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Elastic has just released a new tool called Playground that will enable users to experiment with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) more easily. RAG is a practice in which local data is added to an LLM, such as private company data or data that is more up-to-date than the LLMs training set. This allows it to give more accurate responses and reduces the occurrence of hallucinations.   Playground offers a low-code interface for adding data to an LLM for RAG implementations. They can use any data stored in an Elasticsearch index for this.  It also allows developers to A/B test LLMs from different model providers to see what suits their needs best.  The platform can utilize transformer models in Elasticsearch and also makes use of the Elasticsearch Open Inference API that integrates with inference providers, such as Cohere and Azure AI Studio.  “While prototyping conversational search, the ability to experiment with and rapidly iterate on key components of a RAG workflow is essenti

Earlier this week, the Eclipse Foundation announced the release of the Theia IDE , which is an open source IDE based on the Theia platform. “The release of Theia IDE represents a new milestone in the world of open source development tools,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director for the Eclipse Foundation. “By combining flexibility, innovation, and openness, Theia IDE empowers developers to fully customise and control their coding environments, ultimately driving greater productivity and creativity. We’re excited to see how this tool will shape the future of software development.” It offers compatibility with the VS Code extension ecosystem and works with over 3,000 extensions.  According to the project’s website, the IDE supports almost every language, including Python, Java, JavaScript, and C++.  Other features include an adaptable toolbar, detachable views, and remote development support. In a future release it will also add a live collaboration mode.  The Theia project its

It is no surprise that the rapid acceleration of technology and the growing inventory of tools at our disposal means software engineers need to start rethinking the way we harness existing and emerging resources to develop the next cutting-edge infrastructure that transforms financial services.  To transform with success and grow, collaboration is key. Collaboration not only accelerates the adoption and dissemination of new technologies, it also fosters the culture of innovation required where new, complex engineering solutions are needed to address unique problems.  This culture-building was demonstrated at our recent Accelerate Conference where we brought together 400 of our top software engineers and Chief Information Officers for an intensive three-day collaboration in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for our ‘Accelerate Global Engineering Conference’. Our end goal is to leverage emerging technologies to address customer pain points; transforming the way data can be enabled enterprise-wide

Google has announced that developers now have access to a 2 million context window for Gemini Pro 1.5. For comparison, GPT-4o has a 128k context window.  This context window length was first announced at Google I/O and accessible only through a waitlist, but now everyone has access. Longer context windows can lead to higher costs, so Google also announced support for context caching in the Gemini API for Gemini 1.5 Pro and 1.5 Flash. This allows context to be stored for use in later queries, which reduces costs for tasks that reuse tokens across prompts.  Additionally, Google has announced that code execution is now enabled for both Gemini 1.5 Pro and 1.5 Flash. This feature allows the model to generate and run Python code and then iterate on it until the desired result is achieved. According to Google, the execution sandbox isn’t connected to the internet, comes with a few numerical libraries pre-installed, and bills developers based on the output tokens from the model. And fin

DeepKeep , the leading provider of AI-Native Trust, Risk, and Security Management, announces the product launch of its GenAI Risk Assessment module, designed to secure GenAI’s LLM and computer vision models, specifically focusing on penetration testing, identifying potential vulnerabilities and threats to model security, trustworthiness and privacy. Assessing and mitigating AI model and application vulnerabilities ensures implementations are compliant, fair and ethical.  DeepKeep ‘s Risk Assessment module offers a comprehensive ecosystem approach by considering risks associated with model deployment, and identifying application weak spots. DeepKeep ’s assessment provides a thorough examination of AI models, ensuring high standards of accuracy, integrity, fairness, and efficiency. The module is helping security teams streamline GenAI deployment processes, granting a range of scoring metrics for evaluation. Core features include: Penetration Testing Identifying the model’s tendency

Precisely , the global leader in data integrity, today announced availability of the Spatial Analytics and Data Enrichment services for its leading  Precisely Data Integrity Suite , as well as the release of a new private API for mainframe replication. The new offerings allow customers to use cloud-native spatial APIs to produce more scalable and performant spatial apps, enrich data with critical third-party datasets that add context and reveal new insights for location data, and access more flexible deployment options for mainframe replication. With these additions, the Data Integrity Suite now delivers a complete set of capabilities that seamlessly connect through its Data Integrity Foundation. Featuring a shared data catalog, machine-learning-powered intelligence and hybrid execution agents to run workloads in any data environment, the Data Integrity Foundation is key to accessing the most critical capabilities needed for trusted, AI-ready data. This includes Data Integration, Data

