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Google has launched Chrome 67 on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android devices packed with exciting new features. The release features two powerful APIs, password-free logins, PWA support on desktops and more.  Let’s have a look at the features in detailed. Progressive web apps now supported on Desktops Chrome 67 now supports Desktop based progressive web apps.  They run the same way as other apps, in an app window, without an address bar or tabs. Service workers run the PWA to ensure they are engaging, fast, and smooth. As a developer, there are only certain breakpoints to consider while running your PWA in chrome. Essentially the process of creating it remains the same. If your app meets the standard PWA criteria, Chrome will fire the beforeinstallprompt event, However,  it won’t automatically prompt the user.  Here are the steps you need to follow: Save the event. Then, add some UI—like an install app button—to the app to tell the user your app can be installed As the user clicks the button, you need to call prompt on the saved event. Chrome will then show the prompt to the user If users click add, Chrome will add the PWA to their shelf and launcher AR and VR support with WebXR Device API Chrome 67 offers a special WebXR Device API, to create augmented reality and virtual reality experiences on desktops and mobile devices. It will be used to create immersive experiences across multiple AR/VR devices,  sensors and head-mounted displays including Google Daydream View, Samsung Gear VR, and desktop-hosted headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality Headsets. This API will be used to develop AR and VR games, 360-degree videos, and also be used for data visualization, home shopping, and displaying art. Generic Sensor API for accelerometer support Updating mobile experiences, Chrome 67 offers a new Generic Sensor API. Websites can access a mobile device’s accelerometer, gyroscope, orientation sensor, and motion sensor. The API consists of a base Sensor interface with a set of sensor classes built on top. The base interface simplifies the implementation and specification process for the sensor classes. The goal of the Generic Sensor API is to promote consistency across sensor APIs, enable advanced use cases, and increase the pace at which new sensors can be exposed to the Web. Password-free logins Chrome 67 supports password-free logins based on the Web Authentication standard. These standards can be incorporated into browsers and allow additional ways for users to securely sign into most sites. These include biometric information such as fingerprint, retina, or facial recognition from either smartphone or a USB key. Changes in dev tools There are also a number of changes and updates in DevTools in Chrome 67.  Some of these include: Users can now search across all network headers. There are new audits, desktop configuration options, and viewing traces. Incorporation of user Timing in the Performance tabs. JavaScript VM instances are now clearly listed in the Memory panel. The Network tab in the Sources panel has been renamed as the Page tab. Certificate transparency information is available in the Security panel. Site isolation features now appear in the Performance panel. Check out the Google developer blog for a full list of updates. Chrome 67 can be updated by either using the browser’s built-in updater or downloading it directly from google.com/chrome. Firefox 60 arrives with exciting updates for web developers: Quantum CSS engine, new Web APIs and more Top 5 Google I/O 2018 conference Day 1 Highlights: Android P, Android Things, ARCore, ML kit and Lighthouse What can Google Duplex do for businesses?

Apache foundation announced the RC release of NetBeans 9.0. They also announced the feature set and tools applicable for Java development, including Java Swing, JavaFX, and the support created specifically for Java 9. Apache in its release note mentioned that the focus for this release is mainly on: IP clearance of the Oracle code donation Support for the latest Java SE versions - Java 9 and Java 10 The following are some of the most important features that will be the part of NetBeans 9.0 release: Supporting Local Variable Type Inference: The type inference associated with local variables is used by JDK for definition inside methods, initialization blocks, for-loops, and other blocks like if-else. Supporting the Jigsaw Module System: The Jigsaw module system was announced under Project Jigsaw with a primary goal of making the development easy for large applications that include calling a lot of libraries. It was implemented to maintain libraries, secure and maintain the Java SE platform, and scale the performance of JDK based on the size of the applications. NetBeans 9.0 will be supporting the modules system for Project Jigsaw. New Java Modular Application project type: The modularity feature is considered to be one of the most emerging technology features introduced in Java 9. It helps developers to build productive and easily maintainable software that uses Java, especially for enterprise applications. NetBeans 9.0 will see the full support for modularity. Java Shell support: Java Shell (jShell) is a command line introduced in Java 9 to help write smaller programs efficiently without the hassles of declarations, creating classes, etc. NetBeans 9.0 provides integrated console-like UI for the Java Shell and hence making the development, a bit more hassle-free. You can read more about the known issues in the RC release on the confluence page. The source and binaries for NetBeans 9.0 RC1 can be downloaded from Apache’s mirrors. What can you expect from the upcoming Java 11 JDK? Forget C and Java. Learn Kotlin: the next universal programming language

