finger prick testing, but they also provide a stream of data round the clock. However, like all data, it’s only as useful as the tools that analyze it. […] The post Improving the…

lifeeducationeventsguide

14 Nov 2019

bohops 1 min read

Introduction Windows 10 is an incredibly feature rich Operating System (OS). In the last four years, the innovative folks at Microsoft have continued to introduce and expand functionality as well as improve and integrate security features in its flagship OS. On the second Tuesday of each month, many of us that live in the Windows […]

uncategorized

Ben Francis 3 min read

Today we are releasing WebThings Gateway 0.10. This new release comes with support for thermostats and smart locks, as well as an updated add-ons system including extension add-ons, which enable developers to extend the gateway user interface. We’ve also added localisation settings so that you can choose your country, language, time zone and unit preferences. The post Thermostats, Locks and…

featured articleiotmozilla webthingsmozillaiotwebthings

13 Nov 2019

Anne van Kesteren 3 min read

Earlier this year we decided to reduce the amount of unsolicited notification permission prompts people receive as they move around the web using the Firefox browser. This is an intrinsic part of Mozilla's commitment to putting people first when they are online. In preparation, we ran a series of studies and experiments to understand how to improve the user experience…

firefoxfirefox releasesweb developersbestpracticesnotifications

lukaseder 1 min read

It’s been a while since I’ve ranted on this blog, but I was recently challenged by a reddit thread to write about this topic, so here goes… So, you’re writing a service that produces some JSON from your database model. What do you need? Let’s see: STOP IT No, seriously. Just stop it right there! … Continue reading Stop Mapping…

sqljsonmappingmiddlewareorm

JoJo Swords 1 min read

The dreams of business leaders have changed. Higher profits and happy customers are, of course, still major ambitions. But as Thoughtworks board member Dr. Anita Sands pointed out in her keynote address at Thoughtworks ParadigmShift 2019, a new aspiration has joined the list. As a senior technology executive at a major bank, she said, she dreamed of data. And not…

12 Nov 2019

jgamblin 1 min read

This week I gave a talk on Hacking Holiday Lights at Kenna Security and here is the promised accompanying blog that outlines the hardware and software I demoed for easy reference for anyone who wants to build their own holiday lights. Controller Boards I looked at a bunch of different boards that ended up having a variety of technical hurdles…

uncategorized

1 min read

With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing increase in the number and popularity of declarative configuration management tools. This post attempts to lay out my mental model of the conceptual architecture and internal layering of such tools, and some wishes I have for how they might work differently, based on this model. Background: declarative…

Lin Clark 22 min read

Lin Clark introduces the Bytecode Alliance, and uses Code Cartoon illustrations to share their vision of a WebAssembly ecosystem that is secure by default, fixing cracks in today’s software foundations. Based on advances in the emerging WebAssembly community, founding members of the Alliance - Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat - believe we can make this vision real. And we…

code cartoonsfeatured articlewebassembly

Anna Gudmundson 1 min read

In the current climate of upheaval around the world, lightning-fast news cycles, and questions about where our technological advancements and abilities are headed, it is understandable that we are wary of what’s next. Anna Gudmundson thinks that technology doesn’t just create problems but also can hold solutions. ​ Is a Bright Future Possible for Data Projects and AI? I have…

11 Nov 2019

jonskeet 5 min read

If this is the first blog post about V-Drum Explorer you’ve read, see the first post in this series for the background. In this post we’ll look at the MIDI interface I use in V-Drum Explorer to send and receive configuration information. MIDI basics (Apologies to anyone who really knows their stuff about MIDI – … Continue reading V-Drum Explorer:…

v-drums

Kuppy Tanaporn Benjapolakul 1 min read

This article is written for those who are familiar with the agile work environment and user experience (UX) research. If you are new to design terms like ‘design discovery’ or ‘UX research’, I recommend reading this article as well.

