The short answer: nothing unexpected but its a fascinating look at how code and coders store data and why transparency matters.

QR codes have been around for decades. They were originally invented at Toyota to help label car parts on production lines, but theyve worked their way into everyday life as well. From putting links on a bus stop ad to tracing contacts during a pandemic, storing a little bit of computer data on paper is a useful thing to be able to do.

But how do these strange little squares actually work? And what kind of data are they hiding? To find out, we talked to James Hentsridge, an open-source software developer. James wrote an amazing technical breakdown of whats in WAs very own SafeWA check-in codes.

So this is kind of like barcodes on your food, except its designed so that it can store a lot more data, James says.

Data is still stored as a pattern of black and white spaces, but rather than lines read from left to right, its squares dotted from right to left, bottom to top, snaking back and forth across a grid.

And rather than just a sequence of numbers, it can be arbitrary text data or even binary, James says.

That means QR codes can store code, images, words, or as well see web addresses. Because theyre storing more data, theyve got a few extra tricks up their sleeve to make sure that data survives.

Its also designed with some error correction, so that if theres a smudge on your camera lens or someones put a logo in the centre of the QR code, it can still recover all the data.

Its a bit like the check digit on a regular barcode or a credit card number, but instead of just being able to verify the data, it can actually help fix it as well.

What caught Jamess eye about the SafeWA codes was their size. While theyre the same type of codes as, say, our Particle posters, the SafeWA codes have a lot more dots.

Theres two things that can increase the size of the QR code. One of them is, yes, more data means bigger QR codes, he says.

The other one is you can change the redundancy. You could have very little redundancy, which means any errors in the scanning will mean you lose data, or lots of redundancy means it will increase the size of the code but you can fix more errors.

SafeWA codes are either storing a lot of data or using a lot of error correction, but to figure out which it is, we need to go deeper.

Fortunately, the SafeWA app isnt the only bit of software that can read these codes. Since its a standard QR code, we can open it in a different app one that shows us exactly whats being encoded.

And what do we see? Its a web address, or URL, but thats not exactly surprising, according to James.

Theres a good reason to have this as a URL, because it identifies this as a SafeWA QR code rather than something else, he says. After that, youve got a big long string of letters and numbers, he says.

That means if you scan it with your camera app say, if youre new to WA and dont have the app yet you get sent to a website with more details rather than seeing just those letters and numbers. To a regular camera app, they dont mean much, but to the SafeWA app, its the name and location of the venue youve visited.

The SafeWA app sees that this URL is structured in a certain way, and then it extracts this venue ID and location, and it talks to the server and says you were here.

The codes are big because that web address comes out pretty long perhaps longer than it needs to be. It turns out theyve got a little bit of redundancy and error correction in there as well, which James says could easily be left off to make the code a bit smaller.

So despite the layers and layers of coding, SafeWA codes really do seem to be exactly what they claim to be. Its your check-in location wrapped up in a way thats easy for a phone to understand. But its important for humans to be able to understand it too.

All these check-in systems depend on consent of people to actually participate. So if you break that trust, then theyre worthless, James says.

Part of that trust is transparency. Its easier to trust a system if you know how it works and that it does what it says. James says thats something anyone can try.

Trying to investigate these sorts of things a lot of it is just looking for patterns, he says.

This article was originally published on Particle. Read the original article.

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QR codes: more than just a COVID thing - Tech News | Particle - Particle

SiliconArts is releasing a dedicated ray tracing accelerator core into the Intel Solutions Marketplace as an Intel Partner Alliance(IPA) Gold Member.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA -- August 10, 2021 -- Silicon Arts releases GPU ray tracing RayCore RC1000 core into the Intel Solutions Marketplace. Open source release of ray tracing examples, apis, and drivers on Github with FPGA macro

SiliconArts announces it is releasing a dedicated ray tracing accelerator core into the Intel Solutions Marketplace. As an Intel Partner Alliance(IPA) Gold Member, SiliconArts is expanding its support for FPGA design services to incorporate its leading ray tracing IP into a dedicated IP core that can be combined with legacy GPUs to provide ray tracing to any level of graphics marketplace. A link describing the product on the Intel Partner website describes the RC1000 RayCore FPGA deliverables for evaluation and development purposes. This is especially useful for gaming and VR, as well as embedded, medical, industrial, military and professional use cases, where real-time ray tracing is a requirement that cannot be met with large dedicated GPUs and often must work with an existing legacy GPU.

To make the evaluation of the RC1000 as simple as possible for developers to evaluate or utilize the ray tracing api extensions to OpenGL, SiliconArts has released a demonstration build on the Github site (https://github.com/siliconarts) that allows for developers to access the source code for the rendering examples and execute them on an Intel PAC with Intel ArriaV GX FPGA card. The RayCore 1000 ray tracing accelerator IP core is provided in a downloadable FPGA build along with open source releases of its apis, driver and build files. Having the ray tracing apis released to the open source communities will enable experimentation and innovation for ray tracing beyond the traditional markets. This will enable anyone to program and evaluate ray tracing without dedicating the latest generation GPU to the task. SiliconArts is working to incorporate advanced ray tracing functions into the open source developer environment to prepare for the conversion of graphics into photorealistic representations that can provide natural looking lighting and AR visual immersion.

SiliconArts own graphics technology, the RayCore MC-Series, enabling a scalable 3D GPU rendering solution providing from 1 GRays/sec to up to 10 Grays/sec for multi-core solutions can be integrated to this GPU platform to provide futuristic capabilities for next generation visualization. Higher performance rendering platforms for dedicated and professional use cases can be scaled to 100s of Grays/sec performance with multi-chip board level designs.SiliconArts CEO Hyung-Min Yoon says The ray tracing movement is so critical to our computing platforms user interface. We can expect ray tracing to be a core function of all GPUs in the future.

SiliconArts

Bringing ray tracing to the mainstream GPU market based on a licensable IP core that incorporates patented innovations to accelerate ray tracing for all GPU product ranges, including embedded and legacy GPUs.