Microsoft has released Fluid Framework 2, the latest version of its platform for building collaborative experiences across the Microsoft 365 suite. Fluid Framework 2 includes four major updates, the first of which is a new SharedTree Distributed Data Structure (DDS) that provides a programming interface for working with data. It supports many different data types, such as primitives, objects, arrays, and maps. It also includes features like the ability to listen for changes and track revertible objects on undo/redo stacks, the ability to group changes, an easier way to create granular event listeners, and support for recursive types in schemas.  Next, it adds a new relay and storage solution for SharePoint Embedded that allows users to keep collaborative data within Microsoft 365 tenants. According to Microsoft, this allows developers to benefit from the security and compliance benefits of Microsoft 365 storage.   Fluid Framework 2 also introduces Fluid DevTools , which is a br

The API management platform Gravitee has announced a new solution, Federated API Management , which provides governance capabilities for companies using multiple API gateways and event brokers. According to the company, businesses today are often managing tens of thousands of APIs and different teams tend to use different API gateways as well. This leads to API sprawl and makes governance difficult. With Federated API Management, they will now be able to manage, secure, and publish APIs from a central location, regardless of which API gateway they are using. It offers the ability to discover the APIs in use across the organization, import those APIs into a single control and management layer, and then publish them into a Developer Portal for self-service discovery, documentation, and subscription management.  “We built federated API management because we know that various teams across a given organization leverage myriad tools to manage their APIs,” said Rory Blundell, CEO of Gravi

Creatio , a leading vendor of a no-code platform to automate CRM and enterprise workflows with a maximum degree of freedom, today announced a $200 million capital raise at a $1.2 billion valuation¹. The investment round is led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from StepStone Group and current investors, Volition Capital and Horizon Capital. The round is a minority investment focused on fueling Creatio’s global expansion, with the company’s disruptive strategy and product vision, proven leadership team, and unrivaled commitment to customer success remaining unchanged. Year after year, Creatio delivers world-class 50% revenue growth, significantly increasing its global customer base and partner network. Core to this success is the time-to-value that Creatio provides to its clients due to ongoing platform innovations, including composable architecture and Gen AI-powered Copilot. Thanks to its cutting-edge technology coupled with a unique culture of genuine care, the company achiev

Anthropic has announced new ways to interact with Claude that will facilitate better collaboration between users and the AI.  Pro and Team customers can now save specific chats with Claude into a new feature called Projects, so that certain conversations live alongside other project information, such as style guides, codebases, interview transcripts, etc. “With Projects, you can get started much faster and extend your skills further for any task,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post .  Users can also define instructions for each Project, such as telling Claude to use a more formal tone or answer questions from the perspective of a specific role.  Each P roject includes a 200K context window, which Anthropic says is the equivalent of a 500-page book. A second new feature in preview, Artifacts, allows certain responses from Claude to appear in their own dedicated window alongside the conversation. These include things like code snippets, text documents, graphics, diagrams, or website des

Forrester is revealing its top 10 emerging technology trends for 2024, which is a list it puts together every year based on the trends its analysts are seeing. According to Brian Hopkins, VP of the emerging tech portfolio at Forrester, the evolution of AI agents is the most exciting development this year. AI agents are also a factor in several other technologies on the list: TuringBot agents, edge intelligence, autonomous mobility, and extended reality. “Building upon last year’s concept of autonomous workplace assistants, AI agents are now leveraging advanced language models to perform complex tasks, make decisions, and interact autonomously on behalf of enterprises or individuals. This shift from purely generative AI to “agentic AI” promises more sophisticated and less brittle automation capabilities,” Hopkins wrote in a post .  TuringBots is Forrester’s name for AI assisted software that helps developers plan, design, build, test, and deploy application code. Previously Forre

This morning the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections to Microsoft for violating antitrust rules by bundling Teams into its SaaS subscription platform Microsoft 365, which also includes products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneDrive. “The Commission is concerned that, since at least April 2019, Microsoft has been tying Teams with its core SaaS productivity applications, thereby restricting competition on the market for communication and collaboration products and defending its market position in productivity software and its suites-centric model from competing suppliers of individual software,” the European Commission wrote in a statement . They argue that by bundling Teams into Microsoft 365 with its other commonly used SaaS products, Microsoft has given Teams a distribution advantage.  The European Commission first started investigating Microsoft on this issue in July 2023 , following a complaint from Slack, a Teams competitor. Shortly after, Micro

