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Brendan Eich : The Founder Of JavaScript; A Buggy but Irreplaceable Programming Language

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The websites, the web pages, the web applications are most common things that we see today, and they might not seem that fascinating to us, as much it could a decade ago. Also, it might seem a bit easy to create them, but the amount of work that is done behind the scenes is something that people from the non-technical field may hardly understand. These dynamic websites and web applications are the results of JavaScript, which is a high-level interpreted programming language. JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich who shares a story about hard work and creativity. Brendan developed JavaScript in just over 10 days which clearly represents his hard work and passion to do so.

Brendan grew up in Palo Alto. He graduated from Ellwood P. Cubberley High School and received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Santa Clara University. He then pursued his master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. After completing his education, he started working at Silicon Graphics. He worked there for 7 years on Operating Systems and Network Codes.

Brendan Eich
Image Source: cnet.com

Brendan, soon, joined Netscape Communication Corporation, in April 1995. Netscape was a visionary company and wanted to put out something different in their internet browsers. All the existing technologies at that time, like HTML, stood out as deficient when it came to their vision. Due to this, Brendon was tasked to create a whole new language for Netscape. All that he got was 10 days to complete the task. “Back then, the pace of Web innovation was furious, with Microsoft suddenly making the Internet the focus of its Windows 95 operating system release in response to Netscape’s emerging browser and server products,” said Brendon in an interview. After 10 days, completing a nearly impossible task, Brendon came up with ‘JavaScript’. The language was used in Netscape’s Navigator 2.0 Beta version. The browser was named as Mocha, later renamed to LiveScript and then JavaScript.

“When I joined Netscape, I knew that either it will die, and Microsoft will completely replace it, or it will stay for 24 years or longer. Eventually, people think about Pcs and Operating software, like Windows on them, and they think that we will die every 10 years or so, and it doesn’t”, said Brendon in a talk (Source: “Brief History of JavaScript”). “Eich has unique language writing skills and they were unique,” said Jim Clark who was the founder of Silicon Graphics. The language that he created now is the most extensively used programming language in the world and is one of the three core technologies of the World Wide Web.

The creator of JavaScript was already familiar with writing creative programming languages. During his student times, he built new languages that were used to experiment with syntaxes. At Silicon Graphics too, he worked on new and innovative network monitoring tools.

However, Brendan openly admits that the language still has bugs, and he has been constantly working on it. “It was also an incredible rush job, so there were mistakes in it.” “But the point is that it is really hard to replace. There’s something like successful DNA about JavaScript. Once it’s in there, you’re going to have a hard time getting rid of it,” said Brendon.

Alongside JavaScript, he co-founded ‘Mozilla’ project which was a site that handled open source contribution to the Netscape source code. He served as the CTO of Mozilla Corporation. He passed on the ownership of the Mozilla SpiderMonkey module, in 2011. Mozilla Firefox is one of the great browsers that world today has, in which Brendon holds a large amount of contribution. As of now, Brendan Eich is the CEO of Brave software, which is an open-source web browser. There are many things which makes Brave, a unique browser. It is designed to block ads and trackers to protect users’ data, and it boosts browsing speed up to 8 times that of the original ones.

Brave even has its own currency: a blockchain-based token called the Basic Attention Token (BAT). The BAT token was launched via a record-breaking initial coin offering (ICO) on May 31st, 2017. The company raised $35 million by selling out 1.5 billion BAT tokens in just 30 seconds — the fastest ICO on record. All it does is that it offers the Brave users to experience more features of Brave, that is an ad-free experience. Brave is unlike all the tech giants and provides no breaching of data of consumers. Brendan Eich, the founder of JavaScript, co-founder of Mozilla Foundation and the CEO of Brave software shares a story that shows true passion and hard work. Brendan is certainly an inspiration to all the technology geeks out there.

Microsoft Expanding Xbox Live To Switch, iOS & Android

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According to a GDC listing, Microsoft is planning to expand the Xbox live support to cross platforms. The home video game console Xbox plays ones of the most popular games in the world, and Microsoft has decided to develop a Software Development Kit (SDK) that can be integrated to different platforms, like iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch beside Xbox and PC.

Xbox
Image Source: dailystar.co

The company is planning to announce the news and the details about the new SDK in the upcoming 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC). The Game Developers Conference is the yearly convention for the game developers where they showcase their ideas and new gaming products. This year the event will be held in San Francisco in March.

“Xbox Live is expanding from 400 million gaming devices and a reach to over 68 million active players to over 2 billion devices with the release of our new cross-platform XDK,” says the GDC listing. At the event, Microsoft will be hosting a panel titled, “Xbox Live: Growing & Engaging Your Gaming Community Across Platforms.”