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SiliconArts releases Ray Tracing IP Core to Intel Solutions Marketplace, open source ray tracing APIs on Github - Design and Reuse

DENVER, Aug. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --ShapeShift, a decentralized, non-custodial cryptocurrency platform, has named Willy Ogorzaly, ShapeShift's principal product manager, as head of decentralization within its newly forming Foundation. Ogorzaly will help lead the transfer of open source code, intellectual property and operations to the ShapeShift Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), act as spokesperson for the transitioning entity, and carry forward ShapeShift's mission and product value proposition to the decentralized community.

In July, ShapeShift announcedthat it would be dissolving all corporate structure and turning its management and operations over to a DAO run by holders of its FOX Token. The foundation's purpose is to oversee this shift and, when its mission is complete, disband. The company will announce additional appointments in the coming weeks.

"I'm so excited to help lead the decentralization of ShapeShiftI can't imagine a more worthwhile project to pour my energy into," said Ogorzaly. "The world deserves an open-source, multi-chain, community-owned interface in the growing decentralized universe, and ShapeShift is in the best position to deliver this. Leading the effort to fully decentralize ShapeShift is a dream come true, and I'm grateful to work with our talented and enthusiastic community to help do it right."

At ShapeShift, Ogorzaly has been responsible for leading product strategy, defining new features and solutions, and ensuring ShapeShift's products meet the needs of the community. Before joining ShapeShift, he co-founded Bitfract, the first tool enabling trades from bitcoin into multiple cryptocurrencies in a single transaction; the company was acquired by ShapeShift in 2018. Willy also actively contributes to Giveth, an open-source and decentralized application for donating to social impact projects.

"Willy was the natural choice for this position," said Erik Voorhees, founder and CEO of ShapeShift. "He lives and breathes DeFi and has been a helpful guide in my own learning. Willy's infectious energy will help a decentralizing ShapeShift build partnerships and community channels to make it successful. He has been an incredibly instrumental force in our team toward building stronger DeFi components into our platform, and we are very pleased to have him driving the decentralization and cross-communications efforts."

About ShapeShiftSince 2014, ShapeShift has been pioneering self-custody for digital asset trading. The company's web and mobile platforms allow users around the world to safely buy, hold, trade and interact with digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Learn more at ShapeShift.com.

Media Contact:Lindsay Smith[emailprotected]

SOURCE ShapeShift

https://shapeshift.com

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ShapeShift Appoints Crypto Veteran Willy Ogorzaly as the Foundation's Head of Decentralization - PRNewswire

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Open source software (OSS) is so prevalent that its difficult to imagine life without it. For businesses, open source brings scalability, transparency, cost savings, and the power of the crowd.

To get an idea of the pervasiveness of open source software commercial or otherwise just consider WordPress. The brand synonymous with content management systems (CMS) spans two broad incarnations the self-hosted open source version available through WordPress.organd a hosted version called WordPress.com thats operated by Automattic. Collectively, they now power more than 40% of all websites.

Similarly, just about everyone is familiar with Android, the open source mobile operating system (OS) that claims a global market share of 84%. The lions share of this belongs to Googles flavor of Android, which includes an ecosystem of services and proprietary applications that make Google a lot of money. The core Android Open Source Project (AOSP), however, has been forked several times, perhaps most notably (in the West, at least) by Amazon to create Fire OS, which powers most of its tablets and TV streaming devices. Android is also the most prominent mobile operating system in China, though local handset makers have created their own forks sans Google.

Android is actually based on a modified version of the Linux kernel, arguably one of the biggest success stories to emerge from the open source world. Linux is now used in everything from automobiles to air traffic control and medical devices and is also widely employed in web servers, the most common being Apache.

In fact, the growth of the web over the past 30 years has been fueled in large part by open source software. So what would a world without open source look like?

Everything from operating systems, databases, web servers, programming languages, and developer tools all wouldnt be possible without open source, said Martin Traverso, a former Facebook engineer and cocreator of thedistributed SQL query engine Presto. There would likely be fewer developers in the world because not all developers have the luxury of being part of a certain company theres a lot of innovation that happens outside of companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

In other words, self-taught or indie developers would have less incentive and opportunity to gain a foothold in software development if everything was locked behind a proprietary door.

Traverso joined Facebook in 2012 and alongside two colleagues developed Presto to help analysts and data scientists run faster queries on large amounts of data. Facebook open-sourced Presto a year later, and in 2019 Traverso and his cofounders left Facebook to launch a fork of the original Presto project, called PrestoSQL, as part of the newly formed Presto Software Foundation. In December, PrestoSQL was rebranded as Trino, and the Presto Software Foundation was renamed the Trino Software Foundation.

Above: Hey Presto

In 2019, Traverso also cofounded a company called Starburst Data that targets enterprises with a commercial version of Trino and raised $100 million at a $1.2 billion valuation in January.

For perspective on the impact Presto (the original project) and Trino have had, Amazons AWS uses them as part of the companys Athena interactive query service, and they are also used by Uber, Airbnb, Intel, Twitter, Netflix, Atlassian, and Alibaba. Starburst, meanwhile, claims notable commercial clients like Comcast and Vmware. None of this would have been possible without open source.

Open source has cultivated a community of innovation that wouldnt otherwise exist, Traverso said. Anything that contains software today depends on open source your TV, phone, car, and so on. Theres huge leverage across the industry, and without all those open source components, everyone would have to either build them themselves or buy them.

This helps illustrate what open source software means to businesses of all sizes. It really isnt just free software aimed at cash-strapped startups. Instead, it serves as the fundamental building blocks of most of the technologies we use on a daily basis, something even the major technology companies rely on and its main benefit can be measured in eyeballs and people power.

Open source software is constantly improving because it is updated regularly to meet the needs of a diverse group of users, resulting in technology offerings that are more powerful and broadly applicable than just a single company and a single use case, Traverso said. While a big company might have the resources to develop these technologies from scratch, it wouldnt have the same diverse and growing body of contributors continuously iterating and making the technology better.

Indeed, even a trillion-dollar company wouldnt be prepared to develop everything from scratch internally, as that would mean going back to square one on programming languages, operating systems, databases, web servers, and more.