The Java team is planning to remove the Java Serialization feature from core Java language. This is owing to some security issues with the object serialization API. What is Java’s Object Serialization feature? The Serialization API converts the message in a data communication system into a sequence of bytes which can be processed further. The sequence of bytes is made into an object and written in a Java file. This file can be read and deserialized to recreate the message in the memory. Why is Oracle calling it a mistake? Approximately one-third of all the vulnerabilities in the Java systems have serialization involved. Mark Reinhold, chief Architect from Oracle mentioned that Oracle has been receiving reports that revealed the security weakness in Java Serialization. They have found a lot of applications servers receive serialization data streams on unprotected ports of a server. The attackers can use the easy use case of the serialized object and deserialize to recreate the object. Adding to the overhaul, Reinhold called the serialization feature as a “horrible mistake” made in 1997. To counteract these vulnerabilities, Oracle has added a filtering capability in Java to provide a defense mechanism for the network using serialization and receiving untrusted data streams. Oracle also mentioned their plans to remove serialization from Java as a long-term plan under Project Amber, focussed on streamlining the release cycle of Java and to enhance the productivity of the Java language in the Java 11 release. Looking ahead To continue to support the serialization in Java language, Oracle is planning to add a Serialization feature that will enable object serialization in a safe way. The framework will also be developed to support graphs, that supports JSON or XML to provide serialization of any record. Why Oracle is losing the Database Race What Google, RedHat, Oracle, and others announced at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2018 What can you expect from Java 11

Oracle announced the much awaited Oracle Apex 18.1 today. Oracle Application Express is a free development tool by Oracle. It allows developers to create web-based applications quickly by using a web browser on an Oracle database. With Oracle Apex 18.1, Oracle provides easy integration of data from the REST services with data taken from the SQL queries within an Oracle database to build scalable applications. The new release also includes high-quality features for creating applications without the need of coding. Let’s have a look at some of the major features and improvements in Oracle Apex 18.1. Key features and updates Application features High-level application features such as access control, email reporting, feedback, activity reporting, dynamic user interface selection, etc, can be added to your app. An application can also be created with “cards” report interface, a timeline report as well as a dashboard. REST enabled SQL support Apex 18.1 allows you to build charts, calendars, reports, and trees. You can also invoke certain processes against Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) -provided REST Enabled SQL Services. There is no need for a database link to include data from other remote database objects within your APEX application. REST Enabled SQL gets it all done for you. Web Source Modules Different REST endpoints can be used to declaratively access data such as ordinary REST data feeds, REST services from Oracle REST data services as well as Oracle Cloud Applications REST services. It provides the ability to influence REST data sources results using industry standard SQL. REST Workshop Updates have been made to the REST workshop. Apart from helping with creating REST services against Oracle database objects, the new REST workshop comes with an added ability to generate Swagger documentation against REST definitions with just a button click. Application Builder Improvements Oracle Apex 18.1 allows developers to create components quickly as wizards are now streamlined with fewer steps and smarter defaults. Usability enhancements have been made to Page Designer. This includes advanced color palette and graphics on page elements as well as to Sticky Filter which improves developers’ productivity. Social Authentication Oracle APEX 18.1 comes with a native authentication scheme and social sign-in. It is possible for developers to create applications in APEX using authentication methods such as Oracle Identity Cloud Service, Facebook, Google, generic OAuth2  and generic OpenID Connect without coding. Charts Oracle JET 4.2 engine is a new feature to the APEX 18.1. It consists of updated charts as well as APIs. It also comes with different types of charts such as Box-Plot, Gantt, and Pyramid. These provide support for multi-series sparse data sets. Mobile UI New component types namely ListView, Reflow Report and Column Toggle have been introduced which can be used for creating Mobile Applications. Improvements have been made to the APEX Universal Theme. These are mobile-focused enhancements which means that page headers and footers in mobiles will be displayed consistently on mobile devices. Also, floating item label templates help in optimizing the presented information on a mobile screen. There is also declarative support offered by Oracle APEX 18.1 for touch-based dynamic actions such as tap, swipe, double tap, press, and pan. Font APEX The new release includes a set of 32 x 32 high-resolution icons that automatically selects the right font size. Accessibility Accessibility mode is deprecated as the latest release will make use of APEX Advisor which consists of a bunch of tests to identify the most occurring accessibility issues. These are the major updates and improvements made in the latest Oracle APEX 18.1. Existing Oracle APEX 18.1 customers just need to install APEX 18.1 version to avail all the latest upgrades. To know more about Oracle APEX 18.1, be sure to check out the official Oracle Apex Blog. Xamarin Forms 3, the popular cross-platform UI Toolkit, is here! Firefox 60 arrives with exciting updates for web developers: Quantum CSS engine, new Web APIs and more Will Oracle become a key cloud player, and what will it mean to development & architecture community?  