Microsoft has already made a few of its Xbox Live Achievements available on a few of the iOS and Android devices. But the new SDK will integrate Xbox Live achievements, friends, clubs and game history into non-Xbox and Windows PC platforms for the first time. The company will also be employing its PlayFab suite containing its backend tools as a part of this package.

“Xbox Live players are highly engaged and active on Xbox and PC, but now they can take their gaming achievement history, their friends list, their clubs, and more with them to almost every screen,” said Microsoft on its GDC conference schedule page.

This is an effort from Microsoft to break down longstanding barriers in the gaming industry, by building a cross-platform gaming service, that will enable the developers to get their users onto different platforms, such that they can be active on the Xbox games, without actually using the Xbox console.

Mozilla & Qualcomm to Launch a Native Firefox version for Windows 10 on ARM

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On Thursday, the two tech giants, Mozilla and Qualcomm, announced that the two are working together on a native version of Firefox for Windows 10. Mozilla stated that it is going to develop a new version of Mozilla Firefox, compatible with the Snapdragon-powered Windows computers on ARM. The browser will be a 64-bit version of Firefox that will provide high-performance and better connectivity.

firefox
Image Source: cnbeta.com

Usually, Microsoft uses a number of emulation techniques to run the Windows 10 application on ARM-based machines, among which, the native apps run faster than the other. Mozilla has kept that in mind and has specifically designed the Firefox run on an ARM machine. Firefox will use individual cores to run every tab, and Qualcomm will provide an adequate amount of it for those tabs.

Senior Director of Firefox Product at Mozilla, Marissa Morris, said, “Mozilla is excited to be collaborating with Qualcomm and optimizing Firefox. We can’t wait to see Firefox delivering blazing fast experiences for the always on, always connected, multi-core Snapdragon computer platform with Windows 10.”

On the other hand, Qualcomm also announced its brand-new processor, the Snapdragon 8cx. The ‘X’ in the 8cx stands for ‘extreme’. The processor is specially designed for the Windows’ always-connected laptops and 2-in-1 convertible Pcs. It is a 7nm chip, the biggest of all chips, Qualcomm has ever made for a laptop or a PC. The chip will provide better performance, better battery life as well as better cellular connectivity, i.e. up to 2Gbps. The chip is specifically developed for the Window Pcs and is the first one of its kind.

Microsoft had just made the announcement of completely shutting down the Edge browser. Now with the improved Mozilla Firefox, there will be only two competitors left in the field, Firefox and Safari. Although Microsoft is also working upon its chromium browser with Google, Mozilla’s new browser may arrive sooner.

Microsoft Edge will be Soon Replaced by a Chromium-powered Web Browser

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Microsoft-Edge
Image Source: valuewalk.com

Three years ago, the software giant Microsoft introduced its Edge browser, in order to replace its own old Internet Explorer and also, give a competition to the Chromium Browser from Google. Though the design and appearance of the browser had an impressive impact on its user, its browser engine (EdgeHTML) could not match the level of the Chromium-based browsers.

Now, after three years, Microsoft has given up on the Edge browser, and currently, it is working on a new chromium based browser that is codenamed Anaheim. The Edge browser was developed in 2015, especially for the users of Windows 10, and also, as an alternative to Chrome, Firefox, and other. But now, the new Anaheim browser is going to replace the Edge browser as it has been facing some compatibility issues, and has brought Microsoft under a lot of businesses and consumers pressure for the improvements.

The new browser from Microsoft will use the browser engine Blink from Google, which is used to interpret the website coding to display it on the screen. As soon as the browser is launched successfully, the developers will be more happy, as the testing work will be reduced to an extent. Microsoft had tried hard to encourage Windows users to adopt Edge as their default browser, but failed most of the time, because of the availability of more popular browsers like Chrome and Firefox.

Maybe because of the popularity of Google Chrome, Microsoft has decided to develop its new browser on the same Chromium technology. There have been no official comments on the matter from Microsoft. But considering the reports from the Windows Central, it is estimated that Microsft will announce the browser in the coming week, and it may be out in the early half of next year.

Microsoft Initiates the Password-less Authentication Using FIDO2 Security Keys

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How many times it has happened that you forgot your account password while logging into it, and you have to recreate a new one. Well, the problem is going to vanish for the Microsoft accounts soon, as it is going to introduce the standards-based FIDO2 security key devices to let its users sign into their account without a username and password. Using the FIDO2 WebAuthn and the CTAP2 standards, Microsoft will enable the hardware security keys or Windows Hello support, to authenticate the users, through its Edge browser.

Fido-Security-Key-USB
Image Source: itsagadget.com

The users who are using Windows 10 can start using the new authentication technique, either by using Windows Hello, a biometrics-based authentication platform built into Windows 10, with a FIDO2-compatible device from Yubico or Feitian, an authenticator or with a fingerprint reader.