Using open source software allows these companies to dedicate those resources to more business-critical projects, Traverso added.

But despite all the benefits of open source software, it comes with some notable hurdles. These include the lack of proper project documentation to establish whether its safe to use a specific piece of software.

The biggest challenge is determining whether your use of open source is compatible with the security, legal, privacy, and integrity requirements of your business, Facebook open source product manager Michael Cheng said. Its sometimes challenging to determine where open source packages originate. Without knowing who created the software, it may be difficult to determine whether you can or should use it in your business.

Its also worth looking at how well supported a project is after all, many open source developers work entirely on their own dime in their spare time. A recent Synopsys report showed that 91% of codebases contained open source dependencies with zero development activity in the past two years, representing a three percentage point increase on the previous year. This should be a red flag for any company, as it could mean major vulnerabilities.

However, when that technology becomes critical to everyday products, industries and companies often collaborate to support a project that might otherwise have fallen by the wayside. This is why the Linux Foundation set up the The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) with backing from tech titans like Google, Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, and Facebook. Just a few months ago, Google announced it would start funding developers for Linux kernel, which Android is based on.

If nothing else, the situation highlights some of the challenges businesses face when choosing their open source technology stack. Companies should be asking themselves if they have the expertise and the resources to build the technology in-house, Traverso said. If not, they should look for projects with thriving communities or vendor support.

Oskari Saarenmaa is cofounder and CEO of Aiven, a Finnish company that manages businesses open source data infrastructure on all the major clouds, freeing developers up to focus on building applications.

Aiven provides commercial support, such as security and maintenance, for nine core open source projects, including MySQL, Elasticsearch, Apache Kafka, M3, Redis, InfluxDB, Apache Cassandra, PostgreSQL, and Grafana. The Helsinki-based startup, which raised $100 million at an $800 million valuation back in March, works with such big-name companies as Comcast, Atlassian, and Toyota.

Above: Aiven console

According to Saarenmaa, if a company picks its open source technologies carefully, there are no obvious downsides but he warned against relying too much on contributions from a narrow community of users. With open source, theres no obvious vendor you can demand or push to implement such functionality, he said. On the other hand, as the code is open, you always have the opportunity to contribute the required changes for everyones benefit.

Its worth noting that Aiven is one of the companies that joined the Amazon-led OpenSearch project, a fork that came to be after Elastic switched Elasticsearch to a more restrictive server side public license (SSPL) that prevented cloud service providers (such as Amazons AWS) from offering Elasticsearch as a service.

Put simply, licensing is a perennial concern for open source developers across the spectrum.

Most open source projects nowadays use a pretty narrow set of licenses, but there are some commercial open source companies that muddy the waters between open and proprietary licenses, so its important to make sure you dont start building on top of something that limits your future business opportunities, Saarenmaa explained.

When it comes to starting to build something new directly on top of open source technologies, its important to understand what exactly the role of this technology is, how its licensed, and how its supported, Saarenmaa continued. If its a critical piece of technology, you should look to use popular open source technologies that are developed by a wider community of contributors in case one contributor or company steps away, there are others who can step in.

There are numerous recent examples of bait-and-switch activity, in which a company that built itself on an open source ethos changes the terms of engagement further down the road. MongoDB, for example, created the SSPL back in 2018 to enforce the exact same types of restrictions Elastic pursued essentially, stopping large cloud providers from profiting off open source without giving back. MongoDB tried to pass SSPL off as open source but withdrew its application to the open source initiative (OSI) the following year. The OSI has also calledSSPL fauxpen source proprietary software that masquerades as open source.

Justin Dorfman, open source program manager at cybersecurity company Reblaze, said there is ultimately nothing illegal about this kind of license switching and that the risk is minimal for companies engaging in the practice. In fact, it might actually be good for business MongoDBs market capitalization has gradually risen from around $4 billion at the time of its license switch to an all-time high of $25 billion this past February.

So is there anything that can or should be done to counter this trend? It wont be easy, but Dorfman says education could help.

The community should be educating computer science students early on, encouraging them to become members or volunteers of the OSI, and providing more clarity as to what open source truly is and what it isnt, he said. Just because you can see the code on GitHub or GitLab doesnt mean its truly open source. This still doesnt protect a project from switching when its convenient for them, but the more that they are aware of open source versus source available, the better.

At the top of the technology food chain, numerous companies have created billion- and trillion-dollar businesses off the back of open source software. Facebook, for example, was built on open source technologies from the get-go, with the likes of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP serving as the building blocks for what is now one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world.

Much of the technology we build to power our datacenters, AI and machine learning architecture, or developer tools would not be anywhere as robust, reliable, scalable, or feature-rich as they are without the feedback, contributions, and collaborative energy of countless companies, communities, and individuals we work with in open source, Facebook open source head Kathy Kam said.

On the flip side, the social networking giant has also open-sourced dozens of its own internal projects, including React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces that is now one of the most popular open source projects in the world. Using open source and making open source available enables all of us to build better software together, Kam continued.

Above: Facebook likes open source

But why would a company open-source some of its technologies and not others? What factors are at play here?

Many companies open-source non-differentiating parts of their technology to drive adoption for the differentiating, closed-source parts of their technology, Kam explained.

This means any technology a company has developed to support a core function of its business, but which isnt a direct competitive advantage in itself, might be better off as an open source project. In the community, it can benefit from the input of thousands of developers who might also contribute to an ecosystem of products that support the original companys core product.

However, a company of Facebooks size may have any number of reasons for pushing a piece of software into the open source sphere.

When it comes to open source, Facebooks focus is a bit different, Kam added. Our mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Realizing this vision at the scale and complexity of billions of users worldwide requires that we collaborate openly with diverse external stakeholders to meet these challenges head-on.

While there is often a degree of altruism involved when big tech companies elect to open-source one of their technologies, these players usually stand to benefit somewhere along the way by spurring activity in a particular space, for instance. By way of example, Facebook open-sourced Magma in 2019 to help telecom companies more easily deploy wireless networks in remote areas, a project that was eventually taken over by the Linux Foundation. How might this benefit Facebook? Well, getting people online means they can access Facebook services. This strategy is further evidenced by Facebooks significant internet infrastructure investments spanning subsea cables and satellites.

