Category: Blog Article

Single-vendor open source projects are somewhat common, but are they actually “open source” in any useful sense of that term? It’s often said that open source is as much about community as code, but in a project with all committers and maintainers sitting behind the same firewall, there’s no real contributor community. So why bother with open source at all?

I asked that question of Twitter (yes, all of it). Turns out, there are good reasons to open source your code, even if you never expect a single other contributor to submit a pull request.

SEE: 10 ways to prevent developer burnout (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

A matter of persistence

The first reason may have nothing to do with community, but everything to do with posterity. According to Steven Rostedt, “To

Outlook’s Recall feature, which ostensibly offers users a way to recall emails they have sent either by mistake, with incorrect or inappropriate information or in the heat of a bad moment, has been around for some time across numerous versions. Its usage was especially common when the “press Ctrl-Enter to send” problem was well underway (this can be disabled in Options and every place I’ve worked recently has done so via policies) … and also hilarious.

SEE: 69 Excel tips every user should master (TechRepublic)

Why hilarious? In the past it hasn’t been entirely reliable, and instead of NOT recalling the message, recipients have received a new message stating the sender tried to recall the prior

Education technology was a sleepy corner of the startup world until COVID-19 hit. It’s wide awake now.

Coursera’s IPO in late March 2021 valued the company at nearly $6 billion. Meanwhile, according to HolonIQ, an education market research firm, ed tech companies raised more than $16 billion globally in 2020, with China and India accounting for over three quarters of that total. 

This is perhaps not surprising, given that the coronavirus pandemic pounded the traditional education paradigm and suddenly everyone, from parents to teachers to administrators and, finally, investors began hunting for solutions. Among the most promising companies are those harnessing artificial intelligence to improve education.

SEE: Juggling remote work with kids’ education is a mammoth task. Here’s how employers can help (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Riiid, AI and education

Hiring, hybrid, gender, reopenings and requirements were the focus of the fourth iteration of West Monroe’s quarterly survey of 150 C-suite executives from companies with revenues of $250 million, conducted March 22-25. The good news for job seekers–and those looking to transition–is 60% expect to hire more staff for Q2. Meanwhile, 33% see little to no change, and only 7% expect to lay off staff.

COVID-19 continues to play a critical role in the potential return to the office, because even though 32% of respondents have no idea how they’ll execute it, 66% plan to track employees’ vaccinations. Thirty-four percent said they’re not tracking which employees have been vaccinated and have no plans to do so; 14% said they’ll wait for a “more specific

TechRepublic’s Karen Roby spoke with Jon Friis, CEO and founder of Miiskin, about how the Miiskin app is helping prevent skin cancer. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Karen Roby: We understand how technology can help change things in medicine, such as robots are in the operating room, and we’re just seeing all kinds of really innovative things going on. Observing your moles is one of those things on our skin that I would never think technology would play a role in. Tell us before we get to the technology part of this, the augmented reality and machine learning. How did you come up with this idea, and tell us a little bit more about it.

SEE: 5 Internet of Things (IoT) innovations (free PDF)