Soft skills have been high on the tech agenda for a while now. This was largely down to the stereotypical (and unfair) image of the IT team as quiet, uncommunicative and awkward. But it is also related to broader changes in tech. Today, more people have a stake in software related projects. Product and project managers, even financial managers, will have their work impacted by software. That means everyone's communication around it is so important. This year's Skill Up report clearly highlights that developers are aware of how valuable soft skills really are. A huge 96% of respondents said they believe that developing soft skills is important: The Skill Up 2018 report will be available to download on Monday 4 June. Perhaps this isn't that surprising. We all know how much of a difference effective communication can make on a project. Without good communication, the technical bits of work become even harder. Why soft skills are important to developers working today If we go back to the stereotype of the ring-fenced IT team, it's not hard to see why soft skills are so valued by business leaders and management figures. It's almost as if trainers and consultants and management have conspired, saying 'we need these engineers to be more like us'. But whatever the management industry want from tech pros, it's clear that the real advantage of developing soft skills are for developers themselves. Here are just a few reasons why soft skills are so important for developers: It makes collaboration easier. You can't of course, collaborate if you don't communicate. And in today's Agile-centric software world, clear communication is crucial. When you're working to tight deadlines, being clear about your challenges and problems is vital. Soft skills can change how you focus on problems. Communication changes the way you understand problems. It changes the way they are framed. For example, is the database issue simply a technical issue, or is there a wider point about what the knock on effect for the user will be? There's usually a number of technical solutions, but to select the best one, you often need a frank and clear discussion about the impact different decisions might make. Soft skills open up your career path. When you develop your soft skills you find that you occupy a subtly different role within your team or even within your organization. You become more visible to other people - maybe even more trusted. That can only be a good thing. At a superficial level it's about status; but more importantly it allows you to push forward your own interests. How often have you found your opinions and ideas discounted or ignored? Yes, maybe your ideas were just really bad, but maybe you just didn't quite communicate them properly. Similarly, soft skills are also essential for anyone networking. True, networking is rarely anyone's favorite pastime, but doing it well could do wonders for your future. Also, meeting people is sometimes fun! Good people do exist! It makes work more enjoyable. Work isn't going to be great every day. But anyone who's worked in a job they hate will probably know that communication challenges are often at the root of their dissatisfaction. Of course, sometimes other people are the problem. But if you can keep up your end of the bargain, you've done all you can. And if you can start to help other people develop soft skills then you're well on your way to becoming an important and valuable leader. You learn more when you communicate. This really comes back to collaboration, but it's a little more specific than that. When technology changes so quickly and there are so many options out there - from what you learn to how you learn it - engaging with others can be so important. This might just be about the conversations you have with colleagues. But it's also the wider conversations you take part in within a given community. Perhaps you contribute to a forum, or maybe just like tweeting - either way you're not only playing an important role in the community, you're also pushing your knowledge and understanding forward. The reasons why soft skills are important could be huge. And given 96% of developers believe it to be important, it would seem that no one really needs convincing. However, it is important to see how soft skills impact different parts of your job, and even your life. Yes it's about writing great emails, but it isn't just that. Yes it's about learning how to network at conferences but it's also much more than that. You can't have great technical skill without soft skills The bottom line is that it's hard to be a great technician without soft skills. It's possible, but very rare. Nothing technical happens in a vacuum - technical things are always about people. Forget management speak and training courses: that, really, is the one thing you need to remember. Read next Soft skills every data scientist should teach their child ‘Soft’ Skills Every Data Pro Needs

