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The Swift team released Swift version 4.2 yesterday. Swift 4.2 comes with updates to the Swift language including generics improvement, and standard library updates. Swift 4.2 also comprises changes to the package manager. Swift is a general-purpose and multi-paradigm programming language developed by Apple Inc. for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and Linux. Swift is built for uses that range from systems programming to mobile and desktop apps, to scaling up to cloud services. Let’s have a look at the key features in Swift 4.2. Language updates Swift 4.2 is a major language release and comprises of language changes such as Generics improvements, and Standard library updates. Generics Improvement Better support has been added for Generics which ultimately makes more of your code reusable. Standard Library updates The standard library in this latest release consists of a number of new features such as improvements to the Hashable protocol and a new unified set of randomization functions and protocols. Other updates Swift 4.2 has enabled the binary compatibility for future releases of Swift. Support has been added for batch mode compilation that results in faster build times. There’s a change in calling convention for retain/release cycle which helps reduce the code size and improve runtime performance. Package Manager Updates Swift 4.2 explores three new features namely, batch mode support, improved scheme generation logic, and automatic Xcode project generation. With Swift 4.2, the swift targets will be now compiled using the Swift compiler’s batch mode The scheme generation logic has been improved and it generates the following schemes: One scheme comprising all regular and test targets of the root package. One scheme per executable target consisting of the test targets whose dependencies intersect with the dependencies of the executable target. Swift 4.2 offers automatic Xcode project generation. The generate-xcodeproj here has a new –watch option which enables it to watch the file system and regenerate the Xcode project automatically, if needed. For more information on this release, check out the official release notes. Your First Swift Program What’s new in Vapor 3, the popular Swift based web framework Swift’s Core Libraries

US President Donald Trump signed a bill called the National Quantum Initiative Act. This is a nation-wide quantum computing plan will establish goals for the next decade to accelerate the development of quantum technology. What is the National Quantum Initiative Act about? The bill for quantum technologies was originally introduced in June this year. This bill is a commitment that various departments such as the NIST, NSF, and Secretary of Energy together will provide $1.25B in funding from 2019 to 2023 to promote activities in the quantum information science. The new act and the funding that comes with it will boost quantum research in the US. As stated in the Act: “The bill defines ‘quantum information science’ as the storage, transmission, manipulation, or measurement of information that is encoded in systems that can only be described by the laws of quantum physics.” The president signed the bill as a law last week on Friday. What will the National Quantum Initiative Act allow? This bill aims to further USA’s position in the area of quantum information science and its technology applications. The bill will support research and development of quantum technologies that can lead to practical applications. It seeks to: Expand the workforce on quantum computing Promote research opportunities across various academic levels Address any knowledge gaps dd more facilities and centers for testing and education in this field Promote rapid development of quantum-based technologies The bill also seeks to: Improve the collaboration between the Federal Government of USA, its laboratories and industries, universities Promote the development of international standards for quantum information science Facilitate technology innovation and private sector commercialization Meet economic and security goals of USA The US President will work with Federal agencies, working groups, councils, subcommittees, etc., to set goals for the National Quantum Initiative Act. What’s the fuss with quantum computing? As we mentioned is a previous post: “Quantum computing uses quantum mechanics in quantum computers to solve a diverse set of complex problems. It uses qubits to store information in parallel dimensions. Quantum computers can work through a solution involving large parameters with far fewer operations than a standard computer.” This does not mean that a quantum computer is necessarily faster than a classical computer, a quantum computer is just better at solving complex problems that a regular one will take way too long if at all it can solve such problems. Quantum computers have great potential to solve future problems, and is hence drawing attention from tech companies and governments. Like D-Wave launching a Quantum cloud service, UK researchers working on quantum entanglements, and Rigetti working on a 128 qubit chip. What are the people saying? As is the general observation around the motivation for quantum computing, this comment from Reddit puts it nicely: “Make no mistake, this is not only about advancing computing power, but this is also about maintaining cryptographic dominance. Quantum computers will be able to break a lot of today's encryption.” Another comment expresses: “Makes sense, Trump has a tendency to be in 2 different states simultaneously.” You can read the bill in its entirety on the Congress Government website. Quantum computing – Trick or treat? Rigetti Computing launches the first Quantum Cloud Services to bring quantum computing to businesses Did quantum computing just take a quantum leap? A two-qubit chip by UK researchers makes controlled quantum entanglements possible

iPadOS was first announced at Apple’s WWDC 2019 conference as a new operating system for Apple’s iPad which used iOS. Basically, iPadOS builds on the same foundation as iOS, adding intuitive features specific to the large display of iPad. Now, Apple iPadOS is available for iPad Air 2 and later and iPad mini 4 and later. iPadOS has a new Home screen layout with icons arranged in a tighter grid to give you more room for apps and information. What’s new in iPadOS Split View and Slide Over Split View allows you to work on multiple files and documents simultaneously while using the same app for multiple purposes. With Slide Over, you can quickly move between apps by swiping along the bottom. You can also swipe up to see all the apps in Slide Over and make it full screen by dragging it to the top. You can also open a window from the same app in multiple spaces so you can work on different projects across your iPad. The updated App Switcher shows all spaces and windows for all apps along with title windows and the App Exposé allows you to see all the open windows for an app by tapping its icon in the Dock. Updates to Apple Pencil Apple Pencil integration now brings more natural customizations to iPadOS. The latency has been reduced to 9 milliseconds and tool palette has been redesigned. You can drag it to either side of the screen, or minimize it in the corner so you have more room for your content. Apple Pencil also has a pixel eraser and a ruler.  