68737913
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
It’s a brand new year, and by at least some indications the economy’s doing pretty well, which means that a lot of people will begin looking for a new, possibly better job. If you're looking to trade up, Dice has some tips, some of which are pretty standard-issue ("Update resume," etc.), and others that could actually stand you in good stead, including using the Bureau of Labor Statistics to judge the median salary for a position before negotiating with HR. According to Glassdoor, Dice, and other sources, the average salary for many kinds of tech workers will only rise over the next year, so it really could be a good time to see what's out there. Good luck.
68669957
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Is the tablet market rapidly collapsing? Mobile-analytics firm Flurry doesn't come to quite that stark a conclusion, but things aren't looking too good for touch-screens that don't qualify as "phablets." According to Flurry’s numbers, full-sized tablets accounted for only 11 percent of new devices in 2014, a decline from 2013, when that form-factor totaled 17 percent of the new-device market; small tablets experienced a smaller decline, falling from 12 percent to 11 percent of new devices between 2013 and 2014. (Meanwhile, phablets expanded from 4 percent of new devices in 2013 to 13 percent this year.) Boy Genius Report, for its part, looked at those numbers and decided that the tablet market is doomed: “Consumers happy with compact smartphones are not switching to larger iPhones for now, but former tablet buyers are.” That's not to say people will stop using tablets, but the onetime theory that they would one day cannibalize all PCs looks increasingly nebulous.
68619769
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
If you’d like to change jobs or switch from freelance to full-time status, prepare to pounce: 2015 is shaping up to be a blockbuster year for the IT labor market, according to David Foote, CEO of research firm Foote Partners. “This year started out slow, just as we predicted,” Foote told Dice. “But U.S. employers added an average of 17,633 IT jobs during September, October and November, and we see that momentum continuing into 2015.” So what jobs will actually do well? According to Foote, data architects, experts in data analytics, cybersecurity specialists, business analysts, and anyone who can build an application (especially those who specialize in Agile and JavaFX) will find a growing need for their skills. On the other hand, SAP specialists, Web developers, and "cloud professionals" could find the market not quite as welcoming. Do you agree?
68318055
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
So you’ve worked on an open-source project, and you want to leverage that experience to move your career forward. In theory, there’s no reason an employer should shun your experience, just because you did the project from home on your own time. But how can you actually leverage that project contribution into a full-time gig (assuming you want one, of course)? Developer Jeff Cogswell offers some tips: First, make sure that any project you present on your resume is a good one; pointy-eared bosses have a nasty habit of attribute the less-than-stellar elements of a project to you, even if you weren’t responsible for them. Second, be prepped to talk about deadlines, bug reports and fixes just as if the project were something you'd done for a job instead of just the pleasure of contributing to something cool. Those are just a few of the ways to use open source to your advantage, but others abound.
68201009
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Ever since 3-D printing began to enter the mainstream, people have discussed the technology’s potential for building prosthetic arms and legs for human beings. But what about doing the same for dogs? In one of those videos that ends up circulated endlessly on the Internet, a dog named Derby, born with a congenital deformity that deprived him of front paws, is outfitted with a pair of 3-D-printed prosthetics. With those "legs" in place, the dog can run for the first time, at a pretty good clip. Both the prosthetics and the video were produced by 3D Systems, which builds 3-D printers, and it seems likely that other 3-D-printing companies will explore the possibility of printing off parts for pets. And while the idea of a cyborg pooch is heartwarming, it will be interesting to see how 3D printers will continue to advance the realm of human prosthetics, which have become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade.
68150409
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
When Facebook dropped a cool $2 billion to purchase virtual-reality firm Oculus VR earlier this year, it was seen as a way for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to take an early position in what could become one of the dominant technologies of the next decade. But what if Oculus VR, even with all of Facebook’s money, didn’t end up as the competitor to beat? What if a piece of cardboard, supported by some APIs and an ecosystem of third-party developers, become synonymous with virtual reality? You can debate whether Google’s Cardboard project is expressly intended as a way to ding archrival Facebook, but it’s clear that the search-engine giant wants to play in the virtual-reality sandbox in the same way as it did with smartphones and tablets: open source a technology and encourage others to build with it. Will Cardboard prove the Android of VR, to Oculus Rift’s iPhone? At this nascent stage, that question can’t be answered, but one thing’s for certain: Google is intent on turning something that people initially treated like a joke into an actual platform.
