InfoQ Homepage News
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Java News Roundup: WildFly 34, Stream Gatherers, Oracle CPU, Quarkiverse Release Process
This week's Java roundup for October 14th, 2024 features news highlighting: the release of WildFly 34; JEP 485, Stream Gatherers, proposed to target for JDK 24; Oracle Critical Patch Update for October 2024; and a potential leak in the SmallRye and Quarkiverse release processes.
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Microsoft and Tsinghua University Present DIFF Transformer for LLMs
Researchers from Microsoft AI and Tsinghua University have introduced a new architecture called the Differential Transformer (DIFF Transformer), aimed at improving the performance of large language models. This model enhances attention mechanisms by refining how models handle context and minimizing distractions from irrelevant information.
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OpenAI Releases Swarm, an Experimental Open-Source Framework for Multi-Agent Orchestration
Recently released as an experimental tool, Swarm aims to allow developers investigate how they can have multiple agents coordinate with one another to execute tasks using routines and handoffs.
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General-Purpose and Compute-Intensive Amazon EC2 Graviton4 Instances Now Available
AWS has recently released the EC2 C8g and M8g instances, powered by the latest Graviton4 processors. The general-purpose M8g and compute-intensive C8g instances are designed to deliver up to 30% better performance compared to Graviton3-based instances, with a cost increase of approximately 10% over the previous M7g and C7g generations.
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Google Cloud Adds Scalable Vector Search to Memorystore for Valkey & Redis Cluster
Google Cloud has introduced scalable vector-search capabilities to its Memorystore for Valkey and Redis Cluster. This update allows developers to perform vector searches at ultra-low latencies over billions of vectors.
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Podman Desktop 1.13 Launches with Hyper-V Support and Additional Enhancements
Podman Desktop 1.13 introduces key updates, including Hyper-V support for managing Podman machines on Windows, an integrated image search feature, and redesigned empty state pages for containers, images, pods, and Kubernetes. The release also includes a reorganized Kubernetes navigation and an Image Layer Explorer extension.
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Microsoft Releases Preview of AI Integration Libraries for .NET
Last week, Microsoft announced the preview release of two libraries: Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Abstractions and Microsoft.Extensions.AI. These packages, referred to as Unified AI Building Blocks, provide the .NET ecosystem with essential abstractions for integrating artificial intelligence (AI) services into .NET applications and libraries, along with middleware to enhance key capabilities.
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Microsoft Introduces Drasi: Open-Source System for Real-Time Event Processing and Automation
Microsoft’s Azure Incubations team introduced Drasi, an open-source system that simplifies detecting critical events in complex infrastructures. Drasi offers real-time monitoring and automated responses, eliminating the need for manual event handling. With flexible components and integrations, it streamlines change detection across various data sources.
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Vertex AI in Firebase Aims to Simplify the Creation of Gemini-powered Mobile Apps
Currently available in beta, the Vertex AI SDK for Firebase enables the creation of apps that go beyond the simple chat model and text prompting. Google has just made available a colab to help developers through the steps required to integrate it into their apps.
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No EC2 or Kubernetes Allowed: Insights from Building Serverless-Only Architecture at PostNL
PostNL shared insights and guidance from its transition from outsourced IT project delivery to an in-house product delivery capability. By embracing cloud-native technologies, with an emphasis on serverless services, the company achieved significant gains in productivity and market responsiveness while reducing operational costs.
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How a Sustainable Mindset in Software Engineering Can Increase Team Performance and Prevent Burnout
A sustainable mindset in software engineering matters because software is still primarily built by humans, and we must prioritize their well-being, Marion Løken said at NDC Oslo. Integrating the team more deeply into discovery work, discussing feedback collectively, and fostering a culture of psychological safety helped to engage her team and mitigate burnout.
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Challenges and Lessons Porting Code from C to Rust
In a two-installment series, Stephen Crane and Khyber Sen, software engineers at Immunant, recount how they ported VideoLAN and FFmpeg AV1 decoder from C to Rust for the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). The series includes plenty of details about how they ensured not to break things and optimized performance.
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Copilot Now Available in OneDrive: AI-Powered Features for Streamlined Document Management
Microsoft launched Copilot in OneDrive for commercial users, enhancing the platform with AI-powered tools designed to improve document management and productivity. This new feature set allows users to generate summaries, compare documents, retrieve information, and create content more efficiently, thereby reducing the time spent on manual tasks.
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Google Publishes LLM Self-Correction Algorithm SCoRe
Researchers at Google DeepMind recently published a paper on Self-Correction via Reinforcement Learning (SCoRe), a technique for improving LLMs' ability to self-correct when solving math or coding problems. Models fine-tuned with SCoRe achieve improved performance on several benchmarks compared to baseline models.
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Uber Completes Major MySQL Fleet Upgrade, Boosting Performance and Security
Uber has detailed improvements to its MySQL database fleet by upgrading from version 5.7 to 8.0. The team wanted to take advantage of performance and concurrency improvements in newer versions of MySQL, and because MySQL 5.7 was reaching end-of-life in October 2023. The work took over a year and involved upgrading more than 2,100 clusters and 16,000 nodes across 19 production zones in 3 regions.