You can also quickly take a screenshot using Apple Pencil by dragging it from either bottom corner. Improvements in the Files app The Files app gets a major improvement and iCloud Drive support for folder sharing. You can now access files on a USB drive, SD card, or hard drive. You can also share folders with friends, family, and colleagues in iCloud Drive. You can also easily browse files deep in nested folders in the new Column View. Quick Actions makes it easy to rotate, mark up, or create a PDF in the Files app. Improved Text Editing Text editing on the iPad receives a major update with iPadOS. With Scroll bar scrubbing, you can instantly navigate long documents, web pages, and conversations. You can also select text just by tapping and swiping. You can double-tap to quickly select addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and more. With a simple three‑finger swipe to the left, you can undo gestures or redo by swiping three fingers to the right. You can also quickly select email messages, files, and folders by tapping with two fingers and dragging. Other updates in iPadOS You can use your iPad as a second display for additional screen space. New Dark Mode option for low-light environments New Photos tab lets you browse your photo library with different levels of curation Apps launch is up to 2x faster and unlocking the iPad Pro is up to 30 percent faster Support for Apple Arcade, a game subscription service with over 100 amazing new games, all with no ads or additional purchases. Bug in iPadOS grants third-party keyboards full access Apple has warned its users that a bug has been found in iOS and iPadOS that can result in keyboard extensions being granted full access even if you haven't approved this access. This issue does not impact Apple’s built-in keyboards. It also doesn't impact third-party keyboards that don't make use of full access. Apple says that the issue will be fixed soon in an upcoming software update. These are a select few updates. For more information read the detailed coverage on Apple iPadOS. Apple’s September 2019 Event: iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max, Watch Series 5, Apple TV+, new iPad and more. Apple releases Safari 13 with opt-in dark mode support, FIDO2-compliant USB security keys support and more!. Apple accidentally unpatches a fixed bug in iOS 12.4 that enables its jailbreaking

Cloud mining has become into one of the biggest trends in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The reason is simple: it makes mining Bitcoin incredibly easy. By using cloud, rather than hardware to mine bitcoin, you can avoid the stress and inconvenience of managing hardware. Instead of using the processing power from hardware, you share the processing power of the cloud space (or more specifically the remote data center). In theory, cloud mining should be much more profitable than mining with your own hardware. However, it's easy to be caught out. At best some schemes are useless - at worst, they could be seen as a bit of a pyramid scheme. For this reason, it's essential you do your homework. However, although there are some risks associated with cloud mining, it does have benefits. Arguably it makes Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, more accessible to ordinary people. Provided people get to know the area, what works and what definitely doesn't it could be a positive opportunity for many people. How to start cloud mining Let's first take a look at different methods of cloud mining. If you're going to do it properly, it's worth taking some time to consider your options. At a top level there are 3 different types of cloud mining. Renting out your hashing power This is the most common form of cloud mining. To do this, you simple 'rent out' a certain amount of your computer's hashing power. In case you don't know, hashing power is essentially your hardware's processing power; it's what allows your computer to use and run algorithms. Hosted mining As the name suggests, this is where you simply use an external machine to mine Bitcoin. To do this, you'll have to sign up with a cloud mining provider. If you do this, you'll need to be clear on their terms and conditions, and take care when calculating profitability. Virtual hosted mining Virtual hosted mining is a hybrid approach to cloud mining. To do this, you use a personal virtual server and then install the required software. This approach can be a little more fun, especially if you want to be able to build your own Bitcoin mining set up, but of course this poses challenges too. Depending on what you want to achieve any of these options may be right for you. Which cloud mining provider should you choose? As you'd expect from a trend that's growing rapidly, there's a huge number of cloud mining providers out there that you can use. The downside is that there are plenty of dubious providers that aren't going to be profitable for you. For this reason, it's best to do your research and read what others have to say. One of the most popular cloud mining providers is Hashflare. With Hashflare, you can buy a number of different types of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. You can also select your 'mining pool', which is something many providers won't let you do. Controlling the profitability of cloud mining can be difficult, so having control over your mining pool could be important. A mining pool is a bit like a hedge fund - a group of people pool together their processing resources, and the 'pay out' will be split according to the amount of work put in in order to create what's called a 'block', which is essentially a record or ledger of transactions. Hashflare isn't the only cloud mining solution available. Genesis Mining is another very high profile provider. It's incredibly accessible - you can begin a Bitcoin mining contract for just $15.99. Of course, the more you invest the better the deal you'll get. For a detailed exploration and comparison of cloud mining solutions, this TechRadar article is very useful. Take a look before you make any decisions! How can I ensure cloud mining is profitable? It's impossible to ensure profitability. Remember - cloud mining providers are out to make a profit. Although you might well make a profit, it's not necessarily in their interests to be paying money out to you. Calculating cloud mining profitability can be immensely complex. To do it properly you need to be clear on all the elements that are going to impact profitability. This includes: The cryptocurrency you are mining How much mining will cost per unit of hashing power The growth rate of block difficulty How the network hashrate might increase over the length of your mining contract There are lots of mining calculators out there that you can use to calculate how profitable cloud mining is likely to be. This article is particularly good at outlining how you can go about calculating cloud mining profitability. Its conclusion is an interesting take that's worth considering if you are interested in starting cloud mining: is "it profitable because the underlying cryptocurrency went up, or because the mining itself was profitable?" As the writer points out, if it is the cryptocurrency's value, then you might just be better off buying the cryptocurrency. Read next A brief history of Blockchain Write your first Blockchain: Learning Solidity Programming in 15 minutes “The Blockchain to Fix All Blockchains” – Overledger, the meta blockchain, will connect all existing blockchains

