The native Swift SDK provides Swift developers a simplified and more streamlined experience to effectively develop their iOS application using PubNub.
21 Oct 2019
The native Swift SDK provides Swift developers a simplified and more streamlined experience to effectively develop their iOS application using PubNub.
Fitbit has discontinued their Fitbit One step trackers, which seems like a good opportunity to step back and reflect on wearing one for the last decade or so. I’ve enjoyed using Fitbit trackers, but the One devices seemed like they broke down too often. I’m pretty proud that I ended up earning all the activity-related […]
If you’ve tried your hand at machine learning or data science, you know that code can get messy, quickly.
20 Oct 2019
(I’m writing this post primarily so I can link to it in an internal document on Monday. There’s nothing sensitive or confidential here, so I might as well get it down in a blog post.) SemVer is pretty clear about pre-releases. Any version with a major version of 0 is considered “initial development”, and anything … Continue reading Why I…
Most of the time you are doing local web development without HTTPS and self-signed certificates but good-ol’ plain HTTP. For security and SEO reasons, HTTPS should be enabled in your production environment all the time. One important requirement for production environments is, that every incoming plain HTTP request has to […] The post Conditional redirect from HTTP to HTTPS within…
18 Oct 2019
CSS Grid has been available in most major browsers since early 2017, and it makes web layout more powerful than ever before. But complex-looking new syntax (line-names! grid-areas! minmax! fit-content! fr units!) and missing IE11 support can make it scary. Don’t let that stop you. Miriam Suzanne offers some basic approaches you can put to work today. The post Faster…
Credit notes can be useful tools in your invoicing workflow, but what do they do, what information is needed to create one, and when should you send them?
Your comprehensive resource for understanding the challenges and opportunities that Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) presents for global subscription businesses.
Your monthly resource for tracking the complexities and challenges of the international recurring payments space.
17 Oct 2019
See you at one of seven events across New Zealand.
How to seize technology opportunities - while staying on the right side of the line
Thoughtworks InsightsWhen companies consider the negative impacts of technology, attention understandably tends to focus on data breaches or cyber attacks. But as high-profile incidents like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal have made clear, business leaders also need to examine the ethical implications of the technology-related opportunities they explore. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because in…
16 Oct 2019
The web-ext tool was created at Mozilla to help you build browser extensions faster and more easily. Although our first launch focused on support for the desktop Firefox browser, followed by Firefox for Android, our vision was always to support cross-platform development once we shipped Firefox support. With the 3.2.0 release, you can finally use web-ext to truly build cross-platform…
When building systems for new products, there’s a delicate balance between writing code that works and writing code that lasts. A common anti-pattern is preemptively optimizing systems for the future while still trying to find product market fit. For new product teams, this can be a costly mistake as it leads to a slower iterative […] The post Evolving Systems…
Buffet lines are terrible, but let's try to improve them using computer simulations
Erik BernhardssonMy company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I’ve suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I’m stuck in the line has made me more convinced. This is a hill I’m willing to die on, and it’s also…
15 Oct 2019
The Firefox DevTools team and our contributors were hard at work over the summer, getting Firefox 70 jam-packed with improvements. We are especially excited about our new WebSocket inspection feature. To use the inspector now, download Firefox Developer Edition, and open the DevTools’ Network panel to find the Messages tab. Then, keep reading to learn more about WebSockets and the…
We’ve trained a pair of neural networks to solve the Rubik’s Cube with a human-like robot hand. The neural networks are trained entirely in simulation, using the same reinforcement learning code as OpenAI Five paired with a new technique called Automatic Domain Randomization (ADR). The system can handle situations it never saw during training, such as being prodded by a…
Base maps in French Lambert, Dutch Rijksdriehoekstelsel, or global WGS84 available via API for free.
MapTiler Cloud offers map hosting for your own geodata in any coordinate system in GeoPackage format with EPSG coordinate reference system.
MapTiler Desktop 10.2 is able to generate map in any geographic coordinate system in GeoPackage format and directly upload to MapTiler Cloud.
14 Oct 2019
Today I lost access to my home server. As I described in a previous post I depend heavily on the server to fetch my emails, as a file server, to synchronize files, for newsbeuter and irssi sessions and many other things. As no one was going to be in proximity of the server for the next few hours, my goal…
Find out about internships in the GoCardless Product Development team.
My job involves a lot of staring at large numbers, mostly latencies in nanoseconds, and picking out magnitudes like microseconds. I noticed myself constantly counting digits in my text editor, in my terminal, and in Jupyter notebooks in my browser.
