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In the decades ahead AI will help us invent things and find patents that previously would not have been possible. We’re already starting to see this in Big pharma and in the advancing biotechnology realm. Can AI be an Inventor? As AI by itself starts to invent things, who legally gets the patent? In late April, 2020 the United States Patent and Trademark Office  published a decision  that claims artificial intelligence cannot be inventors. Only “natural persons” currently have the right to get a patent. In the pandemic, a world of robots, automation and “machines doing it” actually makes sense. But what happens when artificial intelligence keeps getting smarter as human beings might be getting less smart? In 2020 we’re starting on the road to how to regulate AI and the ethics involved. In early 2020 the European Patent Office (EPO) has issued a ruling on its approach to patent applications that designate artificial intelligence (AI) systems as inventors. Wi...

GitHub has given developers a welcome helping hand during these difficult times by making its core tools free. Organisations can now make private repositories without paying any fees. Previously, even small teams would’ve had to pay for a premium membership starting from $7/month. Last year, GitHub made private repositories available for free users but with restrictions in areas such as the number of collaborators; which hindered teams. Unlimited collaborators and private repositories are now included in the free tier. Teams can now also access 2,000 GitHub “action minutes” per month at no additional cost. GitHub Actions enable applications to automate individual tasks. Developers can combine their own series of tasks to create Actions, or use ones created by the community. 500MB of GitHub Packages storage is also now included in the free tier. The free tier is great for many small teams with smaller budgets, but larger teams will likely need a few more features. Gi...

Apple’s developers look set to be able to use Xcode on iDevices following the release of iOS 14 later this year.  iOS developer Steve Moser  highlighted  that a Xcode Preview app is hidden in iOS 13 which acts as a companion app to show layout previews on-device from the main Xcode Mac app. While it’s unlikely anyone would want to create a full project on their iOS device; it could be useful for doing a bit of work on-the-move. Apple is also making a bigger push to prove the iPad, especially the Pro lineup, is maturing into a full laptop replacement. Features debuted with iPadOS have made that somewhat feasible for many tasks; even more so following the recent addition of support for iPad keyboard trackpads. Support for trackpads isn’t the only hardware advancement Apple has added to iPads. An un-Apple like switch to USB-C added true support for external drives; with a proper file system added on the platform-level. Regardless of where you stand on whether the...

Mozilla has launched a web browser designed specifically for use with stand-alone virtual and augmented reality (or mixed reality) headsets. The first release of Firefox Reality can be used with Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream products. Firefox Reality appears in the headsets as a floating panel that has the same controls as standard Firefox. You can browse web pages or move around the interface using a virtual pointer. The open source browser was created from scratch for the headset market, and the developers say they had to rethink everything, including navigation, text-input, environments, and search. The browser supports searching the web using your voice to avoid the difficulties of text input, traditionally something virtual reality environments struggle with. The search in Firefox Reality can optionally be used via the microphone in your headset. While this raises the prospect of other people hearing what you're looking for, presumably not many users will be in shared...

Google Cloud announced the availability of their latest Second Generation runtime,  PHP 7.2 on the App Engine standard environment , on Monday. This version is available in beta for users to build and deploy reliable applications with improved flexibility. PHP 7.2  is open and idiomatic as compared to other second Generation runtimes on App Engine standard such as Python 3.7 and Node.js 8. This means one can run popular frameworks such as Symfony, Laravel, and even WordPress on PHP 7.2. With PHP 7.2 on the App Engine standard environment, users can easily build and deploy an application, which can run reliably under heavy load and large amounts of data. The applications will run within its own secure, reliable environment. Thus, making it independent of the hardware, operating system, or the physical location of the server. Benefits of Google App Engine standard environment for PHP 7.2 Faster auto-scaling : Being on t...

In the month of April, the  PHP  development team  announced  the availability of  PHP  version 7.4. This marks the fourth feature update to the PHP 7 series. PHP 7.4 comes with numerous improvements and new features. Key features in PHP 7.4 Class properties support type declarations. Starting from PHP 7.4, arrow functions will provide a shorthand syntax for defining functions with implicit by-value scope binding The full variance support is only available if autoloading is used by the user. Also, a single file will now only support non-cyclic type references. Numeric literals can contain underscores between digits. Weak references in PHP 7.4 will allow the programmers to retain a reference to an object that does not prevent the object from being destroyed. Users can now throw exceptions from __toString(). This was previously not permitted in PHP as it used to result in a fatal error. The CURLFile now supports stream wrappers in addition to ...

Enterprise software provider Sonatype has found a clear connection between DevOps and developer job satisfaction in its seventh annual DevSecOps Community Survey. According to its findings, developers working within mature DevOps practices are 1.5 times more likely to enjoy their work and 1.6 times at chance of recommending their employer to prospects. The findings reveal that development velocity is quickly gaining momentum, with 55 per cent of respondents deploying code to production once every week at a minimum – compared to 47 per cent last year. And as the velocity increased on an annual basis, 47 per cent of developers acknowledged that they didn’t invest in security despite its importance. Results show teams investing in automated security tools without additional time to spend on security. The automated security tools include open source governance (44 per cent), web application firewalls (59 per cent), and intrusion detection (42 per cent). The major differences in inve...

Singapore is making its COVID-19 contract tracing app open source to help developers around the world to build localised solutions. The country is among the worst-hit by the coronavirus due to its proximity to China. Developers in the country undertook a huge effort to build a comprehensive app for contact tracing called TraceTogether and now want to help others. Launched on March 20th, TraceTogether helps to identify people who’ve had close contact with a COVID-19 patient to help them get treatment and prevent spreading the infection further. The app works by using Bluetooth to detect all the other users an individual has been in close proximity to. If that individual is then diagnosed with COVID-19, the health ministry of Singapore can access the app’s log to identify all the people that person had close contact with. In a Facebook post, Singapore foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan said that TraceTogether has been installed over 630,000 times. "We believe that makin...

Mozilla is constantly putting its efforts into improving Firefox’s devtools. One such effort is Firefox Replay, an experimental tool that allows Firefox content processes to record their behavior so that it can be replayed and rewound later. The main highlight of Firefox Replay is the “code timeline” that enables you to scan through every code execution at a glance. Along with execution points, the timeline also shows exceptions, events, and network requests in real-time. It also allows you to save your recordings and pick up where you left afterward. How Firefox Replay works The record and replay behavior is achieved by “controlling the non-determinism in the browser.” Initially, it records non-deterministic behaviors (intra-thread and inter-thread) and then replays it later to “force the browser to behave deterministically.” Firefox Replay includes IPC integration to enable communication between a recording or replaying process and the chrome process. Its rewind infrast...

The mobile app allowed users to ask questions to their neighbours by text or by voice, share local expertise and keep up with updates from their neighbourhood Google  is shutting down its neighbourhood community app Neighbourly, nearly two years after its launch. In a note to its users, the Internet giant said that the app hasn't gained traction as they had hoped, due to which they will be closing down the app on May 12, 2020 and users will be able to download their Neighbourly content until October 12 this year.  The shutdown of the service, which was  initially rolled out in Mumbai  and later  extended to cities  like Bengaluru, New Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad among others, comes at a time when India is under a 21-day nationwide lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. "We set out to build a helpful neighbourhood app that would let neighbours help each other find answers to everyday questions about their neighbourhoods. This was in line with Goo...