Two days ago, the Qt team released the technical preview of an open source QML design viewer based on the Qt for WebAssembly. This design viewer will enable the QML application to be run on web browsers like Chrome, Safari, FireFox and Edge. The Qt for WebAssembly is a platform plugin which allows the user to build Qt applications with web page integrations.  For running a custom QML application, a user will have to define the main QML file and the import paths with a .qmlproject file. The project folder then has to be compressed as a ZIP file and uploaded to the design viewer. Users can also generate a resource file out of their project and upload the package. Image source: Qt blog Read More: Qt introduces Qt for MCUs, a graphics toolkit for creating a fluid user interface on microcontrollers The Qt team has tested the design viewer with the latest versions of Chrome, Safari, FireFox and Edge and has found that the QML application runs well on all the web browsers. “The startup and compilation time depends on your browser and configuration, but the actual performance of the application, once it is started, is indistinguishable from the same application running on the desktop,” states the official blog. This design viewer also runs on Android and iOS and is shipped with most QML modules  and is based on a snapshot of Qt 5.14. Many users have liked the web based design viewer A user on Hacker News comments, “One of the most beautiful things I have seen in 2019. Brilliant!” Another comment read, “This looks pretty cool! I am actually shopping for a GUI framework for a new project and WebAssembly support is a potential critical feature.” Qt and LG Electronics partner to make webOS as the platform of choice for embedded smart devices GitLab retracts its privacy invasion policy after backlash from community Are we entering the quantum computing era? Google’s Sycamore achieves ‘quantum supremacy’ while IBM refutes the claim

Last week, the Golang team announced that the Go module mirror, index, and checksum database are now production-ready thus adding reliability and security to the Go ecosystem. For Go 1.13 module users, the go command will use the module mirror and checksum database by default. New production-ready modules for Go 1.13 module Module Mirror A module mirror is a special kind of module proxy that caches metadata and source code in its own storage system. This allows the mirror to continue to serve source code that is no longer available from the original locations thus speeding up downloads and protect users from the disappearing dependencies. According to the team, module mirror is served at proxy.golang.org, which the go command will use by default for module users as of Go 1.13. For users still running an earlier version of the go command, they can use this service by setting GOPROXY=https://proxy.golang.org in their local environment. Read Also: The Go team shares new proposals planned to be implemented in Go 1.13 and 1.14 Module Index The module index is served by index.golang.org. It is a public feed of new module versions that become available through proxy.golang.org. Module index is useful for tool developers who want to keep their own cache of what’s available in proxy.golang.org, or to keep up-to-date on some of the newest modules go developers use. Read Also: Implementing Garbage collection algorithms in Golang [Tutorial] Checksum Database Modules introduced the go.sum file, a list of SHA-256 hashes of the source code and go.mod files of each dependency when it was first downloaded. The go command can use these hashes to detect misbehavior by an origin server or proxy that gives a different code for the same version. However, the go.sum file has a limitation, it works entirely by trust based on user’s first use. When a user adds a version of a never seen before dependency, the go command fetches the code and adds lines to the go.sum file quickly. The problem is that those go.sum lines aren’t being checked against anyone else’s and thus they might be different from the go.sum lines that the go command just generated for someone else. The checksum database ensures that the go command always adds the same lines to everyone's go.sum file. Whenever the go command receives new source code, it can verify the hash of that code against this global database to make sure the hashes match, ensuring that everyone is using the same code for a given version. The checksum database is served by sum.golang.org and is built on a Transparent Log (or “Merkle tree”) of hashes backed by Trillian, a transparent, highly scalable and cryptographically verifiable data store. The main advantage of a Merkle tree is that it is tamper-proof and has properties that don’t allow for misbehavior to go undetected, making it more trustworthy. The Merkle tree checks inclusion proofs (if a specific record exists in the log) and “consistency” proofs (that the tree hasn’t been tampered with) before adding new go.sum lines to a user’s module’s go.sum file. This checksum database allows the go command to safely use an otherwise untrusted proxy. Because there is an auditable security layer sitting on top of it, a proxy or origin server can’t intentionally, arbitrarily, or accidentally start giving you the wrong code without getting caught. “Even the author of a module can’t move their tags around or otherwise change the bits associated with a specific version from one day to the next without the change being detected,” the blog mentions. Developers are excited about the launch of the module mirror and checksum database and look forward to checking it out. https://twitter.com/hasdid/status/1167795923944124416 https://twitter.com/jedisct1/status/1167183027283353601 To know more about this news in detail, read the official blog post. Other news in Programming Why Perl 6 is considering a name change? The Julia team shares its finalized release process with the community TypeScript 3.6 releases with stricter generators, new functions in TypeScript playground, better Unicode support for identifiers and more