Learn some of the best practices when it comes to deploying serverless applications.
How I am able to make my mark at the best tech company in Singapore
13 Oct 2019
This morning brings new and exciting news from the land of Apple. It appears that, at least on iOS 13, Apple is sharing some portion of your web browsing history with the Chinese conglomerate Tencent. This is being done as part of Apple’s “Fraudulent Website Warning”, which uses the Google-developed Safe Browsing technology as the … Continue reading How safe…
12 Oct 2019
Update: I don’t know whether it was partially due to this blog post or not, but AppVeyor has fixed things so that you don’t (currently, 20th October 2019) need to use the fix in this post. You may want to include it anyway, for the sake of future-proofing. TL;DR: If your AppVeyor build starts breaking … Continue reading Using “git…
11 Oct 2019
The Mozilla Developer Roadshow program launched in 2017 with the goal of bringing expert speakers and web technology updates to local communities through free events and partnerships. Check out the video playlist from our summer tour, with talks on topics like Mixed Reality, WebAssembly, modern CSS, and more. Or register now for an upcoming Roadshow event in Asia. The post…
What does a typical day look like for a GoCardless customer experience manager?
If the goods or services you deliver are liable to change, proforma invoices could help reduce your admin and create a smoother invoicing process.
We spoke to leading accountants about their experience and advice for firms moving to the cloud. This is what they said.
We are now accepting applications for our third class of OpenAI Scholars.
Why chatbots? Written language and speech are rapidly becoming the user interface of the future. We already see that voice assistants (like Alexa or Siri) or textual chatbots are influencing the technology and the way we’re using it. In this article, we share our learnings (including challenges) of building a chatbot in a short period of time. We also share…
10 Oct 2019
Learn how to add API Management, Webpack and CI/CD to your Azure Functions REST API
9 Oct 2019
What does a typical day look like for a GoCardless customer support advocate?
Invoice factoring can boost cash flow and simplify business planning – could it work for you?
How does the Customer Success team help businesses make the most of GoCardless?
Digital transformation is reshaping how companies and entire sectors operate, while technologies such as artificial intelligence are changing our jobs and lives. In this mercurial business climate, employers realize that the experience of their employees is what makes the difference between success and failure.
7 Oct 2019
A day in the life of Onboarding Manager, Katie Gouyette.
During my journey working on people-focused teams, I have faced both hard decisions and enjoyed moments of celebration. The most fulfilling experiences I’ve had are related to career growth, which has cultivated the most sense of purpose in my role. Currently, I lead a program that helps Thoughtworkers accelerate their professional growth and build their future in tech: Desenvolve, or…
6 Oct 2019
In the beginning, before the go tool, before Go 1.0, the Go distribution stored the standard library in a subdirectory called pkg/ and the commands which built upon it in cmd/. This wasn’t so much a deliberate taxonomy but a by product of the original make based build system. In September 2014, the Go distribution […]
Released a tiny npm package today: @0xadada/random-emoji, a javascript random emoji function with zero dependencies. $ yarn add @0xadada/random-emoji $ node > const random = require('@0xadada/random-emoji'); > random() '😁' let a = random(); // defaults to 'emoticons' let b = random('emoticons'); let c = random('food'); let d = random('animals'); let e = random('expressions'); console.log(a, b, c, d, e); // 😍…
Shared some tips about managing medium-sized OpenSource projects. The slides are in Portuguese.
4 Oct 2019
This week-long event recognises great customer service, and we're celebrating.
Invoice finance can give you fast access to cash – could it work for you?
3 Oct 2019
There are a number of variants to this accounting process, useful for ensuring correct balances are recorded within accounts. This guide explains what they are, why reconciliation is important, and how to conduct reconciliation.
Your monthly resource for tackling the complexities and challenges of the international recurring payments space.
Every year, on the second code Tuesday of October, we celebrate Ada Lovelace Day - an important opportunity to appreciate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). As an unapologetic feminist, I’ve never needed much of an excuse to celebrate amazing women who’ve been paving the way and shaping the world in which we live. However,…
2 Oct 2019
CSS is the design language of the web — one of three core web languages — but it also seems to be the most contentious and often perplexing. It's too easy and too hard, too fragile and too resilient. Love it or hate it, CSS is weird: not quite markup, not quite programming in the common (imperative) sense, and nothing…
Node 8 won’t get any more updates from 2020. In this article, we’ll discuss how and why you should move to newer, feature-packed, still supported versions. The post Update Now! Node.js 8 is Not Supported from 2020. appeared first on RisingStack Engineering.