8 Nov 2019

Jeremy Pollock 1 min read

We’ve rolled out a number of changes aimed at giving you better visibility into how you’re using the PubNub platform on a daily basis.

Jeremy Pollock 1 min read

We’ve rolled out a number of changes aimed at giving you better visibility into how you’re using the PubNub platform on a daily basis.

Jim Gumbley 1 min read

Just as cyber-related threats have emerged as a top concern of companies globally, senior executives are losing confidence in their ability to assess, prevent and respond to them. In a way, this is understandable. Technology is a constantly moving target, and every effort to bring a new product or service to customers inevitably creates new risks. Marsh/Microsoft Cyber Risk Perception…

7 Nov 2019

Scott Truitt 4 min read

Today, we’re thrilled to announce four new trusted data integrations that allow data to flow seamlessly and securely between Heroku and external resources in public clouds and private data centers: Heroku Postgres via mutual TLS Heroku Postgres via PrivateLink Apache Kafka on Heroku via PrivateLink Heroku Redis via PrivateLink These integrations expand Heroku’s security and […] The post Announcing Heroku…

newsapache kafkaawscloud infrastructuredatabase

6 Nov 2019

1 min read

When your business buys goods or services, it’s important to keep track of what you’ve ordered and how much it will cost you. Setting up a purchase order system can improve your business’ efficiency, tighten stock controls and save you money.

5 Nov 2019

7 min read

Readers of khalilstemmler.com either love or hate the design of the site. When I was designing the site, I knew that I wanted to draw a…

Schakko 3 min read

A few months ago I had a strange behaviour: Sometimes the L2TP/IPSec connection between my workstation at home and our company VPN silently failed. After clicking on the VPN connection icon in the tasktray it only showed Connecting to… and stopped working after 60 seconds. The VPN connection status did […] The post Windows 10 LT2P/IPSec VPN connection fails silently…

networkingwindows

1 min read

As the final model release of GPT-2’s staged release, we’re releasing the largest version (1.5B parameters) of GPT-2 along with code and model weights to facilitate detection of outputs of GPT-2 models. While there have been larger language models released since August, we’ve continued with our original staged release plan in order to provide the community with a test case…

research

4 Nov 2019

1 Nov 2019

srinivas.tamada@gmail.com (Srinivas Tamada) 1 min read

This post is about displaying the API records with delete and update actions using new Ionic and Angular reactive programming. This is a continuation of Ionic Angular series and it explains to you how to distribute the data between the components using RxJS method like BehaviorSubject. All of the feed API responses/records storing in a reactive object, This help the…

androidangularapiionicios

31 Oct 2019

Jason Draper 6 min read

As an experiment to see how static typing could help improve our team’s Ruby experience, we introduced Sorbet into a greenfield codebase with a team of 4 developers. Our theory was that adding static type checking through Sorbet could help us catch bugs before they go into production, make refactoring easier, and improve the design […] The post Static Typing…

engineeringdeveloper toolsruby

jonskeet 4 min read

This is the first in what I expect to be quite a long series of blog posts, meandering over a fairly wide range of topics as they crop up. There’s nothing particularly technical in this introductory post. It’s really just a starting point. V-Drums In July 2019, inspired/encouraged by a friend name Alice, I bought … Continue reading V-Drum Explorer:…

v-drums

1 min read

A Faster Payment is a type of electronic transfer, designed to speed up the process of sending money within the UK. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about the Faster Payments Service and how your business can use it.