Team Tableau Public Kristin Adderson December 23, 2020 - 9:01pm December 24, 2020 Let’s be real, 2020 has been one incredibly wild ride that no one expected. Despite it all, one thing remained steadfast: the Tableau Public global community of data enthusiasts’ commitment to bringing impactful (and often mindblowing) data insights to life. To mark the end of 2020, we’re taking a look back at some of the most amazing visualizations created by the #DataFam this year.  We looked back at highlights from this year’s featured visualizations. Our “Viz of the Day” gallery represents the many ways our community uses Tableau Public to visualize the data topics they’re most passionate about. Each day, the Tableau Public team selects and features a “Viz of the Day” (VOTD) based on a variety of criteria. A viz might tell a clear and compelling story. Perhaps it is visually stunning or includes an innovative chart type. Or, the viz might result from one of the community’s social data projects or competitions. Whatever the reason, each featured viz shares a common trait—demonstrating the realm of possibility when using data to express oneself.  There were over 200 visualizations featured as “Viz of the Day” in 2020. The Tableau Public team reviewed each one and hand-picked our favorite from each month. We’ve strived to highlight a diversity of visualizations with different chart-types on a wide range of topics from authors across the globe. Read about each one, then click on the thumbnail to see each creation in its full glory. See a viz that you love? Don’t forget to let that author know by logging in and “favoriting” it.    JANUARY  The 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index by Lali Jularbal The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) takes an in-depth look at how people experience three dimensions of poverty—Health, Education, and Living Standards—in 101 developing countries. Lali Jularbal visualizes the developing country’s rankings by MPI, Intensity, Headcount, and poverty dimensions. Favorite this viz   FEBRUARY Racial Integration in U.S. Schools by Candra McCrae Desegregation orders were implemented by the Supreme Court to help eliminate segregation in schools across the United States. However, according to a recent Gallup Poll, 57% of U.S. adults believe school segregation is still a moderate or severe problem. In this visualization, Candra McRae looks at the history of racial integration in U.S. schools and explores ideas that could help reduce segregation. Favorite this viz   MARCH Popular Pizza Toppings by Amy Tran Whether or not pineapple belongs on a pizza was arguably one of the most controversial debate topics in 2020. Dig into this #MakeoverMonday visualization by Amy Tran to learn about the most popular pizza toppings in Britain. Did your favorite topping make the list? Favorite this viz   APRIL The World's Dependence on the Travel Industry by Chantilly Jaggernauth The travel and tourism industry accounted for more than 10% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019. Explore this visualization by Chantilly Jaggernauth to see the amount of GDP generated by travel and tourism, including hotels, airlines, travel agencies, and more, in various countries across the globe. Favorite this viz   MAY Teladoc Health, Inc. by Praveen P Jose  Many countries around the world are still struggling to control the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). As a result, telemedicine has become more popular than ever before. In this visualization, Praveen P Jose looks at the stock price of leading telemedicine provider Teladoc over the last five years. Favorite this viz   JUNE Exonerations in America by JR Copreros Over 2,500 wrongful convictions have been reversed in the U.S. since 1989. Using data from the National Registry of Exonerations, JR Copreros visualizes exonerations by race, state, type of crime, and more, revealing systemic flaws in the criminal justice system. Favorite this viz   JULY Economic Empowerment of Women by Yobanny Samano According to the World Bank, the Women, Business and the Law (WBL) Index, composed of eight indicators, "tracks how the law affects women at various stages in their lives, from the basics of transportation to the challenges of starting a job and getting a pension." In this #MakeoverMonday visualization, Yobanny Samano looks at the WBL index scores for 190 countries. Favorite this viz   AUGUST Constellations Born of Mythology by Satoshi Ganeko How did constellations get their names? Many of them are named after figures in Greek and Roman mythology. Brush up on your stargazing skills and explore this #IronQuest visualization by Satoshi Ganeko to learn about each one. Favorite this viz   SEPTEMBER The Day Lebanon Changed by Soha Elghany and Fred Najjar On August 4, 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the port city of Beirut exploded, killing over 200 people and causing billions of dollars in damage. Soha Elghany and Fred Najjar collaborated to create this visualization, which shows the impact of one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history. Favorite this viz   OCTOBER The Air We Breathe by Christian Felix According to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO), 97% of cities in low- and middle-income countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants do not meet WHO air quality guidelines. In this visualization, #IronViz Champion Christian Felix explores the correlation between breathing air inequality and wealth inequality. Favorite this viz   NOVEMBER The Most Popular Dog Breeds by Anjushree B V In 2019, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi made it onto the Top 10 Most Popular Dog Breeds list for the first time. Check out this visualization by Anjushree B V to learn how each dog breed's popularity has changed over time. Favorite this viz   DECEMBER Giant Pandas Overseas by Wendy Shijia  Did you know that China rents out its pandas? Today, over 60 giant pandas, native to south-central China, can be found worldwide. Dive into this visualization by Wendy Shijia to learn when each panda living abroad will be returned to its home country. Favorite this viz   And that’s a wrap! Cheers to an incredible year, made possible by Tableau Public users like you. Be sure to subscribe to “Viz of the Day” to get more visualizations like these—another year’s worth of awe-inspiring community-created data inspiration awaits.  Craving more viz-spiration? Check out these resources commemorating Tableau Public’s 10th anniversary: Ten most-favorited vizzes to celebrate ten viz-tastic years of Tableau Public Ten years later—What Tableau Public means to our community and the world If Data Could Talk: A walk down memory lane with Tableau Public

Modern engineering practices, like Agile and DevOps, are redirecting the ownership of security, operations, and cost management from centralized teams to workload owners—catalyzing innovations at a higher velocity than in traditional data centers. In this new world, workload owners are expected to build, deploy, and manage cloud workloads that are secure, reliable, performant, and cost-effective. If you’re a workload owner, you want well-architected deployments, so you might be wondering, how well are you doing today? Of all the actions you can take, which ones will make the biggest difference for your Azure workloads? And how will you know if you’re making progress? That’s why we created Azure Advisor Score—to help you understand how well your Azure workloads are following best practices, assess how much you stand to gain by remediating issues, and prioritize the most impactful recommendations you can take to optimize your deployments. Introducing Advisor Score Advisor Score enables you to get the most out of your Azure investment using a centralized dashboard to monitor and work towards optimizing the cost, security, reliability, operational excellence, and performance of your Azure resources. Advisor Score will help you: Assess how well you’re following the best practices defined by Azure Advisor and the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework. Optimize your deployments by taking the most impactful actions first. Report on your well-architected progress over time. Baselining is one great use case we’ve already seen with customers. You can