Intel recently announced their fix for Spectre variant 4 attack that would significantly decrease CPU performance. While working on this fix, Intel anticipated some performance questions that were around the combined software and firmware microcode updates that helps mitigate Spectre variant 4. As discovered by Jann Horn of Google Project Zero and Ken Johnson of Microsoft Spectre variant 4 is a speculative store bypass. Speculative bypass is a variant 4 vulnerability, with this an attacker can leverage variant 4 to read older memory values in a CPU’s stack or other memory locations. This vulnerability allows less privileged code to read arbitrary privileged data and run older commands speculatively. Intel call its mitigation of this Spectre attack as Speculative Store Bypass Disable (SSBD). Intel delivers this as a microcode update to appliance manufacturers, operating system vendors and other ecosystem partners. According to Intel, this patch will be ‘off” by default but if enabled Intel has observed an impact on the the performance from 2%-8% approximately but this would all depend on the overall scores from benchmarks such as SPECint, SYSmark® 2014 SE, and more. Back in January, Intel was less forthcoming in communicating about the CPU performance impact caused by Spectre variant 2 mitigation. They just waved-off such concerns with claiming that the performance would vary depending on the workload. However, Google pushed back stating the impact was severe and ended-up developing its very own Retpoline software alternative. Recently, Intel tested the impact of SSBD running it on an unspecified Intel reference hardware and 8th Gen Intel Core desktop microprocessor. The results on the performance impact of the overall score are as follows: SYSmark 2014 SE: 4% SPECint_rate_base2006 (n copy): 2% SPECint_rate_base2006 (1 copy): 8% These benchmark results are similar even on a Skylake architecture Xeon processor. Intel has clearly stated that this mitigation will be set to ‘off’ by default giving customers a choice to enable it. This is because Intel speculates that most industry software partners will go with the default option to avoid overall performance degradation. They also noted that SSBD would add an extra layer of protection to the hardware of consumers and original equipment manufacturers to prevent the Speculative Store Bypass from occurring. They also stated that the existing browser mitigations against Spectre variant 1 will help to an extend in mitigating variant 4. You can know more about the latest security updates on Intel products form Intel security center. Top 5 penetration testing tools for ethical hackers 12 common malware types you should know Pentest tool in focus: Metasploit  

When Qt 5.11 was released last week, a technology preview of Qt for WebAssembly was released along with it, allowing developers to run Qt applications directly inside the browser window. WebAssembly is a brand-new technology that represents a paradigm shift in web development. Leveraging this technology web developers can write high-performance applications that can run directly in the browser. A common misconception about WebAssembly is that it will eventually replace JavaScript, but the fact is that it’s intended to be used alongside JavaScript. WebAssembly is nothing but a bytecode format which is executed in a web browser. This allows an application to be deployed to a device with a compliant web browser without going through any explicit installation steps. WebAssembly is now supported by all major web browsers as a binary format for allowing executable code in web pages that is nearly as fast as native machine code. Qt uses Emscripten, an open source LLVM to JavaScript compiler. Emscripten complies Qt applications so they can run in a web browser from a web server. Deploying applications on multiple platforms is a tedious task, with WebAssembly developers need to just compile and deploy on a web server for any platform that has a browser. This feature comes in handy especially for enterprise users with multiple clients who are using different platforms. These enterprises can use Qt for WebAssembly to compile their Qt or Quick app and deploy once. Adding support for WebAssembly is a huge step forward for Qt in order to become a truly cross-platform framework. The project is currently in beta and has been released as a technology preview. You can visit the official Qt blog for more information. Qt 5.11 has arrived! How to create multithreaded applications in Qt 3 ways to deploy a QT and OpenCV application

Last year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of its fast, reliable, and fully-managed cloud graph database, Amazon Neptune, at the Amazon Re:Invent 2017. Recently, AWS announced that Neptune is all set for the general public to explore. Graph databases store the relationships between connected data as graphs. This enables applications to access the data in a single operation, rather than a bunch of individual queries for all the data. Similarly, Neptune makes it easy for developers to build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets. Also, due to the availability of AWS managed graph database service, developers can further experience high scalability, security, durability, and availability. As Neptune becomes generally available, there are a large number of performance enhancements and updates, following are some additional upgrades: AWS CloudFormation support AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)/SDK support An update to Apache TinkerPop 3.3.2 Support for IAM roles with bulk loading from Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Some of the benefits of Amazon Neptune include: Neptune’s query processing engine is highly optimized for two of the leading graph models, Property Graph and W3C's RDF. It is also associated