Category: Newsy

Elsewhere: NewsBits – Redis 5 RC 5

~ Codepope

I’ve been doing my usual Friday news gathering for the day job and that means here is todays NewsBits…. Here’s what’s in it:

  • Redis 5.0 gets a new release candidate and controversy.
  • Updates for older MongoDB versions.
  • A guide to analyzing slow MongoDB queries.
  • Making MySQL‘s shell shine.
  • Google open up Dataset Search.
  • Firefox 62 lands, as does the new ESR release.
  • HTTP2 support no longer experimental in Node 10.10.
  • VS Code gets a new Settings UI.
  • Checkout pull requests with the latest Atom.
  • Where to get Java support in the future?
  • And whats it like migrating to Java 11?
  • And finally an SQL puzzler…

Click here to read Compose’s NewsBits (be meeeee!) for this week

Elsewhere – NewsBits (end of August Edition)

~ Codepope

In the most recent NewsBits (NewsBits at Compose.com’s Articles) there’s some minor DB and driver updating, a DB that branches like git, a fresh Vault, what happens to SSDs when they meet database write loads, the new Go 1.11 (and 2 drafts) and… oh yeah who wants to see round corners?

(Apologies for the lateness… I’ve been playing with MicroPython, CircuitPython, ESP32s, ESP8266s and a selection of tiny light emitting things…. more on that soon… promise)

From my other output….

~ Codepope

I’ll be posting some of my regular items I do elsewhere here from now on and…. one thing I write every Friday us Compose’s Little Bits. Here’s what’s in the latest:

Postgres-BDR goes 1.0, MongoDB updates the stable and development branches, a look at Hexastores, Sophia’s key/value storage gets rows, Go goes 1.7, PowerShell goes open source, Github makes page publishing easier, GnuPG gets fixed randomness, Apple talks Black Hat and the world of Wikipedia in a Wikiverse.

Interested? Read it all at Compose.com.

Node.js and Docker realigned

~ Codepope

sporkIt’s not really a surprise, but after just over six months since the “forking” of both Node.js and Docker, the two different projects have ended up back in some sort of alignment. For Node.js, it was the reunification with io.js under the Node.js Foundation, which was officially launched under the Linux Foundation’s umbrella. The Node.js and io.js technical development is now driven by a technical committee and hopefully this will all work out well for all.

The Docker situation is a little more complex. There’s no big group hug like with Node.js. Instead, there’s an official middle ground, the Open Container Project. The announcement of a vendor-neutral (how can it be vendor neutral when it’s founded by vendors?) project to come up with containerisation technology basically sees Docker throw its specs and CoreOS throw its specs for containers into the same ring and see what comes out.

OCP says it’ll try and come up with a future spec independent of what’s layered on top of it, not associated with any project or vendor and be portable. So no, there won’t be a standard command set or management layer, there shouldn’t be any lock-ins and there probably will emerge as standard with a scope so small that it’ll end up as a tiny checkbox on a requirements list.

On the plus side, with that out of the way, there’s room for people to get innovating with the rest of the containerisation stack, which is where all the vendors are heading right now. That list is long too – Amazon, Cisco, EMC, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Red Hat, VMWare and more. With the essential core in neutral hands, the game always moves on. As for the spec itself? Keep your eyes on the OCP’s Github Repository where they say they’ll have something by end of July.

Let’s hope that OCP keeps to its goals better than that other OCP, you know, the one that was building Delta City in the soon-to-be ruins of Old Detroit. That just didn’t work out well at all.

Arduino IDE now boarding for all

~ Codepope

ArduinoZeroThe Arduino IDE is heading into a rather neat consolidation of the numerous Arduino inspired boards out there. The introduction of a mechanism, in version 1.6.2, to allow people to plug their boards into the IDE easily is starting to snowball. To understand why this is important, before 1.6.2’s release if you had a custom board and the tools to make it work with the IDE, then to install them involved copying files into directories, editing files and crossing fingers (and being disappointed often). Anyone who used a lot of boards would find themselves with multiple copies of various versions of the IDE just to keep life simple.

It didn’t really register with me though that when the board manager arrived in the 1.6 version of the IDE how important this would be. Firstly, official board support can be diconnected from releases of the IDE. One of the most recent changes in the Arduino world is the adoption of the Adafruit Gemma as an Arduino board. The Gemma’s a tiny board ideal for wearables, but setting up the IDE was the same nonsense as described above. And then Arduino IDE 1.6.4 arrived with official support through the board manager.

But that wasn’t all. The officially supported boards can now be joined by unofficial board support – just enter a URL and boom – you are downloading the appropriate code for your new board. But what URLs are available you wonder. The Arduino folks give a link to unofficial board support URLs and there’s some interesting boards on there. Adafruit’s boards like the HUZZAH ESP8266*, the Ariadne bootloader for ethernet connected boards, a whole set of ATtiny boards…

And barebones Atmel controllers which means you can make and program devices for the close to the price of the chip, like the Shrimp. Oh, its an exciting time for Arduino…

*More on the HUZZAH when I get to pick some up in the US soon.
**Apologies for the low number of posts… trying to fix that.

Raspberry Pi2 – Already?

~ Codepope

Pi2ModB1GB_-compIt seems like less than a year ago when Eben Upton told Ars Technica that the Raspberry Pi Foundation was “a year or two away from thinking about” building new hardware. In less than a year, we’ve had the Model B+, the Model A+ and now, as a “Well-actually-we’ve-been-thinking-about-it-lots”, here’s the Raspberry Pi 2.

The good? It’s a quad core 900Mhz A7 ARM chip, it’s got 1GB of RAM and it looks just like a Raspberry Pi B+. The better? It sells for £30, same price point as the B+. The neat? The upgrade to A7 means that more ARM software runs on it… Ubuntu Snappy Core is available and, run for the hills, Windows 10 for Devices is coming.

The not so good? Well, it’s not good news for anyone who just bought a B+. Ta-da launches and an air of mystery don’t really sit well with a charity, which is what the Pi Foundation is. It doesn’t help educators make best use of their funds in their planning.

But anyway, it’s a new Raspberry Pi and its definately an improvement. I’ve gone and ordered a bunch myself so I’ll be reporting back as soon as possible on how it feels.

Newsy: CentOS 7 for x86-64 is here

~ Codepope ~ 2 Comments

h-5c-a-1340Just announced in the last few hours, CentOS 7 for x86-64 has arrived. This is the first release under the new arrangements since Red Hat reversed into CentOS, leaving the distro independent but hiring a number of key players. Apart from this being a rapid arrival for a major new release, the announcement notes that they aim to get future updates heading out within 24-48 hours of release. There’s a new versioning system too, so this is Cento 7.0-1406,14/06 being June 2014, when Red Hat released RHEL 7.0 and the code base that this release of CentOS was built on. There’s torrents available for the DVD ISO, “Everything”, GNOME Live (the announcement has a malformed link for that – it’s http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-GnomeLive.torrent), KDE Live, a Live CD and a NetInstall. And to the torrents we fly to check out how it looks… well it should look like RHEL 7.