use Advisor Score to baseline yourself and track your progress over time toward your goals by reviewing your score’s daily, weekly, or monthly trends. Then, to reach your goals, you can take action first on the individual recommendations and resources with the most impact. How Advisor Score works Advisor Score measures how well you’re adopting Azure best practices, comparing and quantifying the impact of the Advisor recommendations you’re already following, and the ones you haven’t implemented yet. Think of it as a gap analysis for your deployed Azure workloads. The overall score is calculated on a scale from 0 percent to 100 percent both in aggregate and separately for cost, security (coming soon), reliability, operational excellence, and performance. A score of 100 percent means all your resources follow all the best practices recommended in Advisor. On the other end of the spectrum, a score of zero percent means that none of your resources follow the recommended best practices. Advisor Score weighs all resources, both those with and without active recommendations, by their individual cost relative to your total spend. This builds on the assumption that the resources which consume a greater share of your total investment in Azure are more critical to your workloads. Advisor Score also adds weight to resources with longstanding recommendations. The idea is that the accumulated impact of these recommendations grows the longer they go unaddressed. Review your Advisor Score today Check your Advisor Score today by visiting Azure Advisor in the Azure portal. To learn more about the model behind Advisor Score and see examples of how the score is calculated, review our Advisor Score documentation, and this behind-the-scenes blog from our data science team about the development of Advisor Score.

Sarah Hinrichsen Services Delivery Enablement Manager, Tableau Kristin Adderson December 28, 2020 - 6:13pm December 28, 2020 Okay, so maybe you aren’t completely sold on virtual instructor-led training yet. I am here to reassure you. There’s a place for it in your Tableau education plan. If you haven’t taken virtual training before, the unknown might make you question whether it’s right for you. Or, if you have taken virtual training, you may wonder what Tableau’s has to offer. Let’s ease your concerns and get you excited about attending a Tableau virtual training. Convenient and Flexible Who doesn’t love working from home in their pajamas? Tableau virtual instructor-led training allows you to grab your first cup of coffee (or fifth, we’re not counting) and leisurely get to your computer before class starts. No worrying about getting out the door and commuting—you can join right from home. You can even attend from the beach, lake, coffee shop, or pub down the street. As long as you have internet access, you can join a virtual training class. *Screenshot above is a subset of options. Times are shown in the user's local time. We offer classes in time zones worldwide, so there will be options in or close to your time zone. This allows you the convenience of taking a course during the workday or in a different time zone, so it doesn’t interfere with your daily work. We also offer virtual classes of varying lengths. Some are full days (9 am-5 pm), and some are partial days (2 - 3 hours/day). This gives you the flexibility to complete the course in a couple of days or spread it out over a week. Either way, you are getting the same proven Tableau curriculum delivered by an expert certified instructor. The only downside is that you don’t get a catered lunch. But it also means you can have potato chips and chocolate for lunch—no judgment here. Interactive and Engaging I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s hard to focus when a presenter doesn’t engage with the audience. In a virtual environment, this becomes even more important; no one wants to be talked at for multiple hours in a day. Tableau’s virtual training instructors utilize many different tools to engage with you throughout the class—in the form of a verbal question, a multiple-choice poll, or a hands-on discovery task. You have the opportunity to use the chat or anonymous poll to answer questions. Having multiple outlets for interactivity and switching between the lecture, interactivity, and hands-on activity will allow you to interact more comfortably and keep the class moving.  Not only do our instructors use interactivity to keep you engaged, but they also throw in fun ways to learn the concepts. For example, to make complex topics more relatable—they may use ice cream sales to help you understand Scatter plots or superheroes to discuss Sets and combined Sets or even cookie recipes to get you more familiar with Relationships. Once you understand the concepts at a fundamental level, the instructor relates them to industry-specific examples so you will know how to apply them to your work. In a perfect world, I would want instructors to ask me questions to keep me engaged, and somewhere I can get my questions answered in real-time. Guess what?!  Our virtual training instructors don’t follow a script and answer any questions you might have throughout the course. You can ask questions about the content the instructor is demonstrating. Most importantly, if you ever get stuck during a hands-on activity, the instructor will be able to clarify steps, so that you can move ahead seamlessly. And remember, if you don’t want to come off mute to ask a question, the virtual training environment has a chat feature to chat directly with the instructor. Support Technology doesn’t come without its pitfalls, and many times it can be daunting to have to use new systems and technologies. Our Global Services team is here to help. A week before your training session, you will receive all of the information to download the course materials and log in. You can download the materials ahead of time and test your connection to the virtual environment before the training starts. This not only allows you to stroll into class a few minutes early with peace of mind but if you have any issues before class begins, you can get help from Global Services. They can assist with troubleshooting or even use other resources and technologies to make sure you have the content and information you need.  Not only do you have Global Services to help with technical issues as your first line of defense, but you also have the certified instructor to help. The instructor knows the technologies’ ins and outs and can point you in the right direction if something happens during class. Many of our instructors are seasoned experts and have likely dealt with all the technical issues you throw at them.  Now that you know a little more about virtual instructor led-training at Tableau, you are ready to take your learning experience to the next level! Once you get into the virtual classroom, you will quickly understand how fun and engaging our virtual classes and instructors are. Convinced and ready to sign up? Go to the Live Virtual Training Classes page to see courses and a full schedule. You can register for a class directly from there! Still not convinced? Check out the video at the bottom of the Instructor-Led Training page that gives you a window into our virtual instructor-led training with snippets of live classroom experiences.

