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Ambassador Labs launches Ambassador Developer Control Plane 1.0

Ambassador Labs announced the release of its new Ambassador Developer Control Plane 1.0 (DCP), which lets developers code, ship and run apps using Kubernetes faster. The control plane provides a new managed cloud UI and an integrated toolchain built entirely on top of Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) open-source projects.  Developers can use the control plane to view and manage their organization’s apps and services across development, deployment, and production environments without needing to stitch together Kubernetes tools or needing to compromise productivity.  Ambassador Labs also unveiled two new developer programs that are designed to elevate hands-on learning with Kubernetes: Summer of Kubernetes and the Ambassador Community Advocate program. “Kubernetes has become an industry-standard and organizations are now faced with a dizzying ecosystem of cloud native open source tools. To deal with increasingly complex tool sprawl, companies have resorted to gluing together

SD Times news digest: Plutora introduces flow metrics, Hasura GraphQL Engine v2.0.0, ML.NET June updates, and more

Plutora has announced an update to its value stream management platform that provides a data-centric view of work. The Plutora Platform has added metrics to monitor flow in a way that deepens its compatibility with Agile planning tools. This will help development managers easily identify bottlenecks across multiple software development pipelines.  With the use of a robust analytics engine, Plutora’s new update identifies constraints and provides the ability to manage the metrics for a wide range of development styles and pipelines. These cutting-edge analytics evaluate pipelines and isolate locations where improvements are required. The update also provides developers with an optimized dashboard of reports and metrics. These stream flow metrics, in combination with DevOps and other metrics, provide a total view of the maturity of the software factory. In addition, the heavy focus on integration with planning tools enhances the common data model with a complete time series and change h

GitLab 14 aims to do away with DIY DevOps toolchains

GitLab is moving forward to the next evolution of DevOps in the release of GitLab 14. According to the company, many DevOps teams use so-called “DIY DevOps” toolchains that are built with parts not designed to work together, leading to silos, lack of visibility, and maintenance challenges.  This latest iteration of the GitLab platform aims to eliminate this notion and provide companies with advanced DevOps capabilities that allow developers to build software with velocity, trust, and visibility.  One new feature in GitLab 14 is Epic Boards, which allow teams to continuously communicate the status of epics, and visualize and refine them in one place using a drag-and-drop interface.  GitLab 14 also features a built-in Terraform module registry, which can be used to discover Terraform modules or publish them through GitLab CI/CD.  This release also streamlined the top menu so that developers can get to what they need in fewer clicks. It consolidates functionality from previous Project

IBM launches new cloud database as a service offering

IBM is launching a new offering, IBM Cloud Databases powered by IBM Cloud Satellite. The new solution will enable customers to leverage the benefits of cloud databases without needing to manage the systems themselves.  Customers will be able to deploy production grade databases on cloud service providers, their own data centers or in edge locations, according to IBM.  Other benefits include the ability to bring databases closer to where applications live, high-availability, secure architecture, daily backups, 24×7 monitoring, and online scaling with pay-as-you-go billing.  As part of this announcement the company announced the release of Databases for PostgreSQL for transactional workloads, Databases for Redis for application and database cashing, Databases for etcd to hold and manage critical information, and Messages for RabbitMQ for message queuing across microservices.  According to the company, IBM Cloud Satellite introduces a new concept of “locations,” which are infrastructu

Balancing user experience and performance

Mobile apps have changed our world— from how we pay bills to how we date or order food, to even the ways we play games. They’ve opened up seemingly limitless possibilities, thanks to the talent of the developer community. Building the next killer app requires the creation of features that attract and delight while still supporting millions of concurrent users— and doing so without compromising the experience. And unfortunately, companies often underestimate just how difficult it can be to strike a balance between performance and experience until they are so far down a path that it is difficult to course correct. As a result, some fantastic ideas never reach their full potential. Building for Scale: A Critical Factor The desire to acquire users as fast as possible with a compelling feature set often leads to limitations on the backend. It’s no surprise that when performance suffers, users migrate away from the app out of frustration and/or viral growth sputters. One of the most impor