Embracing open source can also help businesses attract top technical talent developers generally like all things open source. Martin Traverso worked on Presto for nearly seven years while he was at Facebook. The open source community has a very ardent following of really talented developers and engineers, he said. During my time at Facebook, many engineers cited the companys involvement in, and contribution to, open source as a reason for joining the team. Theres also a lower ramp-up cost for developers joining the company if theyre already familiar with the technology.

There have been several billion-dollar exits in the commercial open source software (COSS) space in recent years, including enterprise-focused Red Hat, which IBM snapped up for a cool $34 billion and Mulesoft, which Salesforce took over for $6.5 billion. Throw in the countless other businesses drawing in sizable investments for their affiliations with the open source world, and its clear investors are crazy for open source, though that wasnt always the case.

So what has changed? According to Two Sigma Ventures VC Vinay Iyengar, the cloud has played a major role in this transformation.

Historically, successful COSS companies, most notably Red Hat, made money from selling technical support to their customers, he said. This was never a super compelling or scalable way to build a large software business. Over the years, however, the rise of the cloud has allowed COSS vendors to sell their software as a managed service. Companies like MongoDB, GitHub, and Cloudera were early pioneers in leveraging this open core model successfully, paving the way for a new, and far more compelling, model of COSS monetization.

Two Sigma Ventures has backed a number of notable players in the open source and open core spheres, including DevOps powerhouse GitLab and Timescale, a time-series database operator that recently announced a $40 million tranche of funding. The VC firm also launched the Open Source Index, a useful tool that showcases the most popular and fastest-growing open source projects on GitHub, allowing users to sort and filter by various criteria.

Above: Open Source Index: Top 10 by TSV ranking

Such data can prove useful for companies looking at which communities are most active, metrics that can help determine which open source technologies are worth building a commercial business on top of. For Iyengar, that is one of open source softwares core selling points.

Generally speaking, COSS companies have large preexisting communities and lots of developer love before they even begin to sell their commercial offerings, he said. This leads to remarkably efficient customer acquisition and bottoms-up growth compared to closed-source equivalents. Additionally, many of these projects constitute a core part of an enterprises infrastructure, making them very difficult to replace once implemented.

This, according to Iyengar, leads to great net retention dynamics and lower churn. We have seen this time and time again, especially with some of the new COSS pioneers like HashiCorp, Confluent, and Databricks, he said.

Many of the major VC and private equity firms have already gone all in on companies that monetize open source tools in some way. And there is at least one investor dedicated entirely to COSS startups Joseph Jacks is the founder and sole general partner at OSS Capital.

We invest exclusively in COSS companies, defined as any given company that would not exist without the co-existence of a given open source core technology,' Jacks explained. We are technology-agnostic and vertical-agnostic investors as long as the company meets this abstract definition, it fits our strict investment thesis.

OSS Capitals most recent investment was a new open source developer tool platform called Rome that launched with $4.5 million in seed funding.

While OSS Capital is mostly focused on pre-series A investments, the COSS space has generated numerous billion-dollar companies in recent years. Investing in an early-stage company may incur higher risks, but the rewards could be significant. For now, Jacks said hes happy to have OSS Capital fly under the radar.

Since our founding, we have made around a dozen investments, he said. We have intentionally kept a low profile on announcing investments since our focus today is at the pre-A stage.

Link:
Wizards of OSS: Industry perspectives on open source software - VentureBeat

After three decades, Coq, a theorem-proving programming language developed by researchers in France, is being fitted for a new name because it has become impossible to ignore that it sounds like bawdy English slang.

Once referred to as CoC, short for Calculus of Constructions, the programming language became Coq when work on version 5 began in 1989.

The name according to software engineer Tho Zimmermann's initial entry to the Coq GitHub wiki on April 6 is a reference to the French word for "rooster," to the Calculus of Constructions, and to the contributions of Thierry Coquand, one of the creators of the language.

Coq also happens to sound like "cock," which while it means both "a male rooster" and "to tilt," can be used informally to refer to the male anatomy. And for some people, that deters community participation.

"This similarity has already led to some women turning away from Coq and others getting harassed when they said they were working on Coq," the project wiki, last updated on Friday, explains. "It also makes some English conversations about Coq with lay persons simply more difficult."

Tech terminology changes have roiled online communities for the past few years as efforts to make computer science and other fields more welcoming to a more diverse set of people have led to the deprecation and removal of terms that carry cultural baggage like "master," "slave," "blacklist," and "whitelist."

This has been particularly evident in volunteer-based open source communities, where the need to formalize governance through codes of conduct has met with frequent resistance among people who resent the imposition of rules on a sphere where they previously acted without constraint.

The Coq community went through this itself in 2017 and 2018 when there was some debate about the need for a code of conduct confusingly abbreviated a CoC in some discussion threads.

Ribald usage of Coq isn't exactly new. Its community has been aware of the pun potential for years. But with so many projects trying to make themselves more welcoming to new contributors, the programming language has finally decided to take a serious look at removing the barrier-to-entry that its name presents.

Members of the Coq community have undertaken the thankless job of evaluating the dozens of suggested new names and, after more than two months of discussion and wiki updates, they've already rejected many for obvious failings.

For example, "Gallus," the Latin word for "rooster" has been discarded because, again, it sounds like a word for a part of the male anatomy.

Then there's "coqi," where the added "i" stands for induction, a mathematical proof technique. Unfortunately, "coqi," it sounds like "," evoking Russian slang for another male anatomical feature.

Why not "Cocon," the French word for "cocoon"? Well, "con" isn't quite polite in French as it's slang for a part of the female anatomy. The project wiki notes that this is likely to lead to more jokes, which is the problem that prompted the whole renaming effort.

How about "Bando," Portuguese for a group of roosters? Er, no. Another male anatomy reference in French slang.