30 Oct 2019

29 Oct 2019

lukaseder 1 min read

One of Java’s big strengths, in my opinion, is the fact that most naming conventions have been established by the creators of the language. For example: If someone does not adhere to these conventions, the resulting code quickly looks non-idiomatic. What about SQL? Many do not agree on the “correct” case: There seems to be … Continue reading A Guide…

sqlidiomatic sqlnaming conventionspl sqlprogramming style

Marco Zehe 6 min read

In Firefox 70, the Accessibility Inspector has become an auditing facility to help identify and fix many common mistakes and practices that reduce site accessibility. In this post, Marco Zehe offers an overview of what is available in this latest release. The post Auditing For Accessibility Problems With Firefox Developer Tools appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer…

developer toolsfeatured articleweb developer toolboxa11yaccessibility

28 Oct 2019

Crafting end-to-end user experiences with Esther Tham 1 min read

Recently I had been feeling frustrated at home because I had clutter. Things were piling up on my desk, and I was running out of storage to put things away. I had mismatching shelves, but the thought of an entire overhaul felt like a daunting task. Then, I had an epiphany. I realised that I could apply the Agile ways…

27 Oct 2019

25 Oct 2019

jonskeet 12 min read

This post revisits the problem described in Versioning Limitations in .NET, based on reactions to that post and a Twitter discussion which occurred later. Before getting onto the main topic of the post, I wanted to comment a little on that Twitter discussion. I personally found it frustrating at times, and let that frustration leak … Continue reading Options for…

versioning

lukaseder 1 min read

Dogfooding, or eating your own dog food, is a practice that all product developers should implement all the time. According to wikipedia: Dogfooding, occurs when an organization uses its own product. This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually … Continue reading Dogfooding in…

jooq-developmentmigrationssqldatabase change managementdatabase migrations

Stanko 1 min read

Short Firefox tip to disable Cmd + MouseWheel zoom. There is a weird interaction with it. Therefore I decided to turn it off completely (I never used it anyway). When I scroll a page using a trackpad and start switching tabs via Cmd + Tab, inertia scrolling would still be active, and the page I switched to gets zoomed in…

24 Oct 2019

Andrzej Mazur 4 min read

This is a case study in the making: how js13kGames, an online “code golf” competition for web game developers, tried out Web Monetization this year. And ended up at the Mozilla Festival, happening this week in London, demoing dozens of interesting web-monetized games. You can check out the MozFest Arcade online as well. The post From js13kGames to MozFest Arcade:…

challengeweb apiscoilgamesgrant for the web

23 Oct 2019

jgamblin 1 min read

I have been meaning to look at Cartography since I saw their talk at BSidesSF last year and I finally had a chance to start looking at it today. One of the first things I noticed was that is was not containerized so I built a quick container for it and decided to document my progress here. Prerequisites AWS CLI…

uncategorized

Rachel Andrew 7 min read

The display CSS property is how we change the formatting context of an element and its children. One of the first things you will learn about CSS is that some elements are block by default, and others are inline. The display property enables switching between these states. With support currently available only in Firefox 70, it is too early to…

cssfeatured articlefirefoxcss displayflexbox

Tom Glover 1 min read

In this, the second of a three-part series, we’ll look at the Internet of Things world from a data perspective in order to appreciate the design challenges we face in a world where everything will be connected. Read Part One here. Processing of Things’ Data

22 Oct 2019

Anand Gurumurthi 6 min read

As part of my MBA at Carnegie Mellon University, I enrolled in a Leadership development certificate program. I was given the opportunity to work with an amazing Leadership Coach, (Laura Maxwell). Laura helped me on my journey of “overcoming my fear of failure”. As part of the program, I was able to share my story […] The post Overcoming Fear…

lifedeveloper toolseducationguide

Bernerd Schaefer 8 min read

Over the past four years, the Heroku Runtime team has transitioned from occasional, manual deployments to continuous, automated deployments. Changes are now rolled out globally within a few hours of merging any change—without any human intervention. It's been an overwhelmingly positive experience for us. This post describes why we decided to make the change, how […] The post Automated Continuous…

engineering

Chris Mills 6 min read

Firefox 70 is released today, and includes great new features such as secure password generation with Lockwise and the new Firefox Privacy Protection Report, as well as cool additions for developers. These include DOM mutation breakpoints and inactive CSS rule indicators in the DevTools, several new CSS text properties, two-value display syntax, and JS numeric separators. In this article, we’ll…

featured articlefirefoxfirefox releases

21 Oct 2019