Industry News - Week of May 18, 2020
IN THIS ISSUE: All-remote WWDC Begins Friday; Facebook Fake News Folly; Apple, Google Promise to Protect Privacy; For Open Source Devs, Remote Work is Nothing New; Android 11 Beta 1 Delayed; Deno Creator Claims to Fix Problems of Node.js
It should come as no surprise that once the decision was made to carry on, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 would be an online-only affair. Such endeavors have been a mixed bag, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Cupertino.
Facebook Effort to Fix Fake Facts Falls Flat
Facebook, the world's largest social media site, has admitted that despite flagging around 50 million user posts relating to the Wuhan virus as misinformation, it still misses about 40 percent of qualifying targets. Still, the company boasts that its machine learning systems now catch about 68 percent more posts it characterizes as "hate speech" in the first quarter of 2020 than it did in the prior quarter, begging the question: "Who decides what constitutes 'hate'?"
Apple, Google Promise to Protect Privacy
The cooperation between Apple and Google in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to develop a common set of contact-tracing APIs across their platforms has led to a set of guidelines that include limits on the use of Bluetooth and a one-app-per-country cap for app stores. The APIs, which were released to developers last week, also restrict usage to public health authorities.
For Open Source Devs, Remote Work is Nothing New
While the commercial development community might have needed the last few months to adjust to the rigors of working from home during the worldwide pandemic lockdown, open-source developers have been doing it for decades. What can we learn from their experience? Plenty, as it turns out, and it all starts with communication.
The Android community on May 6 released its fourth preview of the next version of Android along with a new beta 1 date of June 3, about a month later than originally planned. Subsequent betas are scheduled for July and August, with the general release set for this fall.
Deno Creator Claims to Fix Problems of Node.js
For developers that have experienced issues with the node.js server-side JavaScript execution environment, the release of Deno 1.0 should come as welcome news. Developed by Ryan Dahl, creator of the original node.js, Deno is based on on Google's Chromium V8 engine, supports Microsoft's TypeScript superset of JavaScript, and can link to external libraries without going through the Node Package Manager (NPM).
Edward Correia