Fresh off raising $4.3 million in funding, Opsera today launched a namesake platform that enables IT teams to orchestrate both the tools employed by developers as well as the pipelines that make up a DevOps process. Company co-founder Chandra Ranganathan said the Opsera platform automates setup of DevOps pipelines using a declarative approach that doesn’t […] The post Opsera Simplifies Building of DevOps Pipelines appeared first on DevOps.com.

According to CNCF’s bi-annual survey conducted in August 2018, 83% of the respondents prefer Kubernetes for its container management tools. 58% of respondents use Kubernetes in production, while 42% are evaluating it for future use and 40% of enterprise companies (5000+) are running Kubernetes in production. These statistics give us a clear picture of the popularity of Kubernetes amongst developers as a container orchestrator. However, the recent security flaw discovered in Kubernetes (now patched) that enable attackers to compromise clusters and perform illicit activities, did raise concerns among developers. A container environment like Kubernetes consisting of multiple layers needs to be secured on all fronts. Taking this into consideration, the cncf has released ‘9 Kubernetes Security Best Practices Everyone Must Follow’ #1 Upgrade to the Latest Version Kubernetes has a quarterly update that features various bug and security fixes. Customers are advised to always upgrade to the latest release with updated security patches to fool proof their system. #2 Role-Based Access control (RBAC) Users can control who can access the Kubernetes API and what permissions they have by enabling the RBAC. The blog advises users against giving anyone cluster admin privileges and to grant access only as needed on a case-by-case basis. #3 Namespaces for security boundaries Namespaces generate an important level of isolation between components. Also, cncf states that it is easier to have various security controls and policies when workloads are deployed in separate namespaces #4 Keeping sensitive workloads separate Sensitive workloads should be run on a dedicated set of machines. This means that if a less secure application connected to a sensitive workload is compromised, the latter remains unaffected. #5 Securing Cloud Metadata Access Sensitive metadata storing confidential information such as credentials, can be stolen and misused. The blog advises users to use Google Kubernetes Engine’s metadata concealment feature to avoid this mishap. #6 Cluster Network Policies Developers will be able to control network access of their containerized applications through network policies. #7 Implementing a Cluster-wise Pod Security Policy This will define how workloads are allowed to run in a cluster. #8 Improve Node Security Users should ensure that the host is configured in the right way and that it is secure by checking the node’s configuration against CIS benchmarks. Ensure your network blocks access to ports that can be exploited by malicious actors and minimize the administrative access given to Kubernetes nodes. #9 Audit Logging Audit logs should be enabled and monitored for anomalous API calls and authorization failures. This an indicate that a malicious hacker is trying to get into your system. The blog advises users to further look for tools to assist them in continuous monitoring and protection of their containers.  You can head over to Cloud Native computing foundation official blog to read more about these best practices. CNCF accepts Cloud Native Buildpacks to the Cloud Native Sandbox Google Cloud hands over Kubernetes project operations to CNCF, grants $9M in GCP credits Introducing Grafana’s ‘Loki’ (alpha), a scalable HA multi-tenant log aggregator for cloud natives; optimized for Grafana, Prometheus and Kubernetes      

Last week, Google announced the release of Chrome 78 beta. Its stable version is scheduled to release in October this year. Chrome 78 will release with a couple of new APIs including the CSS Properties and Values API and Native File System API. Key updates in Chrome 78 beta The CSS Properties and Values API The Houdini’s CSS Properties and Values API will be supported in Chrome 78. The Houdini task force consists of engineers from Mozilla, Apple, Opera, Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Google. In CSS, developers can define user-controlled properties using CSS custom properties, also known as CSS variables. However, the CSS custom properties do have a few limitations that make them difficult to work with. The CSS Properties and Values API addresses these limitations by allowing the registration of properties that have a value type, an initial value, and a defined inheritance behavior. The Native File System API Chrome 78 will support the Native File System API, which will enable web applications to interact with files on the user’s local device like IDEs, photo and video editors, text editors, and more. After permission to access local files is received, the API will allow web applications to read or save changes directly to files and folders on the user’s device. The SMS Receiver API Websites send a randomly generated one-time-password (OTP) to verify a phone number. This way of verification is cumbersome as it requires a user to manually enter or copy and paste the password into a form. Starting with Chrome 78, users will be able to skip this manual interaction completely with the help of the SMS Receiver API. It provides websites an ability to programmatically obtain OTPs from SMS as a solution “to ease the friction and failure points of manual user input of SMS codes, which is prone to error and phishing.” Origin trials Chrome 78 introduces origin trials that allow developers to try new features and share their feedback on “usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community.” Developers can register to enable an origin trial feature for all users on their origin for a fixed period of time. To know what features are available as an origin trial, check out the Origin Trials dashboard. Among the deprecations are, disallowing synchronous XHR during page dismissal and the removal of XSS Auditor. On a discussion on Hacker News, users were skeptical about the new Native File System API. A user commented, “I’m not sure about how to think about the file system API. On one hand, is great to see that secure file system access is possible in-browser, which allows most electron apps to be converted into PWAs. That’s great, I no longer need to run 5 different chromium instances. On the other hand, I’m really not sure if I like the future of editing Microsoft Office documents in the browser. I heavily believe that apps should have an integrated UX (with appropriate OS-specific widgets) because it allows coherency and familiarity.” To know what else is coming in Chrome 78, check out the official announcement by Google. Other news in Web Development Safari Technology Preview 91 gets beta support for the WebGPU JavaScript API and WSL New memory usage optimizations implemented in V8 Lite can also benefit V8 GitHub updates to Rails 6.0 with an incremental approach

