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Google announced Kubernetes as an open-source project in 2014, drawing on its internal experience running large clusters with systems such as Borg. Kubernetes was designed to manage containers across many machines rather than treat each container as an isolated unit. Read more
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Apple announced the Swift programming language at WWDC in June 2014 as a modern alternative to Objective-C for iOS and Mac development. Swift kept interoperability with existing Objective-C frameworks so developers did not have to rewrite entire applications. Read more
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Microsoft introduced the Surface Pro 3 in May 2014 with a larger 12-inch display and a redesigned kickstand. Earlier Surface devices had struggled to convince users that one machine could replace both a laptop and a tablet. Read more
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Heartbleed was disclosed in April 2014 as a critical bug in OpenSSL, the cryptographic library used by a huge number of HTTPS servers. The flaw was in the TLS heartbeat extension, not in the underlying encryption algorithms. Read more
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This week, a security bug called Heartbleed has made a small piece of software suddenly important to millions of people. Read more
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A few years ago, designing a website often meant designing for a computer screen. That assumption is becoming dangerous. Read more
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Java 8 was released in March 2014 and introduced the largest language-level change Java had seen in years: lambda expressions. Lambdas made it possible to pass behavior as values more naturally, reducing the need for verbose anonymous classes. Read more
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Computers have moved from desks to laps and then into pockets. The next suggested destination is the body. Read more
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Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp in February 2014 for approximately $19 billion in cash and stock, an extraordinary valuation for a messaging company with a small engineering team. Read more
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Google acquired the London-based AI company DeepMind in January 2014 for a reported price of roughly $400–500 million. At the time, DeepMind was known mainly inside research circles for combining deep neural networks with reinforcement learning. Read more
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Docker gained major developer attention in 2013 by making Linux containers far easier to build, distribute, and run. Containers were not a new kernel technology; Linux already had namespaces and control groups. Docker packaged those primitives into a practical workflow. Read more
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JavaScript applications are becoming large enough that writing everything as a collection of event handlers is no longer comfortable. The browser now hosts email clients, dashboards, editors, social applications, and many interfaces that behave more like desktop software than traditional pages. Read more
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Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One launched in November 2013. Both consoles moved much closer to PC-style hardware than their predecessors, using AMD x86-64 processors and Radeon-derived graphics. Read more
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Windows 8.1 became publicly available in October 2013 as a free update for Windows 8 users. The release tried to soften the conflict between Microsoft’s touch-first ambitions and the expectations of traditional PC users. Read more
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Online courses are becoming difficult to ignore. Universities and new platforms are putting lectures, exercises, and complete courses on the internet. A student can sit at home and listen to a professor from another country. A person with a job can study at night. Someone can explore a subject without formally joining a university. I find this very exciting. Read more
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Apple introduced the A7 system-on-chip with the iPhone 5s in September 2013, calling it the first 64-bit processor in a consumer smartphone. The chip used Apple’s ARMv8-based Cyclone CPU cores rather than simply extending the older 32-bit design. Read more
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Microsoft finalized Windows 8.1 in 2013 less than a year after Windows 8, an unusually fast response to criticism of the new interface. The update preserved the touch-oriented Start screen but restored a visible Start button on the desktop and offered more configuration choices. Read more
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Google released the first Chromecast in July 2013 for $35. The small HDMI dongle did not behave like a traditional streaming box with its own large interface and remote control. Instead, phones and computers acted as controllers. Read more
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Apple used WWDC 2013 to reveal two very different redesigns: iOS 7 replaced the heavily textured visual style of earlier iPhones, while the new Mac Pro abandoned the traditional rectangular workstation tower for a compact cylindrical design. Read more
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Nikola Tesla is one of those historical figures whose real achievements are impressive enough without adding legends. He was born in 1856 in Smiljan, in what is now Croatia, and moved to the United States in 1884. His work in electrical engineering became especially important during the development of alternating-current power systems. Read more