1 Oct 2019
We are thrilled to announce that Apache Kafka on Heroku Shield is now generally available and certified for handling PHI, PII, and HIPAA-compliant data. Our newest managed data service unifies Heroku Shield, a set of Heroku platform services that offer additional security features needed for building high compliance applications, with Apache Kafka on Heroku, our […] The post Apache Kafka…
Create a TypeScript and React Native app using Presence in the final part of my Air Traffic Control game development series.
Create a TypeScript and React Native app using Presence in the final part of my Air Traffic Control game development series.
Create a real-time React Native app using PubNub and Redux in the second part of my Air Traffic Control game development series.
Create a real-time React Native app using PubNub and Redux in the second part of my Air Traffic Control game development series.
Create a real-time Node.js server application using PubNub in this first post of my Air Traffic Control game development series.
Create a real-time Node.js server application using PubNub in this first post of my Air Traffic Control game development series.
Today we’re launching a new video channel, with a selection of shorts to kick things off. Get started with an intro to Dark Mode on the web, by Deja Hodge. Then, Jen Simmons shows us how to access a handy third-panel in the Firefox Developer Tools. Miriam Suzanne has a video all about the ::marker pseudo-element and list counters. No…
Use our handy cheat sheet to make sure your payment experience is fully optimised for the requirements of your customer. Learn how to maximise payment success, get better insights into your process and reduce churn.
MapTiler in cooperation with Airbus presents high-resolution satellite map of Europe.
We are adding support for Python to the Serverless Framework Dashboard to enable monitoring, alerts, and much more for your Python serverless applications.
This is part two in a series about solving Gradle remote build cache misses. Solving build cache misses is important to both avoid work that…
Sitting in my office looking at the people around me, it is hard to imagine working in a world where women aren’t an equal and integral part of the tech environment, yet, there’s still more that needs to be done to make this a normality. With only 14% of the tech workforce identifying as women; a number which has decreased…
30 Sept 2019
One of the Stream APIs greatest features is its laziness. The whole pipeline is constructed lazily, stored as a set of instructions, akin to a SQL execution plan. Only when we invoke a terminal operation, the pipeline is started. It is still lazy, meaning that some operations may be short circuited. Some third party libraries … Continue reading A Quick…
Creating experiences that look and work great across different browsers is one of the biggest challenges on the web. It can also be the most rewarding part, as it gets your app to as many users as possible. Testing legacy browsers late in the development process can break a feature that you spent hours on, even requiring rewrites to fix.…
Service Mesh is the communication layer in a microservice setup. All requests, to and from each of the services go through the mesh. Also known as an infrastructure layer in a microservices setup, the service mesh makes communication between services reliable and secure. Each service has its own proxy service (sidecars) and all the proxy services together form the service…
29 Sept 2019
I like to use Test-Driven Development (TDD) when coding. However, in some circumstances, TDD is more of a hinderance than a help. This happens when how to solve the problem is not clear. Then it is better to first write … Continue reading →
28 Sept 2019
How to Learn Software Design and Architecture | The Full-stack Software Design & Architecture Map
Khalil StemmlerYou ever think about what it took for some of the world's most skilled developers to learn how to build systems within companies like Uber…
27 Sept 2019
MySQL 8 does not yet support the BOOLEAN type as specified in the SQL standard. There is a DDL “type” called BOOL, which is just an alias for TINYINT: The above produces: TABLE_NAME|COLUMN_NAME|DATA_TYPE|COLUMN_TYPE| ----------|-----------|---------|-----------| t |b |tinyint |tinyint(1) | Notice that BOOL translates to a specific “type” of TINYINT, a TINYINT(1), where we might be … Continue reading How to…
The digital transformation of energy payments in the UK: how other countries can take note
GoCardlessWhat can other countries learn from the UK's digital-first approach to payments?
26 Sept 2019
Introduction When we're working on backend logic, it's not uncommon to eventually find yourself using language like this to describe what…
No one asked for this, but I’m something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of mistakes and luck so I thought I’d share some. Honestly, I feel like I’ve mostly benefitted from luck. Some of the things I did on a whim turned out to be excellent choices many years later. Some of the…
MapTiler team was presenting at the open-source State of the Map conference.