Today, DoorDash revealed to its users that their platform suffered a major data breach on May 4, 2019, affecting approximately 4.9 million consumers, dashers, and merchants who joined the platform on or before April 5, 2018. When DoorDash became aware of the attack earlier this month they recruited private security experts to investigate it. The investigation revealed that user data was accessed by an unauthorized third party, who is still unknown. The food delivering company has taken preventive actions to block further unauthorized access. Though DoorDash is uninformed of any user passwords being compromised in the breach, they have requested all their users to reset their passwords and use an exclusive password just for DoorDash. In the official blog post, DoorDash has listed the type of user data that might have got compromised in the data breach. Profile information including names, email addresses, delivery addresses, order history, phone numbers, and more. For some customers, the last four digits of their consumer payment cards. However, DoorDash maintains that customers “full credit card information such as full payment card numbers or a CVV was not accessed.” Also, DoorDash confirms that the accessed information is not enough to make any fraudulent charges on the payment card. For some Dashers and merchants, the last four digits of their bank account number. Again DoorDash confirms that the full bank account information was not accessed and the accessed information is insufficient to perform any illicit withdrawals from the bank account. Approximately 1 lakh Dashers driver’s license numbers were also compromised Read Also: DoorDash buys Square’s food delivery service Caviar for $410 million In the blog post, DoorDash says that they have now taken necessary remedial steps to avoid such security breaches by including additional protective security layers around the data, security protocols that govern access to systems and have also enrolled private expertise to identify and repel threats more accurately in the future. Currently, DoorDash is in the process of reaching out to its affected customers. DoorDash has also clarified that the customers who joined the platform after April 5, 2018, are not affected by this data breach. However, DoorDash has neither clarified the details of how the third party accessed the user’s data nor have they explained how the company came to know about the data breach. The blog post also does not throw any light on why the company took so long in detecting this security breach. Many users are indignant about DoorDash’s lack of detailing in the blog post. https://twitter.com/peterfrost/status/1177572308136976385 https://twitter.com/benrothke/status/1177339060282523648 Many people are also of the opinion that until substantial penalties are levied against these companies, data breaches will continue to occur. Many are of the opinion that companies should stop asking for personal information while confirming a customer. A user on Hacker News comments, “In other words... "We leaked a bunch of your personal information, but at least it's not enough data to steal your money!" All of these leaks have the cumulative effect of making ineffective very commonly used security verification questions: "Can I verify that last 4 of your social? And the last 4 of your credit card?" How long will it take for us to accept that this kind of data can no longer be assumed private? The sooner, the better, mainly so companies stop using it as a secondary form of identity verification.” Head over to the DoorDash blog for more details about the data breach. StockX confirms a data breach impacting 6.8 million customers Following Capital One data breach, GitHub gets sued and AWS security questioned by a U.S. Senator Facebook fails to fend off a lawsuit over a data breach of nearly 30 million users Cloudflare finally launches Warp and Warp Plus after a delay of more than five months Tesla Software Version 10.0 adds Smart Summon, in-car karaoke, Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify streaming

Yesterday, JetBrains announced the release of IntelliJ IDEA 2019.2 Beta 2, which marks the next step towards the stable release. The team has already implemented major features like profiling tools, better shell script support, a new Services tool window, among others. With this release, the team has given a final polish to the existing features including the Terminal that now soft-wraps long lines better. This solves the previous problem of breaking links while wrapping lines. Source: IntelliJ IDEA Shell script support This release will come with rich editing features for shell scripts including word and path completion, quick documentation preview, and textual rename. Additionally, it will also allow integration with various other external tools to provide developers an enhanced shell script support. For instance, the IDE will prompt you to install ShellCheck to detect possible errors in your scripts and also suggest quick fixes for them. A new Services tool window IntelliJ IDEA 2019.2 will introduce a new Services tool window, which will be your single stop to view all connections and run configurations that are configured to be reported to the Services view.  The Services view will incorporate windows for several tools such as RunDashboard, Database Console, Docker, and Application Servers. You have the option of viewing all the service types as nodes or tabs. To view a service type on a separate tab you can either use the Show in New tab action from the toolbar or simply drag and drop the needed node on to the edge of the Services tool window. You can also create a custom tab to group various services using the Group Services action from the context menu or from the toolbar. Source: IntelliJ IDEA Profiling tools for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate You will be able to analyze the performance of your application right from the IDE using the new CPU Profiler integration and Memory Profiler integration on macOS, Linux, and Windows. It will also come integrated with Java Flight Recorder and Async profiler. This will help you get an insight into how the CPU and memory resources are allocated in your application. To run Java Flight Recorder or Async profiler, you just need to click the icon on the main toolbar or the run icon in the gutter. These tools will only be available in the professional and fully-featured commercial IDE, IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate. Source: IntelliJ IDEA Syntax highlighting for over 20 different programming languages IntelliJ IDEA 2019.2 will provide syntax highlighting for more than 20 different languages. To provide this support, this upcoming version comes integrated with TextMate text editor and a collection of built-in grammar files for various languages. You can find the full list of supported languages in Preferences / Settings | Editor | TextMate Bundles. In case you require syntax highlighting for any additional languages, you