SD Times news digest: LogDNA announces Spike Protection, Boomi adds Data Catalog and Preparation service to AtomSphere Platform, and Cloudflare launches new integrations

LogDNA has announced Spike Protection to give companies more control over fluctuations in their data and spend.  LogDNA Spike Protection gives DevOps teams tools to understand and manage increases through Index Rate Alerting and Usage Quotas to provide additional insight into anomalous spikes.  The company also today announced its Agent 3.2 release for Kubernetes and OpenShift, which introduces the configuration of log inclusion/exclusion rules, along with log redaction, using regex patterns.  Additional details are available here .  Boomi adds Data Catalog and Preparation service to AtomSphere Platform Boomi announced the addition of the Data Catalog and Preparation AtomSphere Service to the Boomi AtomSphere Platform along with a new Data operations Professional Services Offering (DataOps PSO).  Data Cloud Platform is also now available as a fully managed cloud-based service to work with the rest of the Boomi AtomSphere Platform. “We are leading the evolution of iPaaS to inclu

Facebook researchers develop new method for detecting deepfakes

Facebook announced a new method of detecting and attributing deepfakes that relies on reverse-engineering from a single AI-generated image to the generative model used to produce it. The technology was developed in tandem with Michigan State University (MSU). The company used reverse engineering to approach the problem of deepfakes by uncovering unique patterns behind an AI model that is used to generate a single deepfake image. This new method is necessary to solve the problem of proliferating deepfakes, according to Facebook.  “It’s important to go beyond close-set image attribution because a deepfake can be created using a generative model that is not seen in training,” Facebook wrote in a   blog post . “The problem of proliferating deepfakes requires taking the discussion one step further, and working to understand how to extend image attribution beyond the limited set of models present in training.” This way of detecting which deepfakes were generated from the same AI model ca

SD Times news digest: Android for Cars App Library released, .NET MAUI Preview 5, and AWS Step Functions Workflow Studio

The Android for Cars App Library version 1.1 is now in alpha, which brings new features to developers such as a sign-in template, a long message template, multiple-length text and map interactivity. The sign-in template allows users to sign in to their app directly from the car screen while parked and the long message template allows them to show long messages like terms of service to users as part of the setup flow while parked.  The library features are available for testing only with the Desktop Head Unit. Additional details are available here .  .NET MAUI Preview 5  The new .NET MAUI Preview 5 enables animations and view transformations and introduces improvements to single project templates.  Several controls now have all properties and events ported to handlers from the renderer architecture of Xamarin.Forms including ActivityIndicator, CheckBox, Image and Stepper.  Also, the new preview includes the first introduction of Shell, an application container that provides URI n

Speed, security and reliability are now one

Companies around the world and across many industries have felt the pressure to release faster, yet they struggle to do so in a safe and reliable way that doesn’t compromise user trust.  A lot of these companies think there’s a dichotomy between whether you can move fast or increase value.  “I think the move fast and break things got a bad rap. It’s kind of horrifying to think, Hey, a developer that I’m not even talking to could suddenly blow up my entire customer base without all these gates,” said Edith Harbaugh, the CEO of LaunchDarkly, during a recent SD Times Live! tech talk. However, releasing slower today could actually make the software more unsafe, according to Harbaugh. “If you’re doing the old software releases of 20 years ago where you do a release every year, every release has so much heft, weight and gravity behind it,” said Harbaugh. Not only are the releases heavy in technical complexity, requiring developers to check all of these different branches and features, b

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Open Voice Network

Open Voice Network (OVN) is a neutral, non-profit association that is dedicated to the development of the standards and guidelines that aim to raise consumer trust in voice-based solutions.  As many researchers—such as those from Zhejiang University in China and Washington University in Seattle—have pointed out, voice assistants can be prone to hacking or even inadvertent data leakage and consumers have grown concerned that their voice assistant devices are storing their conversations. The Open Voice Network aims to bolster consumer trust through communally-developed standards and governance that developers, designers, strategists and makers can go by to give users more data ownership and control.  It also aims to provide these core tenets to any ecosystem and architecture that developers prefer.  The association operates on the directed fund of the Linux Foundation and is independently funded and governed.  Last year, the OVN started a working group that was chartered to develop

Are your metrics right for a remote workforce?

