Welcome to our first news digest of the New Year. We offer a few interesting stories from the software development world from the previous month with a measure of our own analysis. Hopefully, you are able to wean some actionable information from the latest IT news to help inspire your own development efforts.
If you are interested in checking out last December’s digest, simply click on the following link.
Obviously, the kerfuffle surrounding Spectre and Meltdown – and its mitigation – continues to dominate the tech news this month. We covered the story for the first time last week, and have more information to report in this digest. Let’s take a closer look.
Linux creator, Linus Torvalds offered some pointed criticism at Intel. He called a set of Intel’s patches for the chip flaw vulnerability “garbage.” Linus continues to be known for his outspoken nature, and this incident is no exception. His opinion was reported on in ZDNet as well as other tech media sources.
“They do literally insane things. They do things that do not make sense. And I really don’t want to see these garbage patches just mindlessly sent around,” added Torvalds. This latest outburst comes after a shot at Intel soon after the chip issue first became known.
“I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look at their CPU’s, and actually admit that they have issues instead of writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed,” said Torvalds.
Spectre and Meltdown caused a delay in the release of the new Linux version, 4.15. Torvalds expects another release candidate instead of the arrival of the final Linux build.
Earlier this Tuesday, Intel responded to Torvalds’ barb. “We take the feedback of industry partners seriously. We are actively engaging with the Linux community, including Linus, as we seek to work together on solutions,” the chipmaker commented.
In a sense, Intel’s attempts to fix their chip flaw are almost worse than the initial problem. This week, The Verge reported on the chipmaker advising users not to install patches released earlier this month. Users reported servers and PCs randomly rebooting after those patches were installed.
“We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors, and end users stop deployment of current versions on specific platforms, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior,” wrote Intel Executive Vice President, Navin Shenoy. Needless to say, pay attention to the news around Spectre and Meltdown to ensure minimal disruption to your company’s operations.
A new product from MEGA International offers the potential to speed up the software architecture process. HOPEX Application Design fosters a common approach to generating application requirements. It leverages a SOA approach while also using traditional modeling methods like UML.
The tool works seamlessly with both Agile and traditional software development methodologies. It promises to reduce the number of sprints while also delivering a more robust application in the end. If your organization is looking for a new app design tool, HOPEX is likely worth your attention.
That’s it for this edition of the Betica Software Development News Digest. We’ll see you next month. As always, thanks for reading!