But there are some more promising proposals. One possible solution involves extending "Coq" to "Coquand," since the language's name is already derived at least in part from one of its main creators. There's precedent for homage-based branding with languages like Ada, Pascal, and Haskell. It is unclear how Coq's other contributors might feel about this.

Naming is hard. No pun intended.

Read more:
Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language - The Register

Robots are by far the most efficient use of modern science. Robots not only reduce human labor but also execute error-free activities. Many businesses are expressing an interest in robotics. Automated machines have gained popularity in recent years. Keeping the situation in mind, we shall discuss robotic computer languages.

So, in order for robots to do tasks, they must be programmed. Robot programming is the process through which robots acquire instructions from computers. A robotic programmer must be fluent in several programming languages. So lets get started.

There are about 1500 robotic programming languages accessible worldwide. They are all involved in robotic training. In this section, we will go through the top programming languages accessible today.

The easiest way to get started with robotics is to learn C and C++. Both of these are general-purpose programming languages with almost identical features. C++ is a modified version of C that adds a few features. You should now see why C++ is the most popular robotic programming language. It enables a low-level hardware interface and delivers real-time performance.

C++ is the most mature programming language for getting the greatest results from a robot. C++ allows you to code in three different ways. The Constructor, Autonomous, and OperatorControl methods are among these. In this constructor mode, the initializing code runs to build a class. It will execute at the start of the program in this scenario.

It aids in the initialization of sensors and the creation of other WPILib objects. The autonomous approach guarantees that the code is executed. It only works for a set amount of time. The robot then moves on to the teleoperation section. The OperatorControl technique is used in this case.

Python is a powerful programming language that may be used to create and test robots. In terms of automation and post-process robotic programming, it outperforms other platforms. You may use this to build a script that will compute, record, and activate a robot code.

It is not necessary to teach anything by hand. This enables rapid testing and visualization of the simulations, programs, and logic solutions. Python uses fewer lines of code than other programming languages. It also includes a large number of libraries for fundamental functions. Pythons primary goal is to make programming easier and faster.

Any item can be created, modified, or deleted. In addition, we may code the robots motions in the same script. All of this is accomplished with very little code. Python is among the finest robotic programming languages as a result of this.

Java is a programming language that enables robots to do activities that are similar to those performed by humans. It also provides a variety of APIs to meet the demands of robots. Java has artificial language characteristics to a high degree.

It enables you to construct high-level algorithms, searching, and neural algorithmic algorithms. Java also allows you to run the same code on many computers.

Java is not built into machine code since it is an interpretative language. Rather, in execution, the Java virtual computer interprets the commands. Java has become quite popular in the field of robotics as a result of this. As a result, Java is preferable to alternative robotic programming languages. Java is used by modern AIs such as IBM Watson and AlphaGo.

Microsofts .NET programming language is used to create apps with Visual Studio. It provides a good basis for anyone interested in pursuing a career in robotics. .NET is primarily used by programmers for port and socket development.

It supports various languages while allowing for horizontal scaling. It also offers a uniform environment and makes programming in C++ or Java easier. All of the tools and IDEs have been thoroughly tested and are accessible on the Microsoft Developer Network.

In addition, the merging of languages is smooth. As a result, we can confidently rank this among the best robotic programming languages.

In robotic engineering, MATLAB and its open-source cousins like Octave are extremely popular. In terms of data analysis, it is considerably ahead of many other robotic computer languages. MATLAB is not really a programming language in the traditional sense. Yet, engineering solutions based on complex mathematics can be found here.

Robotic developers will learn how to create sophisticated graphs using MATLAB data. It is quite helpful in the development of the complete robotic system. It also aids the development of deeply established robotic foundations in the robot business. Its a tool that lets you apply your methods to simulate the outcome. Engineers may use this simulation to fine-tune the system design and eliminate mistakes.

There have been cases when MATLAB has been used to build a complete robot. As a result, it must be included among the top ten languages. Kuka kr6 is one of the greatest instances of MATLAB application. MATLAB was also used to create and simulate this robot by the developers.

One of the first robotic computer languages was Lisp. It was introduced to the market to allow computer applications to use mathematical terminology. Lisp is an AI domain that is mostly used for creating Robot Operating Systems.

Tree data structures, automated storage management, syntax highlighting, and elevated-order characteristics are among the features available. As a result, it is simple to use and aids in the elimination of implementation mistakes after an issue have been identified.

This problem-solving procedure takes place at the prototype stage, not the manufacturing stage. It also includes capabilities like the read-eval-print loop and self-hosting compilation.

One of the earliest programming languages to hit the market was Pascal. Its still quite useful, especially for newcomers. It is based on the Fundamental programming language and teaches excellent programming skills. Pascal is being used by manufacturers to create robotic programming languages.

ABBs RAPID and Kukas KRL are two examples. Nevertheless, most developers consider Pascal to be obsolete for everyday use. Theyve also highlighted its significance for newcomers.

It will assist you in learning other robot programming languages more quickly. This is only recommended for complete novices. When youve gained some expertise in robotics programming, you can transition to another language.

And its a wrap. We hope that you found this article helpful regarding robotic programming languages. Weve covered all of the pros and cons of the top robotic programming languages. You can choose the most appropriate language for your needs. Even now, robotics has a promising future. So now is the ideal moment to get started.

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Different Types of Robot Programming Languages - Analytics Insight

PyTorch, a Facebook-backed open source library for the Python programming language, has reached version 1.9 and has made significant improvements in scientific computing.

PyTorch has become one of the more important Python libraries for people working in data science and AI. Microsoft recently added enterprise support for PyTorch deep learning on Azure. PyTorch has also become the standard for Facebooks AI workloads.

Googles TensorFlow and PyTorch are integrated with important Python add-ons such as NumPy and data science tasks that require faster GPU processing.

to see: Recruitment Kit: Python Developer (TechRepublic Premium)

According to the release notes, the PyTorch linear algebra module torch.linalg will move to stable in version 1.9, providing NumPy users with familiar add-ons for working with math.