DataStax is making a number of improvements to its development platform that will allow developers to more easily implement retrieval augmented generation (RAG) in their generative AI applications.  “The Generative AI stack is a big and complex ball of technology that many are working to get their arms around. We’re focused on helping developers stay true to their roots so they can do what they do best: build and develop, rather than worrying about application infrastructure. We’re delivering a cutting-edge, end-to-end stack to make this a lot easier,” said Ed Anuff, chief product officer at DataStax. The company is releasing Langflow 1.0 , the newest version of the visual framework for building RAG applications, which DataStax acquired back in April. This update includes dozens of integrations with other generative AI tools, including LangChain, LangSmith, OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Mistral. It also includes a cloud-hosted version of Langflow within DataStax Cloud and access to Lan

Substrate Labs , an AI infrastructure startup founded by a team from  Stripe ,  Pulumi , and  Robust Intelligence , announced an $8M seed round to deliver elegant APIs that enable developers to build more modular AI systems, accelerating a new era of software development. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from South Park Commons, Craft Ventures, Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Immad Akhund (Mercury), Will Gaybrick (Stripe), and others. Led by co-founder and CEO Rob Cheung and co-founder Ben Guo, the company also announced the official launch of its API optimized for running ensembles of models. “The AI market will inevitably move from training models to using inference that puts models to work—a massive market that today is far too inefficient,” said Nnamdi Iregbulem, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “Rob and Ben are strong engineers with over a decade of experience designing APIs and scaling systems at organizations like Stripe, Substack and Venmo.

LibreChat is an open source project that brings all of the various LLMs out there into one interface. This includes models from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Groq, Anthropic, Mistral and more.  The benefit of using this platform over any one specific platform is that you can utilize one interface for all of your AI needs, whether it’s talking to ChatGPT, generating images with Claude, and more. It allows conversations to be edited, resubmitted or even branched off into separate conversations. Other features include the ability to import/export conversations, search messages, fork messages or conversations, and switch between AI endpoints and presets in the middle of a conversation. “LibreChat brings together the future of assistant AIs with the revolutionary technology of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Celebrating the original styling, LibreChat gives you the ability to integrate multiple AI models. It also integrates and enhances original client features such as conversation and message search, p

The theme of this year’s International Women in Engineering Day (INWED), on Sunday, June 23, is “Enhanced by Engineering,” highlighting the achievements and accomplishments of women engineers.  In alignment with that theme, here is a look at women in computer science and IT throughout history — and today — who have shaped technology as we know it.  “Happy International Women in Engineering Day to all the women who have overcome gender stereotypes, who have pursued their passion in engineering despite barriers, and who have excelled in their careers. Thank you for being an inspiration to the next generation of young girls breaking into tech and STEM,” said ChanChan Mao, developer advocate at Alluxio . Here are just a small number of the women who have shaped the technology of our world. Ada Lovelace , born in 1815, was a mathematician who studied under Charles Babbage , who is considered to be the “father of the computer.” It is believed that she wrote the first computer program

ScyllaDB has announced the release of version 6.0 of its database, which features a new replication architecture called “tablets.” The new architecture builds on the Raft consensus protocol and provides improvements to elasticity, speed, simplicity, and efficiency. ScyllaDB claims that now clusters can be doubled within 15 minutes, and their throughput in that same time period is quadruple what it used to be. “With ScyllaDB’s new tablets architecture, data is dynamically redistributed as the workload and topology evolve. New nodes can be spun up in parallel and start adapting to the load in near real-time. This means teams can quickly scale out in response to traffic spikes – satisfying latency SLAs without needing to overprovision ‘just in case,’” the company explained in its announcement.  According to the company, tablets are ideal for scenarios where there will be varying traffic volume throughout the day, unexpected spikes, or major events that will increase traffic to an unk