with the query languages, Apache TinkerPop Gremlin and RDF/SPARQL, providing customers the flexibility to choose the right approach based on their specific graph use case. Neptune storage scales automatically, without downtime or performance degradation as customer data increases. It allows developers to design sophisticated, interactive graph applications, which can query billions of relationships with millisecond latency. There are no upfront costs, licenses, or commitments required while using Amazon Neptune. Customers pay only for the Neptune resources they use. To know more interesting facts about Amazon Neptune in detail, visit its official blog. 2018 is the year of graph databases. Here’s why. From Graph Database to Graph Company: Neo4j’s Native Graph Platform addresses evolving needs of customers When, why and how to use Graph analytics for your big data

Kublr, a comprehensive Kubernetes platform for the enterprise, announced the release of Kublr 1.9.2 at the DevOpsCon, Berlin. Kublr provides a Kubernetes platform which makes it easy for Operations to deploy, run, and handle containerized applications. At the same time, it allows developers to use the development tools and the environment they wish to choose. Kublr 1.9.2 allows developers to deploy the complete Kublr platform and Kubernetes clusters in isolated environments without requiring access to the Internet. This comes as an advantage for organizations that have sensitive data, which should remain secure. However, while being secured and isolated this data also benefits from features such as auto-scaling, backup and disaster recovery, centralized monitoring and log collection. Slava Koltovich, CEO of Kublr, stated that,”We’ve learned from several financial institutions that there is a vital need for cloud-like capabilities in completely isolated environments. It became increasingly clear that, to be truly enterprise grade, Kublr needed to work in even the most secure environments. We are proud to now offer that capability out-of-the-box”. The Kublr 1.9.2 changelog includes the following key updates: Ability to deploy Kublr without access to Internet Support Docker EE for RHEL Support CentOS 7.4. Delete onprem clusters. Additional kubelet monitoring. The Changelog also includes some bug fixes of some known issues. Kublr further announced that it is now Certified Kubernetes for Kubernetes v1.10. To know more about Kublr 1.9.2 in detail, check the release notes. Why Agile, DevOps and Continuous Integration are here to stay: Interview with Nikhil Pathania, DevOps practitioner Kubernetes Containerd 1.1 Integration is now generally available Introducing OpenStack Foundation’s Kata Containers 1.0  

A week before its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple released iOS 11.4 for iPhones, iPads, and iPods. The new update got released just a month after the release of 11.3.1. The new release includes features such as AirPlay 2 multi-room audio, HomePod stereo pairing support, and storing messages in iCloud. Let’s have a look at the key features and upgrades in this new iOS 11.4 release: Major updates and highlights AirPlay 2 AirPlay 2 was announced by Apple last year at the Worldwide Developers Conference. It is Apple’s proprietary system that enables users to stream audio and videos from Apple devices to any other device with the help of wifi or other wired networks. It comes with following features: AirPlay 2 lets you play a particular song on different speakers situated throughout the house. It allows you to play music in a room from another room using an iOS device, HomePod, Apple TV, or Siri voice commands. After AirPlay 2’s integration with HomeKit, you can find the AirPlay 2 devices now displayed in the Apple Home app. AirPlay 2 allows you to control where music plays with the help of control center, lock screen or within apps on an iOS device. You can ask Siri to play music for you in any or multiple rooms with a device compatible with AirPlay 2 such as iPhone, iPad, HomePod, or Apple TV. Picking a call or playing a game on your iPhone or iPad is possible with AirPlay 2 without interrupting the playback on speakers. HomePod Stereo pairing HomePod which is Apple’s powerful speaker has also been updated in iOS 11.4 and has gained support for stereo pairing which allows you to group two HomePod speakers within a room as one. Updates to the HomePod Stereo are as follows: You can set up the HomePod stereo pair using iPhone or iPad. HomePod pair senses the location automatically and balances the sound on the speakers depending on its location. Messages in iCloud First promised as an iOS 11 feature, you’ll now be able to synchronize and store the Messages app history across all of your iOS and macOS devices in iOS 11.4. You can store all your messages, videos, photos, etc for free on iCloud. This helps free up space on your Apple device. On signing into a new device with the same iMessage account, all the messages appear. On deletion, conversations and messages are instantly removed from all your devices. All conversations are end-to-end encrypted. Apart from these key features and upgrades, there have also been certain improvements and fixes which can be found on the official iOS 11.4 update release notes by Apple. WWDC 2018 Preview: 5 Things to expect from Apple’s Developer Conference MariaDB 10.3.7 releases TensorFlow.js 0.11.1 releases!  

