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SD Times
July 2021
www.sdtimes.com
NEWS WATCH Prosus to acquire Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion The technology investment company Prosus has announced its intent to acquire the online development community Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion. According to Stack Overflow, this acquisition will enable it to continue to operate as an independent company, but with the backing of a “global technology powerhouse.” According to Prosus, it decided to acquire the developer community because of its popularity within the developer and technologist community, as well as for the company’s knowledge management and collaboration solution Stack Overflow for Teams.
Android 12 adds privacy features in Beta 2 One new feature is the Privacy Dashboard, which provides users with more insight into what data apps access. It shows a timeline view of recent app accesses to microphone, camera, and location. Users will also be able to request information from an app on why it accessed certain data. Developers can provide this information through a new system intent: ACTION_VIEW_PERMISSION_USAGE_FOR_PERIOD. The Android development team is recommending developers utilize this intent and use the Data Auditing APIs to help track access in code and third-party libraries. Android 12 Beta 2 also adds indicators for when an app is using the microphone or camera. Users will be able to go to Quick Settings to learn which
Tim Berners-Lee auctioning off original source code for the web as NFT Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has announced that he is auctioning off the original source code for the web as non-fungible token (NFT), which is a unique digital asset that exists on blockchains. Sotheby’s will be running the auction from June 23 to June 30, with the initial bidding starting at $1,000. The proceeds from the NFT sale will go to initiatives supported by Berners-Lee and his wife, Lady Rosemary Leith Berners-Lee. The NFT will contain four elements: Original time-stamped files that contain the source code, a visualization of 10,000 lines of code, a letter written by Berners-Lee, and a digital poster of the full code created by Berners-Lee. apps are accessing the microphone or camera and manage those permissions.
Apple announces Xcode Cloud and AR updates Xcode Cloud aims to simplify the developer workflow by integrating the cloud and developer tools together. When a developer commits a change to the code Xcode Cloud will automatically build the app. Since the app is built in the cloud, the device is free for other tasks and other members of the team see if a change introduces errors. Xcode Cloud runs automated tests in parallel, simulating how they would run on every Apple device and platform and test results are displayed in
Xcode. Once it passes all tests, it can be distributed to all testers on the team and even beta testers with Test Flight, according to Apple. For augmented reality, the company also revealed a new advanced rendering API and the ability to create realistic 3D objects using Object Capture — a technology that leverages photogrammetry that turns 2D pictures into 3D content. Other advancements to AR included the launch of Live Text, which can automatically identify text in pictures so that users can save it as a note or use it in an online search. In addition, the company ramped up its machine learning capabilities to be able to identify text, locations and objects that are on a screen and then enable users to search up these elements through Spotlight.
Infragistics Ultimate 21.1 zeros in on collaboration The latest version of the Infragistics Ultimate UI/UX toolkit is now available with new Indigo.Design, Agular, React, Web Components, Windows Forms and WPF features. Infragistics Ultimate 21.1 is built off of three key themes: l Enabling hyper-productivity and better collaboration between app development and design through its design-tocode platform, Indigo.Design App Builder l New innovations and experiences with Angular, React, Web Components, ASP.NET Core l New enhancements in Windows Form and WPF