68103225
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Demand for tech professionals isn’t slowing down anytime soon, according to a survey of nearly 800 tech-focused hiring managers by Dice (yes, yes, we know). Heading into the new year, 75 percent of recruiters anticipate hiring more tech professionals in the first six months of 2015 than the last six months of 2014, an all-time high for this semi-annual survey; that’s five points greater than mid-year and two points greater than December 2013. Like the last six months of 2014, hiring managers are particularly interested in the experienced candidate. The majority (76 percent) are hiring for positions requiring six to 10 years of experience, while four in 10 (40 percent) are hiring for positions requiring more than 10 years of experience. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of companies are planning to expand by more than 10 percent in early 2015, another record breaker. Sixty-eight percent of recruiters anticipated hiring over 10 percent more professionals six months ago, and 65 percent projected such a large-scale hiring push a year ago. So, for tech professionals looking for a job or considering leaving their current one, now might be a good time.
68061055
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Back in the day, Microsoft viewed open source and Linux as a threat and did its best to retaliate with FUD and patent threats. And then a funny thing happened: Whether in the name of pragmatism or simply marketing, Microsoft began a very public transition from a company of open-source haters (at least in top management) to one that’s embraced some aspects of open-source computing. Last month, the company blogged that .NET Core will become open-source, adding to its previously open-sourced ASP.NET MVC, Web API, and Web Pages (Razor). There’s no doubt that, at least in some respects, Microsoft wants to make a big show of being more open and supportive of interoperability. The company’s even gotten involved with the .NET Foundation, an independent organization designed to assist developers with the growing collection of open-source technologies for .NET. But there’s only so far Microsoft will go into the realm of open source—whereas once upon a time, the company tried to wreck the movement, now it faces the very real danger of its whole revenue model being undermined by free software. But what's Microsoft's end-goal with open source? What can the company possibly hope to accomplish, given a widespread perception that such a move on its part is the product of either fear, cynicism, or both?
67850491
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
A funny thing happened to the iPod Classic on its way to the dustbin of history: people seemed unwilling to actually give it up. Apple quietly removed the iPod Classic from its online storefront in early September, on the same day CEO Tim Cook revealed the latest iPhones and the upcoming Apple Watch. At 12 years old, the device was ancient by technology-industry standards, but its design was iconic, and a subset of diehard music fans seemed to appreciate its considerable storage capacity. At least some of those diehard fans are now paying four times the iPod Classic’s original selling price for units still in the box. The blog 9to5Mac mentions Amazon selling some last-generation iPod Classics for $500 and above. Clearly, some people haven’t gotten the memo that touch-screens and streaming music were supposed to be the way of the future.
67672515
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
what if manufacturers could build drones out of something other than metal? What if you could construct an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) out of biological material, specifically a lightweight-but-strong one known as mycelium? The vegetative part of a fungus, mycelium is already under consideration as a building material; other materials would include cellulose sheets, layered together into “leather,” as well as starches worked into a “bioplastic.” While a mushroom-made drone is probably years away from takeoff, a proposal for the device caught some attention at this year’s International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. Designed by a team of students from Brown, Spelman, and Stanford Universities in conjunction with researchers from NASA, such a drone would (theoretically) offer a cheap and lightweight way to get a camera and other tools airborne. 'If we want to fly it over wildfires to see where it’s spreading, or if there’s a nuclear meltdown and we want to fly in to see what’s going on with the radioactivity, we can send in the drone and it can send back data without returning,' Ian Hull, a Stanford sophomore involved in the project, told Fast Company.