According to these release notes, this module extends PyTorch support and implements all the functions of NumPys linear algebra module (currently supporting accelerators and autograd). torch.linalg.matrix_norm And torch.linalg.householder_product..

Also moving to the stable version is the Complex Autograd feature, which provides users with a way to calculate complex gradients and use complex variables to optimize real-valued loss functions.

This is a feature needed by multiple prospective users of PyTorch complex numbers, such as TorchAudio, ESPNet, Asteroid, and FastMRI, now and downstream, said the PyTorch project.

This release also has some debugging features with the new torch.use_determinstic_algorithms option. When enabled, the operation works deterministically if possible. If not enabled, you will get a runtime error if it can behave non-deterministically.

There is a new beta version of torch.special Module Similar to SciPys special module. This brings many features that are useful for scientific computing and working with distributions such as: iv, ive, erfcx, logerfc,and logerfcx..

And this version brings a PyTorch Mobile interpreter designed to run programs on edge devices. This is a streamlined version of the PyTorch runtime. This significantly reduces the binary size compared to the runtime on the current device.

The current pt size on Arm64-v8a Android MobileNet V2 is 8.6MB compressed and 17.8MB uncompressed. We are using MobileInterpreter to target compressed sizes less than 4MB and uncompressed sizes less than 8MB, said the PyTorch project. Says.

Mobile app developers can also use the TorchVision library with iOS and Android apps. The library contains C ++ TorchVision operations that assist with tasks such as object detection and segmentation in video and images.

to see: This old programming language suddenly gets hot again.But the future is still uncertain

There are some additional features that are useful for distributed training of machine learning algorithms. TorchElastic, which is currently in beta, is part of the core PyTorch and is used to handle scaling events properly.

There is also CUDA support for RPC. CUDA RPC sends Tensors from local CUDA memory to remote CUDA memory for more efficient peer-to-peer Tensor communication.

In terms of performance, this version of PyTorch also offers a stable release of the Freezing Application Protocol Interface (API), a beta version of PyTorch Profiler, a beta version of the inference mode API, and a beta version of torch.package in new ways. .. Package the PyTorch model.

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PyTorch 1.9 has arrived: this is what you need to know - Texasnewstoday.com

PyTorch, the Facebook-backed open-source library for the Python programming language, has reached version 1.9 and brings major improvements for scientific computing.

PyTorch has become one of the more important Python libraries for people working in data science and AI. Microsoft recently added enterprise support for PyTorch deep learning on Azure. PyTorch has also become the standard for AI workloads at Facebook.

Google's TensorFlow and PyTorch integrate with important Python add-ons like NumPy and data-science tasks that require faster GPU processing.

SEE: Hiring Kit: Python developer (TechRepublic Premium)

The PyTorch linear algebra module torch.linalg has moved to stable in version 1.9, giving NumPy users a familiar add-on to work with maths, according to release notes.

Per those release notes, the module "extends PyTorch's support for it with implementations of every function from NumPy's linear algebra module (now with support for accelerators and autograd) and more, like torch.linalg.matrix_norm and torch.linalg.householder_product."

Also moving to stable is the Complex Autograd feature to provide users a way to "calculate complex gradients and optimize real valued loss functions with complex variables."

"This is a required feature for multiple current and downstream prospective users of complex numbers in PyTorch like TorchAudio, ESPNet, Asteroid, and FastMRI," the PyTorch project notes.

There are also some debugging goodies in this release with a new torch.use_determinstic_algorithms option. Enabling this makes operations behave deterministically, if possible, otherwise it will produce a runtime error if they might behave nondeterministically.

There's a new beta of the torch.special module similar to SciPy's special module. It brings many functions that are helpful for scientific computing and working with distributions such as iv, ive, erfcx, logerfc, and logerfcx.

And this version brings the PyTorch Mobile interpreter, which is made for executing programs on edge devices. It's a slimmed down version of the PyTorch runtime. This should make big cuts to the binary size compared to the current on-device runtime.

"The current pt size with MobileNetV2 in arm64-v8a Android is 8.6 MB compressed and 17.8 MB uncompressed. Using Mobile Interpreter, we are targeting at the compressed size below 4 MB and uncompressed size below 8MB," the PyTorch project notes.

Mobile app developers can also use the TorchVision library on their iOS and Android apps. The library contains C++ TorchVision ops to help with tasks like object detection and segmentation in videos and images.

SEE:This old programming language is suddenly hot again. But its future is still far from certain

There are several additions to help with distributed training for machine-learning algorithms. TorchElastic is now in beta but part of core PyTorch, and is used to "gracefully handle scaling events".

There's also CUDA support for RPC. CUDA RPC sends Tensors from local CUDA memory to remote CUDA memory for more efficient peer-to-peer Tensor communication.

On the performance front, this version of PyTorch also brings the stable release of the Freezing application protocol interface (API), a beta of the PyTorch Profiler, a beta of the Inference Mode API, and a beta of torch.package, a new way to package PyTorch models.

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PyTorch 1.9 has arrived: Here's what you need to know - ZDNet

Blockchain programming can be difficult if the basics are not understood properly. Good books help in understanding and give a better insight to the readers about using blockchain programming for different purposes. Analytics Insight has selected the top 10 popular books about blockchain programming, available in 2021.

Foundations of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Programming for Beginners

Author: Chris Dannen

Chris Dannen is a partner and founder at Iterative Instinct, a hybrid investment fund focused on cryptocurrency trading and seed-stage venture investments. He was formerly a corporate strategist for Fortune 500 companies.

The book demonstrates how to use Solidity and the Ethereum project, which is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization. Blockchain protocols are taking the world by storm, and the Ethereum project, with its Turing-complete scripting language Solidity, has rapidly become a front runner. This book presents the blockchain phenomenon in context; then situates Ethereum in a world pioneered by Bitcoin. It provides the fundamentals of programming and networking, alongside its introduction to the new discipline of crypto-economics.

Blueprint for a New Economy

Author: Melanie Swan

Melanie Swan is the Founder of the Institute for Blockchain Studies and a Contemporary Philosophy MA candidate at Kingston University London and Universit Paris VIII. She has a traditional markets background with an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and work experience at Fidelity and JP Morgan.