Two years ago I wrote this rant. Firefox had a problem on MacOS on scaled resolutions, resulting in insanely high CPU usage and battery drain. Issue is finally fixed, and I'm happy to say I'm using it again. The fix is expected to land in the stable version in late October 2019, with the release of Firefox 70. Meanwhile you…
25 Sept 2019
Fascism is an expensive to maintain state-of-siege by the capitalist economy attempting to defend itself by an irrational means. Fascism rallies to the defense of the conservative bourgeois ideology of the family, private property, the moral order, and patriotic nationalism. It unites the petty-bourgeois, the unemployed who have been hurt by the crisis or disappointed by the impotence of the…
We believe that no matter who you are or how you identify, you deserve respect, empathy and equal opportunity to succeed. We work hard to ensure everyone at Thoughtworks—and everyone we work with—is treated this way.
Creative web design and systematic web design don’t need to be at arms. This post examines how to use a design system (Material) and extend it to make it your own.
24 Sept 2019
Edward Snowden recently released his memoirs. In some parts of the Internet, this has rekindled an ancient debate: namely, was it all worth it? Did Snowden’s leaks make us better off, or did Snowden just embarass us and set back U.S. security by decades? Most of the arguments are so familiar that they’re boring at … Continue reading Looking back…
Frontend development is an animal of it's own. From jQuery, to Backbone, to EmberJS, to the (terribly painful) journey of dealing with…
As we look at advancements in mixed reality like the WebXR API, we are able to explore ways to feel more present with others through technology. Hubs by Mozilla is built on top of WebRTC and supports real-time conversations between users in a shared virtual environment. Users embody 3D models in the glTF format called avatars. The code powering Hubs…
APIs should be easy to use and hard to misuse. — Josh Bloch A good example of a simple looking, but hard to use correctly, API is one which takes two or more parameters of the same type. Let’s compare two function signatures: What’s the difference between these functions? Obviously one returns the maximum of […]
23 Sept 2019
Cloud-based solutions abound in the digital age, with many of us using online software to manage our emails, our banking or our photo storage. So why not move your business’ accounting and bookkeeping needs to the cloud too?
Introducing DDSketch, the first fully-mergeable, relative-error quantile sketching algorithm with formal guarantees.
This article covers the basics of using Docker to control dependencies ranging from operating system to packages. While we use Python as an example here, the concepts are equally applicable to any other programming language.
20 Sept 2019
19 Sept 2019
I just spent a day and a half recovering my Github account after the code in my 2FA application stopped working for authentication. GitHub has a good support article on how to recover your account that has this ominous warning on it: Warning: For security reasons, GitHub Support may not be able to restore access to accounts with two-factor authentication…
One of the biggest and undead myths in SQL is that COUNT(*) is faster than COUNT(1). Or was it that COUNT(1) is faster than COUNT(*)? Impossible to remember, because there’s really no reason at all why one should be faster than the other. But is the myth justified? Let’s measure! How does COUNT(…) work? But … Continue reading What’s Faster?…
The cost-benefit analysis: A procedure used by businesses to assess the value of undertaking a project or making an important decision. Here's how you do one, and when and why you should.
We’ve fine-tuned the 774M parameter GPT-2 language model using human feedback for various tasks, successfully matching the preferences of the external human labelers, though those preferences did not always match our own. Specifically, for summarization tasks the labelers preferred sentences copied wholesale from the input (we’d only asked them to ensure accuracy), so our models learned to copy. Summarization required…
Installing an older version of some package using Homebrew can be more complex than you expect
18 Sept 2019
GoCardless now supports ACH payments in the US
You know what smoke testing is, right? Yes! Great, I also thought I knew, as did a colleague of mine. The problem: each of us had a different interpretation of the meaning. As mentioned in my article, visualization and prioritization of technical debt, analogies can significantly help with grasping abstract concepts. This is where a term like “Smoke Testing” can…
17 Sept 2019
PubMoji: An open source, React Native app for billowing emojis anywhere in the world, in real time.
PubMoji: An open source, React Native app for billowing emojis anywhere in the world, in real time.
Building and releasing a browser is complicated and involves many players. To optimize the process, and make it more reliable for all users, over the years we’ve developed a phased release strategy that includes ‘pre-release’ channels: Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition. Starting Q1 2020, we're making a change. We plan to start shipping a major Firefox release every 4…
We’ve observed agents discovering progressively more complex tool use while playing a simple game of hide-and-seek. Through training in our new simulated hide-and-seek environment, agents build a series of six distinct strategies and counterstrategies, some of which we did not know our environment supported. The self-supervised emergent complexity in this simple environment further suggests that multi-agent co-adaptation may one day…
What's this syndrome all about? Do you have it? How do you fix the imposter feeling?
Deploy Next.js on AWS Lambda@Edge for global, fast server-side rendered react applications, and easily interact with other AWS resources.
Learn how to create, run and deploy a simple REST API to Azure Functions with the Serverless Framework