VMware recently released its brand new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud, known as the VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) 5.0. This release, announced at the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, Canada, is fully based on the new OpenStack Queens release. VIO provides customers with a fast and efficient solution to deploy and operate OpenStack clouds. These clouds are highly optimized for VMware's NFV and software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure, with advanced automation and onboarding. If one is already using VIO, they can use OpenStack's built-in upgrade capability to upgrade seamlessly to VIO 5.0. VMWare Integrated OpenStack(VIO)5.0 would be available in both Carrier and Data Center Editions.The VIO-Carrier Edition will addresses specific requirements of communication service providers (CSP). The improvements in this include: An Accelerated Data Plane Performance:  Support of NSX Managed Virtual Distributed Switch in Enhanced Data Path mode and DPDK provides customers with: Significant improvements in application response time, reduced network latencies breakthrough network performance optimized data plane techniques in VMware vSphere. Multi-Tenant Resource is now scalable: This will provide resource guarantee and resource isolation to each tenant. It will also support elastic resource scaling that allows CSPs to add new resources dynamically across different vSphere clusters to adapt to traffic conditions or transition from pilot phase to production in place. OpenStack for 5G and Edge Computing: Customers will have full control over the micro data centers and apps at the edge via automated API-driven orchestration and lifecycle management. The solution will help tackle enterprise use cases such as utilities, oil and gas drilling platforms, point-of-sale applications, security cameras, and manufacturing plants. Also, Telco oriented use-cases such Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), latency sensitivity VNF deployments, and operational support systems (OSS) would be addressed. VIO 5.0 also enables CSP and enterprise customers to utilize Queens advancements to support mission-critical workloads, across container and cloud-native application environments. Some new features include: High Scalability: One can run upto 500 hosts and 15,000 VMs in a single region using the VIO5.0. It will also introduce support for multiple regions at once with monitoring and metrics at scale. High Availability for Mission-Critical Workloads: Creating snapshots, clones, and backups of attached volumes to dramatically improve VM and application uptime via enhancements to the Cinder volume driver is now possible. Unified Virtualized Environment: Ability to deploy and run both VM and container workloads on a single virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) and with a single network fabric based on VMware NSX-T Data Center. This architecture will enable customers to seamlessly deploy hybrid workloads where some components run in containers while others run in VMs. Advanced Security: Consolidate and simplify user and role management based on enhancements to Keystone, including the use of application credentials as well as system role assignment. VMware Integrated OpenStack 5.0 takes security to new levels with encryption of internal API traffic, Keystone to Keystone federation, and support for major identity management providers that includes VMware Identity Manager. Optimization and Standardization of DNS Services: Scalable, on-demand DNS as a service via Designate. Customers can auto-register any VM or Virtual Network Function (VNF) to a corporate approved DNS server instead of manually registering newly provisioned hosts through Designate. To know more about the other features in detail read VMWare’s official blog. How to create and configure an Azure Virtual Machine Introducing OpenStack Foundation’s Kata Containers 1.0 SDLC puts process at the center of software engineering

Data forms an integral part of every business or organization which is used to make valuable decisions based on changing circumstances. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a widely adopted technique used by machines to understand and communicate with humans in human language. This enables human to access, analyze and extract data more intelligently from a huge amount of unstructured data. Intel AI Lab’s team of NLP researchers and developers has introduced NLP Architect, a new open-source Python library. This library can be used as a platform for future research and developing the state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for natural language processing and natural language understanding. Rapid and recent advancements in deep learning and neural network paradigms has led to the growth in NLP domain. This new library offers flexibility in implementing NLP solutions which are packed with the past and ongoing NLP research and development work of Intel AI Lab. NLP Architect overview The current version of NLP Architect offers noteworthy features which form the backbone in terms of research and practical development. All the following models are provided with required training and inference processes: It consists of NLP core models such as BIST and NP chunker that allows powerful extraction of linguistic features for NLP workflow NLU models such as intent extraction (IE), name entity recognition (NER) used for intent-based applications It consists of modules which address semantic understanding Now consists of components which hold a key for conversational AI such as chatbot applications, dialog applications and more End-to-end deep learning applications such as Q&A, reading comprehension and more Source: AI Intel Blog This library of NLP components provides the required functionality to extend NLP solutions with a range of audience. It provides excellent media for analysis and optimization of Intel software and hardware on NLP workloads. In addition to these models, new features such as data pipelines, common functional calls, and utilities related to NLP domain which are majorly used when deploying models, are added. To know more about the updates, you can refer the official Intel AI blog. How NLP Architect can be used You can train models using the provided datasets, configurations and algorithms You can train models based on your own data You can create new models or extend your existing models You can