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Weekly#132

  • Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users.
    Part of the trick is that the company builds its service using a programming language called Erlang. Though not all that popular across the wider coding community, Erlang is particularly well suited to juggling communications from a huge number of users, and it lets engineers deploy new code on the fly. But Mahdavi says that the trick is as much about attitude as technology..
    But that’s the point. “The number-one lesson is just be very focused on what you need to do,” he said. “Doing spend time getting distracted by other activities, other technologies, even things in the office, like meetings.”At WhatsApp, employees almost never attend a meeting. Yes, there are only a few dozen of them. But that too is the point.(Wired)
  • Google’s Rachel Potvin came pretty close to an answer Monday at an engineering conference in Silicon Valley. She estimates that the software needed to run all of Google’s Internet services—from Google Search to Gmail to Google Maps—spans some 2 billion lines of code. By comparison, Microsoft’s Windows operating system—one of the most complex software tools ever built for a single computer, a project under development since the 1980s—is likely in the realm of 50 million lines…
    The flip side is that building and running a 2-billion-line monolith is no simple task.(Wired) (Tweet source)
  • German Car-Parts Makers See Bigger Role in Technology
    Bosch GmbH, Continental AG and ZF Friedrichshafen AG, which are expanding into mega-suppliers able to leverage new technologies for all parts of a vehicle, have started working closely with the U.S. technology giants. (WSJ)
  • Google has hired Detroit veteran John Krafcik to run its self-driving car division, sending a message that it is serious about the commercial viability of the autonomous vehicles business. (WSJ)
  • The iPhone 6S could set a sales record for Apple — in large part because it was made available in China from Day One.The company announced Monday that online orders of the iPhone 6S, including the bigger-screened Plus variety, are on pace to exceed 10 million over the new two weeks, set to surpass the record first-few-weeks sales mark the iPhone 6 hit a year ago. The iPhone 6 wasn’t available in China for about the first month. (LA Times)
  • Clone wars: First Lenovo, now Dell is working on a Surface competitor (ZDNET)
  • Developer Daniel Pasco explained in a blog post that Apple’s upcoming tvOS — which will power the new Apple TV — doesn’t support webviews, which means apps for the device won’t be able to display Web content.This makes it a lot harder for developers to build in features like browsing websites, opening links from apps like Twitter or RSS readers, or displaying frequently updated information, such as sports scores. (the next web)
  • Paralyzed man becomes first person to “feel” sensations through a prosthetic hand connected to his brain (Boing Boing) (Image Source : http://www.darpa.mil/program/revolutionizing-prosthetics)
    Revolutionizing-Prosthetics-Modular-Prosthetic-Limb-619-3164

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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