The book talks about how the blockchain is in a position to become the fifth disruptive computing paradigm after mainframes, PCs, the Internet, and mobile/social networking. It explains that the blockchain is essentially a public ledger with the potential as a worldwide, decentralized record for the registration, inventory, and transfer of all assets. It is not only applicable just for finances, but also for property and intangible assets such as votes, software, health data, and ideas.

Harnessing Bitcoins Blockchain Technology

Author: Siraj Raval

Siraj Raval is an app developer & entrepreneur. He is the founder of a crowdfunding platform for developers called Havi. He has also developed several iOS apps including Meetup and has worked on a host of open source work.

The book demonstrates how to take advantage of Bitcoins underlying technology, the blockchain, to build massively scalable, decentralized applications known as DApps. In this practical guide, author Siraj Raval explains why DApps will become more widely used and also more profitable than todays most popular web apps. It would help the reader learn about advances in distributed-system technology that make distributed data, wealth, identity, computing, and bandwidth.

Building Blockchain Projects

Author: Narayan Prusty

Narayan Prusty is a full-stack developer, with five years of experience in the field. He specializes in Blockchain and JavaScript. His commitment has led him to build scalable products for startups, the government, and enterprises across India, Singapore, the USA, and UAE.

The book talks about developing real-time practical DApps using Ethereum and JavaScript. This book is for JavaScript developers who now want to create tamper-proof data (and transaction) applications using Blockchain and Ethereum. Those who are interested in cryptocurrencies and the logic and database empowering it will find this book extremely useful.

The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto

Author: Phil Champagne

Phil Champagne is the Managing Director of Wren Investment Group LLC, a firm that invests in real estate with equity funding from financial partners. His knowledge of the Austrian School of Economics enables Wren Investment Group LLC and its partners to navigate investments from a sound money perspective.

Like the currency he created, the identity of Bitcoins creator Satoshi Nakamoto is virtual, existing only online. The Nakamoto persona, which may represent an individual or a group, exists only in the online publications that introduced and explained Bitcoin during its earliest days. This book is the first-ever collected and professionally published form of the essential writings that detail Bitcoins creation. It contains Satoshi Nakamoto emails and posts on computer forums presented in chronological order, Bitcoin fundamentals presented in laymans terms, Bitcoins potential and profound economic implications, etc.

Write Production-ready Smart Contracts for Ethereum Blockchain with Solidity

Author: Jitendra Chittoda

Jitendra Chittoda is a blockchain security engineer at ChainSecurity. His day job is to perform a security audit on smart contracts and expose security vulnerabilities in Solidity and Scilla contracts. He has also developed non-custodial, decentralized, P2P lending contracts for ETHLend. The Solidity contracts that he has developed or audited handle over $100 million worth of crypto assets. He also served as a tech and security advisor in various ICO projects.

The book delves into solidity and understands control structures, function calls, and variable scopes. It explores tools for developing, testing, and debugging your blockchain applications. The book also helps in learning advanced design patterns and best practices for writing secure smart contracts book Description. The book is very detailed and essential for beginners.

Practical Java Programming for IoT, AI, and Blockchain

Author: Perry Xiao

Dr. Perry Xiao is an Associate Professor and Course Director of London South Bank University. He comes from a physics and electronics background, having received BEng in Opto-Electronics, MSc in Physics, and Ph.D. in Photophysics.

The book demonstrates practical uses for some of the hottest tech applications trending among technology professionals. It provides a brief overview for getting started with Java Programming and how it can be applied to some of the biggest trending applications of today. The book helps the readers to understand how to program Java to interact with operating systems, networking, and mobile applications.

A Beginners Guide to Build Smart Contracts for Ethereum and Blockchain

Author: Ritesh Modi

Ritesh Modi is a former Microsoft senior technology evangelist. He has been recognized as a Microsoft Regional Director for his contributions to Microsoft products, services, and communities. He is a cloud architect, a published author, a speaker, and a leader who is popular for his contributions to datacenters, Azure, Kubernetes, blockchain, cognitive services, DevOps, artificial intelligence, and automation.

The book helps in learning the most powerful and primary programming language for writing smart contracts and find out how to write, deploy, and test smart contracts in Ethereum. It starts with a brief run-through of blockchain, Ethereum, and their most important concepts or components. It also teaches how to install all the necessary tools to write, test, and debug Solidity contracts on Ethereum.

Programming the Open Blockchain

Author: Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Andreas is a passionate technologist, who is well-versed in many technical subjects. He is a serial tech-entrepreneur, having launched businesses in London, New York, and California. He has earned degrees in Computer Science and Data Communications and Distributed Systems from UCL.

The book acts as a guide through the seemingly complex world of Bitcoin, providing the knowledge the reader needs to participate in the internet of money. Whether one is building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this revised and expanded second edition provides essential detail to get started.

Gain blockchain programming skills to build decentralized applications using Python

Author: Arjuna Sky Kok

Arjuna Sky Kok has experienced more than 10 years in expressing himself as a software engineer. He has developed web applications using Symfony, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, and Django. He also has built mobile applications on top of Android and iOS platforms. Currently, he is researching Ethereum technology. Other than that, he teaches Android and iOS programming to students.

The book implements real-world decentralized applications using Python, Vyper, Populus, and Ethereum. It talks about the blockchain ecosystem implement in smart contracts, wallets, and decentralized applications (DApps) using Python. It provides deeper insights into storing content in a distributed storage platform book description.

Read more here:
Top Blockchain Programming Books to Read in 2021 - Analytics Insight

Kood/Jhvi opens its doors to students this autumn, offering a radical new approach to learning to code.

Later this year, an international coding school will open its doors to students in Jhvi, a town of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants in Estonia that is located 50km from the Russian border.

There are no tuition fees, no classes and no teachers, and over the course of two years, students learn the skills they need to enter Estonia's job market as full-stack developers.

"We have to constantly explain how a school without classes can actually work," says Karin Knnapas, the 34-year old co-headteacher of the brand-new Kood/Jhvi computing school. "There is no similar school in Estonia."