explore various common and not-so-common challenges faced in NLP domain using deep learning models You can optimize and extend the use of state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms You can integrate various modules and utilities from the library to NLP solutions Deep learning frameworks support This repository supports several open source deep learning frameworks such as: Intel Nervana Graph Intel Neon Intel-optimized TensorFlow Dynet Keras Note: We can expect the list of models to update in future. All these models will run with Python 3.5+ If you want to download the open-source Python library or want to contribute to the project by providing valuable feedback, download the code from Github. A complete documentation for all core modules with end-to-end examples can be found in their official page. Intel takes Facebook’s help on AI chip; Cisco uses AI to predict IT services; and more Introducing Intel’s OpenVINO computer vision toolkit for edge computing Facelifting NLP with Deep Learning

The Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is Apple’s yearly summer event for developers where the tech giant announces all the major updates related to its software and hardware platform. The event spanning from June 4-8, at McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, is expected to make big news as Apple plans to launch iOS 12 for iPhone and iPad, MacOS 10.14 for desktops among other announcements. Along with these annual OS releases we can also expect to see improvements to Apple’s very own Swift programming language slated to be released later in the year and plenty of other updates to ARKit and Siri as well. iOS 12 will have rigorous testing and digital wellbeing in focus Image Source: Apple iOS A number of rumors are circulating about what new features will be added to iOS 12 and it sounds like it is going to be a subtle change rather than drastic upgrades. Codenamed “Peace” iOS 12 will heavily focus on performance and bug fixes. Earlier this year on his visit to China, Tim Cook, stressed on the fact that due to the growing user base of the iOS devices, it becomes imperative to do rigorous testing before releasing an update to the software. This response from the Apple CEO came after a lot of advertisements featuring iOS 11 bugs surfaced on the internet. So what features are expected to be rolled out in iOS 12? Here is a list of possible announcements at WWDC: A Digital Health tool for parents, enabling them to manage children’s digital time. Animoji Update Animoji integration into FaceTime Sleep tracking improvements Multi-user sessions support for AR games and FaceTime Improved message and presencing technologies Another important update that is rumored to be added this time around is the Unified App Framework named Project Marzipan, which will let developers create a single app with an interface that adapts to the device it’s running on. While sources from Bloomberg say that this could be rolled out only as early as next year, we could see some sort of announcement at the conference next month. Will macOS 10.14 finally bring iOS into its fold? Image Source: Apple macOS The 2018 edition of Apple’s Mac operating system is likely to be released as a public beta, a month after the WWDC; followed by an actual release in September or October, based on the release trends from the previous editions. While Tim Cook, hinted that there would be no cross-platform compatibility between iOS and macOS applications, such a feature will greatly increase the number of available apps on Macs. It could also mean that Apple will bring some of its iOS-only apps, like Home, to the Mac. Apart from this, we can see several minor additions to macOS like improvements in Safari for better video conferencing and AI image identification capabilities. ABI (application binary interface) comes to Swift 5 Image Source: Apple Swift Swift continues its evolution as one of the safest, fastest, and most expressive languages, with better performance and new features in every release. One of the most awaited features in this year’s edition is Application Binary Interface (ABI) stability, a feature which was originally intended for the Swift 4 release, but got delayed. If you already know what an API is, then understanding ABI becomes a lot easier. It is a compiled version of an API. When you write source code, you access the library through an API. Once the code is compiled, your application accesses the binary data in the library through the ABI. One of the big advantages of ABI is that it enables OS vendors to embed a Swift Standard Library and runtime in the OS that is compatible with applications built with Swift 5 or later. Other notable features to be announced at WWDC are: String ergonomics to improve processing of the string type Improvements to existing standard library facilities Improvements to the Foundation API so the Cocoa SDK can work seamlessly with Swift Syntactic additions Laying the groundwork for a new concurrency model Is 2018 the year when users say, “Hey Siri, you the best!”? Image Source: Apple Siri Siri was one of the most widely-used voice assistants in the world when it was first introduced in 2011. Since then Apple has faced some stiff competition from Amazon powered Alexa and Google's me-too efforts tied to its Assistant running on Android, iOS and most of the Google products. The pressure is mounting on Apple to compete in this wildly competitive voice platform space. Hopefully this year Apple would address or add several key capabilities in Siri that could help them stand out. The most likely enhancements include: SiriKit: New domains to be the added to the current APIs. Siri already includes messaging, payments, phone calls, and ride bookings. Workflow: Apple acquired Workflow a year ago, a Workflow Intent for Siri could enable third parties to craft any sort of skill for users to launch with their voice, or graphically from any iOS device. Apples hope that this could be their answer to Alexa skills or Google’s Actions. Better “Hey Siri”: Apple has been enhancing how different Siri devices work together on the same network, an issue that neither Amazon or Google have really had. This is still a work in progress, but HomePod already does a good job of silencing your iPhone when both are listening for "Hey Siri." ARKit Image Source: Apple ARKit Last year at WWDC Apple debuted ARKit and enabled developers to create engaging virtual experiences augmented over the real world. This year we can expect a lot of improvements in this tool. For starters, the new ARKit 1.5 which was released last month brings a lot of new features to the framework such as the ability to detect vertical and irregularly shaped surfaces, detecting 2D objects and allowing developers to interact with them with better resolution. With the framework now evolving we expect to see some cool demos in this year’s conference; perhaps an integration of ARKit with Maps, along the lines of what we saw in the I/O conference earlier this month. These announcements are exciting, confirming our hunch that Apple will show off their high-profile initiatives that will shape the coming year. While only a few thousand lucky developers will get a chance to attend, others can live stream the event on Apple’s official website. Apple steals AI chief from Google F8 AR Announcements Watson-CoreML : IBM and Apple’s new machine learning collaboration project