can download the TextMate bundle for the selected language and import it into IntelliJ IDEA. Commit directly from the Local Changes With this version, developers will be able to commit directly from the Local Changes tab without having to go through a separate Commit dialog. While working on a commit, you will be able to browse through the source code, view the file history, view the diff for the file in the same area as the commit, or use other features of the IDE. In previous versions, all these actions were impossible because the modal commit dialog blocked all the other IDE functionality. Additionally, there is a new feature for projects that are using version systems like Git or Mercurial. You just need to press the Commit shortcut (Ctrl-K on Windows, Linux/Cmd-K on macOS) and the IDE will select the modified files for the commit. You will then be able to review the selected files and change the file or code chunk. Source: IntelliJ IDEA These were some of the features coming in IntelliJ IDEA 2019.2. You can read the entire release notes and stay updated with the IntelliJ IDEA blog to know more in detail. Developers are excited about the profiling tools and other shining features bundled with this release: https://twitter.com/Rahamat87523498/status/1149221123256492032 https://twitter.com/goKarumi/status/1148849477136146432 https://twitter.com/matsumana/status/1140659765518852097 What’s new in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.2 IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 Early Access Program is now open! Netbeans, Intellij IDEA and PyCharm come to Haiku OS

On Monday, Intel announced the Pohoiki Beach, a neuromorphic system comprising of 8 million neurons, multiple Nahuku boards and 64 Loihi research chips. The Intel team unveiled this new system at the DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit held in Detroit. Intel introduced Loihi in 2017, its first brain inspired neuromorphic research chip. Loihi applies the principles found in biological brains to computer architectures. It enables users to process information up to 1,000 times faster and 10,000 times more efficiently than CPUs for specialized applications like sparse coding, graph search and constraint-satisfaction problems.The Pohoiki Beach is now available for the broader research community and they can experiment with Loihi. “We are impressed with the early results demonstrated as we scale Loihi to create more powerful neuromorphic systems. Pohoiki Beach will now be available to more than 60 ecosystem partners, who will use this specialized system to solve complex, compute-intensive problems,” says Rich Uhlig, managing director of Intel Labs. According to Intel, Pohoiki Beach will enable researchers to efficiently scale novel neural inspired algorithms such as sparse coding, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and path planning. The Pohoiki Beach system is different in a way because it will demonstrate the benefits of a specialized architecture for emerging applications, including some of the computational problems hardest for the internet of things (IoT) and autonomous devices to support. By using this type of specialized system, as opposed to general-purpose computing technologies, Intel expects to realize orders of magnitude gains in speed and efficiency for a range of real-world applications, from autonomous vehicles to smart homes to cybersecurity. Pohoiki Beach will mark a major milestone in Intel’s neuromorphic research, as it will lay the foundation for Intel Labs to scale the architecture to 100 million neurons later this year. Rich Uhlig says he, “predicts the company will produce a system capable of simulating 100 million neurons by the end of 2019. Researchers will then be able to apply it to a whole new set of applications, such as better control of robot arms.” Ars Technica writes that Loihi, the underlying chip in Pohoiki Beach consists of 130,000 neuron analogs—hardware-wise, this is roughly equivalent to half of the neural capacity of a fruit fly. Pohoiki Beach scales that up to 8 million neurons—about the neural capacity of a zebrafish. But what perhaps is more interesting than the raw computational power of the new neural network is how well it scales. “With the Loihi chip we’ve been able to demonstrate 109 times lower power consumption running a real-time deep learning benchmark compared to a GPU, and 5 times lower power consumption compared to specialized IoT inference hardware. Even better, as we scale the network up by 50 times, Loihi maintains real-time performance results and uses only 30 percent more power, whereas the IoT hardware uses 500 percent more power and is no longer real-time,” says Chris Eliasmith, co-CEO of Applied Brain Research and professor at the University of Waterloo As per the IEEE Spectrum, Intel and its research partners are just beginning to test what massive neural systems like Pohoiki Beach can do, but so far the evidence points to even greater performance and efficiency, says Mike Davies, director of neuromorphic research at Intel. “We’re quickly accumulating results and data that there are definite benefits… mostly in the domain of efficiency. Virtually every one that we benchmark…we find significant gains in this architecture,” he says. Going from a single-Loihi to 64 of them is more of a software issue than a hardware one. “We designed scalability into the Loihi chip from the beginning,” says Davies. “The chip has a hierarchical routing interface…which allows us to scale to up to 16,000 chips. So 64 is just the next step.” According to Davies, Loihi can run networks which are immune to catastrophic forgetting and can learn more like humans. He proved this with an evidence of research work done by the Thomas Cleland’s group at Cornell University, that Loihi can achieve one-shot learning. That is, learning a new feature after being exposed to it only once. Loihi can also run feature-extraction algorithms immune to the kinds of adversarial attacks that can confuse image recognition systems. Traditional neural networks don’t really understand the features they’re extracting from an image in the way our brains do. “They can be fooled with simplistic attacks like changing individual pixels or adding a screen of noise that wouldn’t fool a human in any way,” Davies explains. But the sparse-coding algorithms Loihi can run work more like the human visual system and so wouldn’t fall for such shenanigans. This news brings a lot of excitement amongst the community and they are awaiting to see a system that will contain 100 million neurons by the end of this year. https://twitter.com/javiermendonca/status/1151131213576359937 https://twitter.com/DSakya/status/1150988779143880704 Intel discloses four new vulnerabilities labeled MDS attacks affecting Intel chips Intel plans to exit from the 5G smartphone modem business, following the Apple Qualcomm dispute Google researchers present Zanzibar, a global authorization system, it scales trillions of access control lists and millions of authorization requests per second