Facebook has presented Hack – a new programming language based on the PHP syntax and intended for implementation with HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine). Applications written on Hack can seamlessly interact and go with an existing code written on PHP, as the HHVM environment supports the implementation of unmodified PHP scripts. The Hack code is distributed under a free PHP license. The realisation of the language has already been tested in commercial operation; Facebook, in particular, has already changed to Hack and translated practically all the code of its PHP projects into Hack.

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Erlang — is a general-purpose concurrent, garbage-collected programming language and runtime system.

The release has a lot of new different features and changes. The first thing is that the versioning scheme has been changed. Previously it was R15B, R16B, etc.

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Great find! bcat is a small utility to pipe console's output to browser. Do you have a script which outputs HTML? bcat! Do you need to preview a README file with Markdown formatting? bcat! Is your script fetching web pages and you want to see the result? bcat! Do you just simply want to say «hello world» in your browser? You know the answer, right?

Utility is compatible with Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD. Theoretically, it should work fine on any Unix-based platform integrated with freedesktop.org.

You can use gem to install bcat:

gem install bcat

Let's test it by opening year of 2014 calendar:

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During the last 30 years, Wolfram Research was working on a new multi-paradigm programming language. Please, welcome, — Wolfram Language! The language is very large, with emphasis on functional programming, symbolic computation, and rule-based programming, touching on numerous domains, often specialized. As an example, it includes built-in functions for generating and running Turing machines, creating graphics and audio.

It will be bundled with the system software installed on every Raspberry Pi. Intel Edison, introduced at CES 2014, also integrates the language. The language will also be integrated in the Unity game engine.

Wolfram Research team is currently working on standardizing documentation, which is also huge. Nevertheless, incomplete pre-release already exists.

Here is a short video with Stephen Wolfram, introducing the Wolfram Language.

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Amazon Dash — new gadget from Amazon to simplify online shopping. Now you don't have to choose products from huge catalogs. It's a 6.375x1.125 inches tool, which easily fits in your hand and boasts a built-in microphone and barcode scanner allowing you to quickly add items to your shopping cart. Just speak into it or scan a pack of toilet paper and the wand will immediately send that product to an online store via Wi-Fi.



Amazon Dash is tied to the same day grocery delivery service AmazonFresh. But you can also buy products from regular Amazon.com. Once the products were added to your account, you can view the list on your desktop or mobile device to purchase and schedule delivery.



There is a free registration to test new gadget, but unfortunately you have to have Amazon Dash invitation code.

I'm curious, will Amazon give Dash for free, so people buy more and more? Do you think the device worth it?

Benjamin Stein, technical manager at Mobile Commons, talks about the “worst bug” that he has ever encountered. It happened once Ben changed his iPhone for an Android. Soon, he noticed that he is not receiving most of the messages from his contacts – other iPhone users.

As it turned out, when his friend attempts to send a message, their iPhone instantly sends it as an iMessage as their cache memory recognizes his number as one that supports iMessage. Naturally, his Android device does not receive the message.

Advanced users may realise that they should send the same message again in the form of a simple SMS. However, in the case of Group iMessage there is no such option, hence there is absolutely no way for the addressee to receive the message. The sender remains uninformed that the message was not received.

Stein deleted his iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime accounts from all devices and from the website. He demanded that tech support withdraws his certificates, so that he would not be able to log into the system even if he wanted to. In other words, the servers have no record of Benjamin. Nevertheless, the cache memory on the mobile devices of other users will always recognize Benjamin as an Apple user.

Benjamin contacted Apple tech support and said that they persistently tried to fix the problem, but there was nothing they could do. The company's official position on this topic was that every individual subscriber, whom Stein has contacted during the past five years, must personally delete the iMessage chats with him. Obviously, this is unrealistic.

It seems that Apple is creating additional barriers and obstacles for users who want to leave the homogenous infrastructure. Perhaps the company does not even acknowledge this functionality as a bug because it is quite rare for a user to leave the Apple infrastructure.
“I have an absolute feeling like I am a hostage,” says Benjamin Stein. “They have no solution for this problem and it is absolute madness that Apple holds my phone number hostage and I cannot get it back.”

Web Development

• nodegh.io — GitHub command line tools
• Best PHP IDE in 2014
• How to use NoFollow tag
• Scrolling animations: examples, tutorials and jQuery plugins
• Slush — the streaming scaffolding system as a replacement for Yeoman
• WTF, HTML and CSS?
• Mobile Angular UI — mobile UI framework based on AngularJS and Twitter Bootstrap
• How to use Data URIs to speed up your website
• CSS shooter (game programming)
• Building HTML5 context menus

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This is an old, but still great illustration on how to choose NoSQL database. I'll just leave it here.

Everyone has probably noticed the slim progress bar on Medium and YouTube, which is a UI element placed below the browser's address bar.



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The main motive for the creation of the microscope was the struggle against malaria — in the developing countries about a billion microscopic examinations of the blood samples per year have to be carried out for malaria diagnosis. A standard laboratory microscope is an expensive and fragile device. Stanford scientists have managed to construct a microscope with magnification up to the 2000x, while the cost of all the components in a mass production will be 97 cents. The microscope body is cut out and folded from a sheet of thick paper. Other components are a flat battery, a LED switch, a piece of conductive copper tape and a glass or a sapphire ball lens.

Paper microscope fits easily in your one's pocket, weighs less than ten grams, can be used for brightfield, darkfield, polarized and fluorescent microscopy, and even work as a projector. One battery lasts for 50 hours. Microscope can easily endure pretty rough usage, it can even be stepped on, it can be dropped on the floor — it can withstand anything that a piece of cardboard can withstand. The quality of the microscope image is sufficient to determine various types of infections in outdoor conditions.

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