Epicor Software Corporation recently announced its partnership with Microsoft Azure to accelerate its Cloud ERP adoption. This partnership further aims at delivering Epicor’s enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform. The company plans to deploy its Epicor Prophet 21 enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite on Microsoft Azure. This would enable customers a faster growth and innovation as they look forward to digitally transform their business with the reliable, secure, and scalable features of Microsoft Azure. With the Epicor and Microsoft collaboration customers can now access the power of Epicor ERP and Prophet 21 running on Microsoft Azure. Having Microsoft as a partner, Epicor, Leverages a range of technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to deliver ready-to-use, accurate solutions for mid-market manufacturers and distributors. Plans to explore Microsoft technologies for advanced search, speech-to-text, and other use cases to deliver modern human/machine interfaces that improve productivity for customers. Steve Murphy, CEO, Epicor said that,”Microsoft’s focus on the ‘Intelligent Cloud’ and ‘Intelligent Edge’ complement our customer-centric focus”. He further stated that after looking at several cloud options, they felt Microsoft Azure offers the best foundation for building and deploying enterprise business applications that enables customers’ businesses to adapt and grow. As most of the prospects these days ask about Cloud ERP, Epicor says that by deploying such a model they would be ready to offer their customers the ability to move onto cloud with the confidence that Microsoft Azure offers. Read more about this in detail on Epicor’s official blog. Rackspace now supports Kubernetes-as-a-Service How to secure an Azure Virtual Network What Google, RedHat, Oracle, and others announced at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2018

HTC Vive Focus 2.0 update promises long battery life, among other things for the VR headset HTC Vive Focus, the standalone VR headset, gets a major system update 2.0, making the headset even more versatile, before its global release. HTC announced at the annual Vive Ecosystem Conference in Shenzhen, that its standalone 6DoF Vive headset can install a System update 2.0 which promises long battery life, ability to link with HTC smartphones, passenger and surroundings mode along with other exciting features. Vive Focus Smartphone Integration Features Here’s a quick rundown of updates made to HTC Vive Focus: Key feature updates Smartphone Integration: There is a newly added ability to link HTC Smartphone with the Vive Focus. This helps users take calls, receive messages, and view social media notifications from a paired HTC smartphone, without taking the headset off. This new Focus feature will be made available first to the HTC U12+ and will later get distributed for all the other HTC smartphone users through HTC’s and Tencent’s app stores. Surroundings Mode: This mode is handy when using Vive focus in a moving vehicle. It is a see-through mode which can be enabled by double-clicking the power button on the headset. The camera in the headset then gets activated. This helps the user to see the world outside the headset without taking it off. Passenger Mode: This mode makes it possible for the users to experience the Virtual world seamlessly, making sure that the user does not drift away in the virtual world due to the turbulence of a moving vehicle. Stream Content from Viveport or SteamVR: The new Vive Focus update also provides users the ability to stream Viveport or SteamVR content from a PC to a Vive Focus using Riftcat VRidge app over 5GHz WiFi. VR apps installation: You can now install apps directly on the microSD card with the new System Update 2.0. You can also purchase apps using credit cards from within the Viveport store. Other Upcoming Features There are other upcoming features lined up for HTC Vive Focus in the third quarter of 2018. These features include: Software update which will make Vive’s 3DoF headset controller behave like a 6DoF controller by using computer vision technology on focus’ camera. Hand movements tracking with the help of front cameras using gesture recognition technology. You will be able to stream different forms of media such as apps, videos and games directly from the six-inch U12+ phone screen to the bigger VR display. An additional combination of media storage device and external battery pack, the Seagate VR Power Drive will also be enabled in the HTC Vive Focus. The VR power drive is also compatible with U12+ and will be optimized for the Focus as well. This promises to improve the battery life considerably. Vive Focus system update 2.0 is available on all HTC Vive Focus devices which are available only in China for now. No announcement has been made regarding its availability in the West, but with the company shipping dev kits to developers in the past few weeks, the announcement will be made soon. Also, details regarding the cost and storage capacity will be announced later this year but it’s not yet confirmed. With competitors such as Google daydream powered Lenovo Mirage Solo, the latest updates made to the HTC Vive Focus have built major anticipation in the mind of the users regarding what more to expect in the VR world. Qualcomm may announce a new chipset for standalone AR/VR headsets this week at Augmented World Expo Top 7 modern Virtual Reality hardware systems Understanding the hype behind Magic Leap’s New Augmented Reality Headsets