“Now budding Python developers can read up on the National Security Agency’s own Python training materials,” reports ZDNet:
Software engineer Chris Swenson filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA for access to its Python training materials and received a lightly redacted 400-page printout of the agency’s COMP 3321 Python training course. Swenson has since scanned the documents, ran OCR…
Tag: languages
Google’s Area 120 Brings Quick Web Games To Slow Phones
Google is countering Facebook’s Instant Games with its own bid to make web games more accessible. Its Area 120 experimental lab is introducing GameSnacks, HTML5-based casual games that are designed to load quickly and play well even on poor connections and basic smartphones. From a report: The combination of a lean initial web page, compressed media and just-in-time loading means you…
Facebook Accidentally Blacked Out an Entire Language
On January 16th, Facebook users received an error message when posting in Jinghpaw, a language spoken by Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin and written with a Roman alphabet. From a report: “We couldn’t post this. Tap for more info,” the message said. When clicking, a second appeared: “Your request couldn’t be processed. There was a problem with this request. We’re working on getting…
Why Can We Write Software To Get To the Moon, But Not To Count Votes
minstrelmike shares a report. From the article: The best way to get a feel for what NASA’s job was like is to read some of the code, now immortalized in a GitHub repository. Choose a file at random. GROUND_TRACKING_DETERMINATION_PROGRAM.agc, for instance, has 204 lines and more than 85 of them are comments. Each of the lines consists of only one operation,…
Are There Generational Differences In First Coding Languages and Learning Resources?
“Under the age of 39? Odds are that most of your peers learned to code in C. “Most Baby Boomers and Gen Xers — or, those between the ages of 40 and 74 in 2020 — learned to code in BASIC.” That’s just one of the interesting conclusions from HackerRank’s third annual “Developer Skills Report,” which this year compiled responses from…
Move Over, Silicon Valley: St. Louis, Atlanta, Small Cities Gaining Tech Jobs
Slashdot reader SpaceForceCommander shared Dice’s new annual report on America’s tech industry salaries based on a survey of over 12,800 “technologists”: Columbus and St. Louis enjoyed double-digit year-over-year growth in salaries (14.2 percent and 13.6 percent, respectively), and other cities such as Denver [7 percent] and Atlanta [10 percent] also experienced an ideal mix of growth and high salaries. These up-and-comers…
Google To Translate and Transcribe Conversations In Real Time
At a press event in San Francisco today, Google announced a feature that’ll let people use their phones to both transcribe and translate a conversation in real time into a language that isn’t being spoken. The tool will be available for the Google Translate app in the coming months, said Bryan Lin, an engineer on the Translate team. CNET reports: Right…
Is PHP Still a Worthwhile Language To Learn?
mbadolato (Slashdot reader #105,588) shares this post from Belgium-based programmer Brent Roose: It’s no secret among web developers and programmers in general: PHP doesn’t have the best reputation. Despite still being one of the most used languages to build web applications; over the years PHP has managed to get itself a reputation of messy codebases, inexperienced developers, insecure code, an inconsistent…
Chinese New Year 2020 falls on January 25
Chinese New Year 2020 falls on January 25 in Asia (January 24 in the west), beginning the Year of the Rat. China’s public holiday will be January 24-30. In Beijing this week, Chinese health officials expressed concerns about a coronavirus now spreading during this heavy travel season in Asia. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/chinese-new-year-lunar-new-year…
Augmented Reality In a Contact Lens: It’s the Real Deal
Tekla Perry writes: Startup Mojo Vision announced a microdisplay mid-2019, with not a lot of talk about applications. Turns out, they had one very specific application in mind — an AR contact lens. Last week the company let selected media have a look at working prototypes, powered wirelessly, though plans for the next version include a battery on board. The demos…