Vice president of program management at Microsoft Identity Division, Alex Simons, said, “Microsoft is the first company to support password-less authentication using the FIDO2 WebAuthn and CTAP2 specifications, and Microsoft Edge supports the widest array of authenticators compared to other major browsers.”

To use a hardware authentication key, one needs to plug it into the USB port of the system. For logging into a Microsoft account over a phone, one need to use the Bluetooth or NFC wireless communications. The users can also login into the Microsoft apps, on a smartphone, using the Microsoft Authenticator app. The Microsoft platforms that support the FIDO2 security key includes Outlook.com, Office 365, Skype, OneDrive, Cortana, Microsoft Edge, Xbox Live on the PC, Mixer, the Microsoft Store, Bing and the MSN portal site.

Microsoft had already introduced its Authenticator app, for the iOS and Android users and as of now, Microsoft is the only company to provide such security devices to its users. Soon, we can see other companies adopting the same technology as the regular username and passwords have already been vulnerable to the security breaches. It may be a drastic change in the authentication procedure, but adopting the new one can be more beneficial for the security of the important data stored on the web.

Paul Allen : Self-made Billionaire & the Co-founder of Microsoft

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A business magnate, investor, philanthropist and also a cancer survivor, the computer enthusiast, Paul Allen, was the one, who persuaded Bill Gates to drop out of his college and start a software company, that later, became the multi-billion Microsoft. He was the 46-richest person of the world, at the time of his death and comprising of 100 million Microsoft shares. The self-made billionaire also founded another multibillion-dollar company,  Vulcan Inc., which managed his various business and philanthropic efforts.

Early Life

Paul Allen was born and brought up in Seattle, Washington, U.S. He was born on 21 January 1953, to Kenneth Sam Allen and Edna Faye Allen. His father worked as the associate director of the University of Washington Libraries. Paul completed his schooling from a local private school named as Lakeside School. This was the place, where he met his two years younger friend, Bill Gates. The two shared a common interest- Computers. Both of them started learning programming languages and improvising their skills. They also sneakingly used the laboratory of the Computer Science Department of the University of Washington, to carry out their experiments. As they were not the students of the university, they got banned from the University campus, in 1971, after they got caught by the university authority. Later, Paul got a 1600 SAT score and got proper admission to the Washington State University, as a student.

Founding Microsoft

Allen decided to leave the college only after two years of his enrollment, to join a job as a programmer, for Honeywell in Boston, near Harvard University. Gates was an alumnus at the Harvard University. After working for a small time at the Honeywell, Allen convinced Gates to drop out of the university and start Microsoft with him.

Paul Allen
Image Source: geekwire.com

Allen and Gates together, built software for the first microcomputers on BASIC. They started marketing for their software, and in 1980, they bagged a contract from IBM. According to the contract, they had to develop a Disk Operating System (DOS) for the IBM PCs. The two were not able to complete the order, hence Allen made a deal with Tim Paterson, and purchased his QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) software to complete the contract. The deal was a success, and Microsoft emerged as a leading software development company.

In 1982, Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin disease, and hence, resigned from his post of Microsoft’s chief technologist. It led the parting of Microsoft shares between the two partners in 60:40 ratio, Allen having 40 per cent shares in the company.

Allen served as the member of the board of Microsft until 9 November 2000 and remained as a senior strategy advisor to the company’s executives.

Other Ventures

After leaving Microsoft in 1982, Allen invested in other businesses. Allen with his sister Jody Lynn, co-founded Vulcan Inc., in 1986. Under Vulcan Inc., Allen made various investments in different fields, including America Online, SureFind, Starwave, hardware, software, and wireless communications. He also founded the Vulcan Capital under Vulcan Inc.

Allen and Judy had also started a film production company named Vulcan Productions, and produced films like We The Economy, Far from Heaven, Hard Candy, Where God Left His Shoes, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, Racing Extinction and Body Team.

Allen was also into philanthropy and contributed more than $2 billion towards the advancement of science, technology, education, wildlife conservation, the arts, and community services in his lifetime. A trust named as Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was also founded by Allen, that had donated $494 million to over 1,500 nonprofits.

Allen also launched institutes like The Allen Institute for Brain Science (2003) and Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (2014), that carry out the scientific researches.

Personal Life

Allen stayed single whole his life. He was assumed to be reclusive. Allen was a pro guitarist and got his first guitar at the age of sixteen. Even Sony had released his major label with the name Everywhere at Once by Paul Allen.

Allen also owned two professional sports teams, the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA.

In 1982, after receiving radiation therapy for his Stage 1-A Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Allen had recovered from the disease. But, in 2009, he was again tested positive with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It was also cured after treating Allen for a long time. Although cancer returned back and Allen died on 15 October 2018.