InfoQ Homepage News
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Grok-2 Beta Version Released on X Platform
The Grok-2 language model has been released in beta on the X platform, introduced alongside Grok-2 mini. The model, tested under the designation "sus-column-r" on the LMSYS leaderboard, has achieved a higher Elo Score compared to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4-Turbo. Grok-2 mini, a smaller variant, is also part of the beta release, designed to offer a balance between speed and performance.
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Concerns Rise in Open-Source Community as CockroachDB Ends Core Free Edition
CockroachDB Labs has recently announced a change to the license model of their distributed SQL database, discontinuing the free Core version and making the Enterprise version the only option. Having previously moved away from an open-source license, this latest change has raised further questions in the community about the future of open-source solutions managed by a single vendor.
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Microsoft Launches Open-Source Phi-3.5 Models for Advanced AI Development
Microsoft launched three new open-source AI models in its Phi-3.5 series: Phi-3.5-mini-instruct, Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct, and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct. Available under a permissive MIT license, these models offer developers powerful tools for various tasks, including reasoning, multilingual processing, and image and video analysis.
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Cloudflare Introduces Automatic SSL/TLS to Secure and Simplify Origin Server Connectivity
Cloudflare recently introduced new Automatic SSL/TLS settings to simplify the provider's encryption modes for communication with origin servers. This feature offers automatic configuration, ensuring security without risking site downtime.
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.NET MAUI 9 Preview 7: Introduction of HybridWebView and Other Improvements
Microsoft released the .NET 9 Preview 7 version which includes significant updates to .NET MAUI, such as the introduction of HybridWebView and the deprecation of the MainPage. It also introduces new lifecycle methods for managing remote notifications on iOS and also enhancements to Native Embedding capabilities and more.
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.NET Community Toolkit 8.3 Released with .NET 8 and NativeAOT Support
The .NET Foundation announced the release of the .NET Community Toolkit 8.3, bringing key updates including full support for .NET 8 and NativeAOT. This release enhances performance, contains some bug fixes, and provides new features aimed at improving the developer experience.
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First European InfoQ Dev Summit to Take Place Next Month in Munich
The inaugural European InfoQ Dev Summit is set to take place in less than a month at the Hilton Munich Park Hotel. Following the successful format of the recent InfoQ Dev Summit Boston, the two-day conference for senior software engineers, architects, and team leaders will be held in the Bavarian capital on September 26th and 27th.
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Fostering High-performing Work Environments for Software Development
According to Eb Ikonne, leaders should provide a motivating challenge or mission so that the software engineering team understands what success looks like. They can provide an enabling structure for effective teamwork, address things that negatively impact team success, and reduce or remove friction. Coaching can help people discover how to work effectively together.
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Azure Advisor Well-Architected Assessment in Public Preview to Optimize Cloud Infrastructure
Microsoft Azure recently announced the public preview of the Advisor Well-Architected assessment. This self-guided questionnaire aims to provide tailored, actionable recommendations to optimize Azure resources while aligning with the Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) principles.
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Microsoft Releases Prompty: New VS Code Extension for Integrating LLMs into .NET Development
Microsoft has released a new Visual Studio Code extension called Prompty, designed to integrate Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4o directly into .NET development workflows. This free tool aims to simplify the process of adding AI-driven capabilities to applications. The official release post includes a practical example demonstrating how Prompty can be used in real-world scenarios.
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Improving Distributed System Data Integrity with Amazon S3 Conditional Writes
AWS recently announced support for conditional writing in Amazon S3, allowing users to check for the existence of an object before creating it. This feature helps prevent overwriting existing objects when uploading data, making it easier for applications to manage data.
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Apple Unveils Apple Foundation Models Powering Apple Intelligence
Apple published the details of their new Apple Foundation Models (AFM), a family of large language models (LLM) that power several features in their Apple Intelligence suite. AFM comes in two sizes: a 3B parameter on-device version and a larger cloud-based version.
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Meta Open-Sources DCPerf, a Benchmark Suite for Hyperscale Cloud Workloads
Meta has recently released DCPerf, aiming to provide a representation of the diverse workloads found in data center cloud deployments. This collection of benchmarks is expected to be a valuable resource for researchers, hardware developers, and internet companies, aiding in the design and evaluation of future products.
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Google Cloud Launches C4 Machine Series: High-Performance Computing and Data Analytics
Google Cloud recently announced the general availability of its new C4 machine series, powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Sapphire Rapids). The series offers a range of configurations tailored to meet the needs of demanding applications such as high-performance computing (HPC), large-scale simulations, and data analytics.
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Java News Roundup: JDK 23-RC2, MicroProfile 7.0, Infinispan, Maven, JHipster
This week's Java roundup for August 19th, 2024, features news highlighting: the second release candidate of JDK 23; the release of MicroProfile 7.0; and point releases for Infinispan, Quarkus, Helidon, Maven, JHipster and Kotlin.