So much of what we do at work has to be measured. There is a sense that, if something cannot be measured, does it even really exist? Certainly, if a project or function can not demonstrate how it is being measured in a clear, understandable manner, its ability to secure approval or signoff is dramatically reduced. Metrics, key performance indicators, objectives and key results (OKRs), being able to measure progress – it all links back to a need within organisations to ultimately quantify return on investment.  When we all worked in one place, most metrics were tied to outputs – achieve sales targets, ship code, maintain a positive net promoter score.  Changing environments demand new metrics But how have those ways of measurement changed in the last year? Do they take into account the challenges and opportunities that come with remote working? As Dan Montgomery, the founder and managing director of Agile Strategies, said , the current situation “is a great opportunity to get better

GitHub Desktop 2.9 adds the ability to squash and reorder commits

GitHub has announced the release of GitHub Desktop 2.9. New features include the ability to squash and reorder commits, amend previous commits, and start new branches from earlier commits.  According to GitHub, commit history is often used by developers to tell a story about the progression of a project. Now, developers will be able to drag commits on top of each other to squash them together and add a new commit message to that grouping. When merging, they will be able to squash and rebase as part of the merge. In addition, developers will now be able to drag commits in the history to reorder them.  The next new feature in GitHub Desktop 2.9 is the ability to make changes to or update the commit message of the previous commit. This is intended for small changes, as there is already an existing undo feature in GitHub Desktop that reverts things back to the previous commit.  GitHub Desktop 2.9 also features the ability to start a new branch from an earlier commit. This enables devel

Neo4j raises $325 million in Series F funding round

The $325 million Series F funding round for Neo4j marks the largest investment round in database history, according to the company.  “With this largest investment round in databases, we’ve set our sights on ensuring that graph databases become the largest part of the new database market, and Neo4j a generational company that will last for decades,” Emil Eifrem, founder and CEO of Neo4j, wrote in a blog post .  RELATED TOPICS: Data improves value stream management Eifrem predicts that there will be four distinct segments that sit side by side with the traditional relational database and that this new decade will bring in a “great unbundling of the database market.” One trend is that graph databases will see grassroots adoption as it’s already the fastest growing database category in the last decade.  Another trend is that many of the largest enterprises have already adopted graph databases including all of the 20 biggest banks, seven of the ten biggest retailers and more.  “By 2

SD Times news digest: Visual Studio 2022 Preview 1, Rust 1.53 released, HackerOne announces GitHub integration

Microsoft announced the first preview release of Visual Studio 2022, which the company aims to use to test and tune the scalability of the new 64-bit platform.  The Visual Studio 2022 previews can be installed side-by-side with earlier versions of Visual Studio, which are available in all three editions (Community, Pro, and Enterprise), and are free to use.  Microsoft added that it is working on a slate of new features and performance improvements in Preview 2. One such feature that developers can try now is the update to IntelliCode, which automatically completes code up to a whole line at a time. Additional details on the new preview are available here .  Rust 1.53 released Rust 1.53 contains several new language features and many new library features, including the ‘IntoIterator’ implementation for arrays.  This new feature enables developers to iterate over arrays by value whereas previously the only possible reference was by using ‘&[1, 2, 3]’ or ‘[1, 2, 3].iter().’  A

IBM joins effort to re-skill the workforce for tech roles

IBM will be joining 30 global organizations including governments, community colleges, non-profits, and employment agencies to connect with underserved populations and give them the necessary skills to join today’s workforce.  According to the company, in order to close the current global skills gap, education and training systems need to evolve along with market demands.  As part of its new collaboration, global organizations will leverage IBM SkillsBuild, an online learning program designed to get job seekers ready for the professional workforce within three to six months. It will offer technical skills, badges, and credentials recognized by the market. It will focus on underserved populations such as veterans, women, minorities, refugees, and unemployed young adults. “Closing the global skills gap is one of the most pressing issues of our time,” said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM. “That is why I’m proud of these collaborations, which will help people of all backgrounds