67630299
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Many programming languages have come and gone since Dennis Ritchie devised C in 1972, and yet C has not only survived three major revisions, but continues to thrive. But aside from this incredible legacy, what keeps C atop the Tiobe Index? The number of jobs available for C programmers is not huge, and many of those also include C++ and Objective-C. On Reddit, the C community, while one of the ten most popular programming communities, is half the size of the C++ group. In a new column, David Bolton argues that C remains extremely relevant due to a number of factors, including newer C compiler support, the Internet ("basically driven by C applications"), an immense amount of active software written in C that's still used, and its ease in learning. 'Knowing C provides a handy insight into higher-level languages—C++, Objective-C, Perl, Python, Java, PHP, C#, D and Go all have block syntax that’s derived from C.' Do you agree?
67425623
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
What programming language will earn you the biggest salary over the long run? According to Quartz, which relied partially on data compiled by employment-analytics firm Burning Glass and a Brookings Institution economist, Ruby on Rails, Objective-C, and Python are all programming skills that will earn you more than $100,000 per year. But salary doesn’t necessarily correlate with popularity. Earlier this year, for example, tech-industry analyst firm RedMonk produced its latest ranking of the most-used languages, and Java/JavaScript topped the list, followed by PHP, Python, C#, and C++/Ruby. Meanwhile, Python was the one programming language to appear on Dice’s recent list of the fastest-growing tech skills, which is assembled from mentions in Dice job postings. Python is a staple language in college-level computer-science courses, and has repeatedly topped the lists of popular programming languages as compiled by TIOBE Software and others. Should someone learn a language just because it could come with a six-figure salary, or are there better reasons to learn a particular language and not others?
67380495
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Late last week, Disney released a ninety-second trailer for the latest Star Wars movie, which is scheduled to arrive in theaters by the end of 2015. While the trailer itself didn’t reveal very much about the plot or characters of the space epic, it’s already providing seemingly endless material for fan art, homages, and even parodies. One of the most popular parodies circulating online, created by Michael Shanks, re-edits the trailer in a way that suggests what might have happened if George Lucas—who sold the rights to the Star Wars franchise in 2012 and didn’t direct this latest installment—had gotten his hands on the footage. Spoiler alert: It features everything that diehard Star Wars fans hated about the prequels and the “Special Edition” versions of the original trilogy, from excessive use of computer graphics to a very special guest appearance by a certain much-reviled character.
67331095
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
As researchers uncover one serious flaw after another in widely used software, it’s increasingly clear there are lots of vulnerabilities, everywhere. While there are efforts underway to identify and fix these issues before criminals exploit them, the bigger challenge is stopping developers from using buggy code. There is no such thing as perfect software, but developers can reduce the number of bugs by following secure coding practices. There are also tools which can analyze individual libraries—both open-source and commercial—included in software projects to ensure they aren’t buggy. Many organizations have no idea if the software they are using contains vulnerable components because the application hasn’t been thoroughly tested. But aside from As researchers uncover one serious flaw after another in widely used software, it’s increasingly clear there are lots of vulnerabilities, everywhere. While there are efforts underway to identify and fix these issues before criminals exploit them, the bigger challenge is stopping developers from using buggy code. But aside from efforts such as The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative, which maintains open-source apps, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of coordinated effort out there to clean up old code and analyze libraries and apps for bugs. Is there anything that can be done about this?
67100605
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
As a Python developer, sooner or later you’ll want to write an application with a graphical user interface. Fortunately, there are a lot of options on the tools front: The Python wiki on GUI programming lists over 30 cross-platform frameworks, as well as Pyjamas, a tool for cross-browser Web development based on a port of the Google Web Toolkit. How to choose between all these options for Python GUIs? Developer David Bolton started by narrowing it down to those that included all three platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and, where possible, Python 3. After that filtering, he found four toolkits (Gtk, Qt, Tk, and wxWidgets) and five frameworks (Kivy, PyQt, gui2Py, libavg and wxPython). He provides an extensive breakdown on why he prefers these.
