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Showing posts from October, 2024

Microsoft open-sources Drasi, a data processing system for detecting and reacting to changes

Microsoft has announced and is open-sourcing a new data processing system called Drasi that can detect and react to changes in complex systems. This new project “simplifies the automation of intelligent reactions in dynamic systems, delivering real-time actionable insights without the overhead of traditional data processing methods,” Mark Russinovich, CTO, deputy chief information security officer, and technical fellow at Microsoft Azure, wrote in a blog post .  It watches for events in logs and change feeds without copying data to a central data lake or continuously querying data sources. Developers can use define which changes they want to track, and then Drasi decides if changes should trigger an action.  “If they do, it executes context-aware reactions based on your business needs. This streamlined process reduces complexity, ensures timely action while the data is most relevant, and prevents important changes from slipping through the cracks,” Russinovich explained. Drasi ca

ChatGPT Canvas offers a new visual interface for working with ChatGPT in a more collaborative way

OpenAI now offers a more collaborative way of interacting with ChatGPT. ChatGPT Canvas is a new interface for conversations that makes it easier to iterate on a writing or coding project. When triggered, it opens a separate window where ChatGPT and the user can collaborate side by side.  “People use ChatGPT every day for help with writing and code. Although the chat interface is easy to use and works well for many tasks, it’s limited when you want to work on projects that require editing and revisions. Canvas offers a new interface for this kind of work,” OpenAI wrote in a post . With Canvas, a user could highlight a specific section of the text that it wants ChatGPT to focus on, and then receive inline feedback and suggestions on that section, and ChatGPT will consider the context of the project as a whole in its response. ChatGPT Canvas also features a number of shortcuts for specific tasks the user wants ChatGPT to do. Writing shortcuts include suggest edits, adjust the length,

Open Source AI Definition nears final version as first release candidate is announced

The process of coming up with an official Open Source AI Definition has been progressing along, and now the Open Source Initiative (OSI) — the group that has been spearheading this effort — has announced Release Candidate 1 for the definition.  The OSI started the process of creating this definition back in 2022, and for the past year it has been traveling the world to gather feedback and further input on the draft definition.  The group wrote in its announcement that this release was the result of “lots of community feedback: 5 town hall meetings, several comments on the forum and on the draft, and in person conversations at events in Austria, China, India, Ghana, and Argentina.” Now that this first release candidate is available, any future updates will only be bug fixes, not actual new features. Generally, the Open Source AI Definition specifies that an AI system is open source if it meets the following criteria: Anyone can use it for any purpose without needing to ask pe

OpenAI announces Realtime API, prompt caching, and more at DevDay

OpenAI held its annual DevDay conference yesterday, where it announced its Realtime API, as well as features like prompt caching, vision fine-tuning, and model distillation. The Realtime API is designed for building low-latency, multimodal experiences, and it’s now available as a public beta. The company shared a couple of examples of companies that are using the Realtime API already, such as fitness coaching app Healthify, which used it to enable more natural conversations with its AI coach, or Speak, which is a language learning app that used the Realtime API to enable customers to practice conversations in the language they are learning.  The API supports the six preset voices in ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode, according to OpenAI.  Audio input and output have also been added to the Chat Completions API to support voice in use cases that don’t require the low latency benefits of the Realtime API. This enables developers to pass text or audio into GPT-4o and have it respond with

SmartBear Boosts Testing Efficiency and Software Quality with Integrated Load Testing in TestComplete

SmartBear, a provider of software quality and visibility solutions, has integrated the load testing engine of LoadNinja into its automated testing tool, TestComplete . Testers can now re-use their functional tests and run them as a load test in a single workflow, optimizing efficiency and productivity, enhancing test coverage, and reducing costs – solving the pain of needing point solutions to run a complete UI testing suite. “By integrating load testing capabilities into TestComplete, SmartBear is empowering its customers to enhance software quality through streamlined testing workflows,” said  Prashant Mohan , Senior Director of Product Management at SmartBear. “With the ability to automate both functional and load testing from a single location, our customers can now conduct thorough and efficient testing, ensuring their applications perform reliably under heavy loads.” This integration allows testers to quickly convert existing functional tests into load tests, providing a fast