Kood/Jhvi is an initiative from members of the Estonian Founders Society, an organization set up to invigorate the local startup community and empower new startup founders. Among the eight Estonian entrepreneurs involved in the project are the co-founders of two unicorn-status startups: Bolt's Martin Villig, and Wise's (formerly Transferwise) Taavet Hinrikus. In addition to state funding, the school has received 700,000 in private donations.

SEE: Hiring Kit: Python developer (TechRepublic Premium)

Kood/Jhvi's curriculum is based on 01 Education System, a peer-learning platform developed by French computer scientist Nicolas Sadirac. There are no classes and teachers, and most of the studies are cooperation-based.

Knnapas likens the curriculum to a computer game, with students tasked with solving increasingly difficult problems that allow them to level-up. "The platform has specific instructions on what the student needs to do, for example, code a forum, build a website," she says.

"They need to follow the instructions and do what is asked. About 80% of these problems are solved together in a team, so they need to work with other people and figure it out together."

Knnapas had been involved in organizing student entrepreneurship at the European Innovation Academy for a number of years alongside colleague Elle-Mari Pappel, when in autumn 2020 they came across a job listing for a headmaster role at a new IT school in Estonia.

The pair applied for the role together, and as of the beginning of 2021, Knnapas and Pappel work alongside each other in joint roles as Kood/Jhvi's co-headteachers.

"Kood/Jhvi is a unique type of school with an innovative methodology, so the school also needed a different kind of management model," says Knnapas.

"We knew that our cooperation works well, we know each other's strengths and weaknesses and like working together, so it just felt like a perfect match to take on this challenge together."

The location of the school, which is situated in the industrial county of Ida-Virumaa, was selected with the hope that it would help diversify job opportunities in the region, where the main industry of oil shale mining is expected to decline in the future.

For decades, Estonia has relied heavily on oil shale in electricity production, but in recent years the country has made efforts to turn towards renewable energy sources.

The state energy firm, Eesti Energia, announced in June that it will stop producing electricity from oil shale by 2030 and there have been steps taken in that direction already.

All of this is expected to bring sweeping changes to the economy and labour market in eastern Estonia home to the country's biggest oil shale mines and a need for new job opportunities for the thousands of people employed in the industry-heavy region.

"Our goal is to support the competitiveness of the region [and] give the local youth and also older people an additional education opportunity either at the start of their journey, or if they want to change their career," says Knnapas.

SEE:AI and data science jobs are hot. Here's what employers want

To apply to Kood/Jhvi, students need to be over 18 years-old and have at least a basic education, which means having graduated from ninth grade. While there are no tuition fees, students are expected to commit to their studies full-time throughout their two-year education.

Kood/Jhvi is not entirely unique. There are more than 20 schools worldwide that are based on a similar methodology, including Paris's cole 42, which Sadirac developed in cooperation with French telco billionaire, Xavier Niel.

Despite this, word of Kood/Jhvi is already spreading, with the school attracting interest regionally and internationally. Its first round of applications ended on May 31; of the roughly 3,000 applicants, 25% were from Ida-Virumaa, with other applications coming from Finland, Latvia, and even as far as Brazil.

To apply, applicants must take a two-hour online test that challenges their logical thinking and memory. The 600 highest test scorers will then be selected to continue the application process in a 'selection sprint', during which, over the course of three intensive weeks, they will learn the basics of programming and solve challenges individually and as a team. In autumn, the 200 best applicants of these 600 will start their two-year journey at Kood/Jhvi.

To begin with, students will be housed in the Ida-Viru Vocational Education Center in neighbouring Sillame, until a modern, renovated building in Jhvi is opened in 2022 that will house study space, housing, and event space.

According to The State of European Tech Survey 2020, Estonia has four to six times as many startups per capita as the European average, meaning that on a population-adjusted basis, it is the European capital of startups. At the same time, there are growing concerns that the future development of the Estonian IT sector could be jeopardized by a lack of skilled technology professionals.

"A good programmer without a job is really hard to find in Estonia," says Ivo Lasn, the head of the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications (ITL). "There are more ideas and business plans in the IT field than the people with whom to execute those ideas. We're talking about a shortage of thousands of people."

The problem is an old one, and over the years there have been several initiatives by state and private-sector companies aimed at promoting IT education among prospective students. The success of Estonian startups in more recent years has had a positive impact on these efforts, and ICT courses are now among most the popular university subjects in terms of the number of applications universities receive.

Older adults are also being encouraged to explore careers in tech. Two of the biggest universities in Estonia have master's curriculums for people from other fields wanting to acquire IT-specific skills and knowledge: Tallinn University of Technology (Taltech) offers a 'Digital Transformation in Business' degree, meanwhile the University of Tartu offers a 'Conversion Master in IT'.

SEE:What is Agile software development? Everything you need to know about delivering better code, faster

Since 2017, more than 500 retrained adults have entered the IT labor market having taken the software development course Choose IT!, which involves six weeks of theory classes and eight weeks of hands-on internship experience at partner companies.

It's not just software developers and testers that are desperately needed for Estonia's IT sector, with Lasn pointing out that non-technical roles such as business analysts, project managers, product owners, service designers, salespeople, and even recruiters and marketeers are also in demand.

After all, these roles usually constitute around 50% of the people working in IT companies, Lasn says.

Knnapas hopes that Kood/Jhvi will help draw more people into Estonia's fledgling tech sector and address the country's widening skills gap. She also believes more education is needed around the opportunities a career in IT can offer, regardless of a person's background or whether they're interested in technical or non-technical roles.

"We need opportunities available both for young people who are finishing high school, but also for people who want to change their career or looking for new opportunities," she says.

"Learning to code can seem a bit daunting even if it isn't, and we need to talk more about what it actually means to work in the IT sector, to help people understand that there are a lot of different roles that need to be covered."

She adds: "Everyone can find something that's interesting for them."

Originally posted here:
This free coding school has no teachers or classes. Can it help solve the tech skills crisis? - ZDNet