Anthropic is kicking off the Claude 3.5 model family with its first release: Claude 3.5 Sonnet.  Sonnet is the name for Anthropic’s mid-tier model; Haiku is the smallest model and Opus is the largest model.  According to Anthropic’s benchmarks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms OpenAI’s latest model GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro in a number of different areas, including coding, multilingual math, and reasoning over text. “When instructed and provided with the relevant tools, Claude 3.5 Sonnet can independently write, edit, and execute code with sophisticated reasoning and troubleshooting capabilities. It handles code translations with ease, making it particularly effective for updating legacy applications and migrating codebases,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post .  It also outperforms Claude 3 Opus across all tested benchmarks: graduate level reasoning, coding, math problem-solving, multilingual math, etc. According to Anthropic, the new model is also twice as fast as Claude 3 Opu

A number of industry leaders — over 1,000 in total — have come together to create the Enterprise GenAI Governance Framework , which provides guidance that businesses can use to assess their AI readiness, identify associated risks, and responsibly adopt generative AI. The initiative was spearheaded by integration platform Boomi, professional services firm Connor Group, and a number of professors, including David Wood from Brigham Young University, Scott Emett from Arizona State University, and Marc Eulerich from University of Duisberg-Essen. According to the creators, the framework can be utilized by companies of any size and can be modified to suit specific objectives, needs, and risk appetites.  “Effective AI adoption will be a massive competitive advantage, but many don’t know where to start and how to apply it,” said Jeff Pickett, chair and founder at Connor Group. “A few AI tools exist now, with many on the way, and they are coming fast. Having a smart AI adoption strategy with

The data management company Datadobi has announced StorageMAP 7.0, the latest version of its unstructured data management platform.  “StorageMAP 7.0 is revolutionizing the way businesses and government organizations handle their unstructured data, transforming it into a powerhouse of strategic advantage,” said Carl D’Halluin, CTO of Datadobi.  StorageMAP 7.0 introduces two new analytics features: Custom Dashboards and an Analysis Module. Custom Dashboards allow users to create specific views of data that can be sorted and filtered by metadata fields or StorageMAP tags. They can be displayed in a number of ways, such as time charts, series charts, or lists, and can be exported to PowerPoint for easy sharing.  The Analysis Module is a new tool that allows for better analysis of trends in a dataset. It can incorporate multiple layers of filters and classifications, and then the data can be easily exported to create charts, a tabular output, or other reports.  This release also adds

The Android development team has released Android 15 Beta 3 and also announced that Android 15 has now reached Platform Stability. This means that developer APIs and app-facing behaviors for the release are final and developers can now review them and integrate changes into their apps.  “Android 15 continues our work to build a platform that helps improve your productivity while giving you new capabilities to produce superior media and AI experiences, take advantage of device form factors, minimize battery impact, maximize smooth app performance, and protect user privacy and security, all on the most diverse lineup of devices,” Matthew McCullough, VP of product for Android Developer, wrote in a blog post .  One of the updates available in Android 15 Beta 3 is an improved user experience for passkeys , which is a password alternative that allows users to sign in with a fingerprint, facial recognition, or screen lock. Using a passkey on Android used to require going through two scree

SmartBear , a leading provider of software quality and visibility solutions, has launched two innovations that fundamentally change how both API and functional tests are performed, integrating  SmartBear HaloAI,  trusted AI-driven technology, and marking a significant step forward in the company’s AI strategy. GenAI technology, known for automating repetitive and error-prone tasks, enhances efficiency and reduces manual intervention, revolutionizing traditional software development and testing methods. According to Gartner®, “By 2025, 75% of developers will use generative AI to learn new software development skills.” 1 “Our product development goal is to revolutionize software quality for our customers through smart automation built into our popular tools,” said  Dan Faulkner , Chief Product Officer at SmartBear. “Customers face ongoing downward pressure on quality with expectations for speedier releases, resource constraints, and adoption of AI development tools that generate code qu

Redgate Software , the end-to-end Database DevOps solution provider, today announced the successful acquisition of  DB-Engines , a valued, independent source of objective data in the database management systems market. This strategic acquisition reflects Redgate’s commitment to providing the database community with unparalleled content, events, community websites, and market insights, with an increasing focus on supporting multiple database platforms. DB-Engines will retain its branding and identity, ensuring that its users continue to receive the trusted and independent monthly database ranking reports and detailed database insights they have come to rely on. DB-Engines will join the wide selection of community assets Redgate provides, including  Simple Talk,   SQL Server Central,  and the  PASS Data Community Summit  and each will mutually benefit from shared insights and data. “Redgate’s acquisition of DB-Engines reinforces our mission to support the database community with valua