Different Career Opportunities for Experts in Coding in 2024 and Beyond Neeraj Mishra The Crazy Programmer

Programming has persisted in assuming the status of a wonder of the modern economy because of the critical function that it plays in the process of driving technological change in different fields of human endeavor. When talking about modern software development, applications using artificial intelligence or machine learning , coding is the core basis of it. Thus, relying on complex software systems and automation needed in industries like healthcare, finance, e-commerce, and manufacturing, the demand for qualified coders improving, developing, and optimizing such systems grows. Software development has increased, particularly in using data, cloud, and security needs, and this led to a higher demand for coders to develop scalable applications. Every time organizations transition from one digital level to another, coders are called upon to learn new programming languages, frameworks, and tools. Software to drive advancements in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, coding professi

Synopsys Software Integrity Group rebrands as Black Duck Software

BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 1, 2024 — The former Synopsys Software Integrity Group announced today that it has rebranded as Black Duck Software, Inc. (“Black Duck”), a newly independent application security company. The company’s new brand is inspired by its flagship software supply chain solution, Black Duck software composition analysis (SCA), which has helped thousands of organizations around the world adopt open source technology safely and securely for nearly 20 years. As an independent company, Black Duck provides the full portfolio of application security solutions previously available from the Synopsys Software Integrity Group. Black Duck’s mission is to help organizations build trust in their software by enabling them to manage application security, quality, and compliance risks at the speed their business demands. This empowers Black Duck customers to innovate and transform their businesses with new, emerging technologies like AI. As a recognized market leader, Black Duck prov

MIT startup Liquid AI releases its first series of generative AI models

Liquid AI , an AI startup spun out from MIT, has announced its first series of generative AI models, which it refers to as Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs). “Our mission is to create best-in-class, intelligent, and efficient systems at every scale – systems designed to process large amounts of sequential multimodal data, to enable advanced reasoning, and to achieve reliable decision-making,” Liquid explained in a post .  According to Liquid, LFMs are “large neural networks built with computational units deeply rooted in the theory of dynamical systems, signal processing, and numerical linear algebra.” By comparison, LLMs are based on a transformer architecture, and by not using that architecture, LFMs are able to have a much smaller memory footprint than LLMs.  “This is particularly true for long inputs, where the KV cache in transformer-based LLMs grows linearly with sequence length. By efficiently compressing inputs, LFMs can process longer sequences on the same hardware,” Liquid

The iPhone 16 Pro: Are we hitting the limit on features?

The iPhone 16 Pro is Apple’s premier iPhone. It has several new features, like a dedicated camera multi-function button that cuts across the iPhone line, that are both useful and needed. But as I watched the launch presentation of the iPhone 16 Pro and they spoke about the camera features, the phone seemed to be trying to stretch beyond its form factor, like a motorcycle that was suddenly trying to be a pickup truck, or a “Jack of all trades, master of none.” That phrase also applies to the Swiss Army Knife. It has a massive number of features but mostly sucks against more dedicated tools, and I think the iPhone 16 Pro’s camera feature exceeds the reasonable capability of the form factor. You might dispute this, but let’s jump ahead a decade and ask ourselves what’s left to add to the phone that makes sense? The Problem with Over-Featuring a Product I use the Swiss Army Knife as an example because I owned one as a kid, and it had something like 24 different functions. But using even

Accelerating innovation: How the Lucid visual collaboration suite boosts Agile team efficiency

Fostering a positive developer experience and aligning it with business goals may seem like an obvious focus for organizational stakeholders. When developers feel empowered to innovate, they deliver customer experiences that positively impact the bottom line. Yet key organizational stakeholders still struggle to get visibility into how products are advancing, from ideation to delivery. To help those teams gain insights into how products are advancing, Lucid Software is announcing enhancements to its visual collaboration platform that are designed to help elevate agile workflows by cultivating greater alignment, creating clarity and improving decision-making.  “Visual collaboration is about seeing an entire workflow from the very beginning, enabling teams to align, make informed decisions and guide the initiative all the way to market delivery,” said Jessica Guistolise, an evangelist, Agile coach and consultant at Lucid. “Lucid excels at bringing all necessary information into one p