Stay up-to-date with everything happening in Ashland, Oregon, with the Ashland Oregon News Dispatches app! This convenient app brings you the latest news articles from various local news sources, all in one easy-to-access place. Whether you’re interested in current events, community updates, local sports, or entertainment, Ashland Oregon News Dispatches has it all.
If you live in the Ashland Oregon area or a planning a visit to the Rogue Valley, this app is for you. Ashland Oregon News Dispatches is your go-to app for all the news and updates from the Ashland area. Download now and stay connected with your community!
Features:
The Ashland Oregon News Dispatches app provides:
Curated News Feed: Easily browse through a comprehensive list of articles from multiple Ashland-area news sources, keeping you informed about what’s happening in your community.
Date Filtering: Stay current with today’s news or explore past articles by choosing your preferred date range. Find exactly what you’re looking for with just a few taps.
Customizable Sources: Personalize your news feed by selecting the specific news sources you want to follow. Tailor your experience to focus on the topics and outlets that matter most to you.
Easy Sharing: Found an article you want to share? With a simple tap, you can send articles to friends, family, or colleagues via messages or email, making it easy to keep everyone in the loop.
Device Platforms Currently Supported:
iOS – iPhone/iPad
Additional platform versions of the app are still in development. I will update this section as they are accepted.
App Help Information:
The Ashland News Dispatches app allows you to read articles from several news sources in the greater Ashland Oregon area. To share a page (by email, text message, etc.) in the Browser tab, click the sharing button in the upper right corner. The Settings tab allows you to: 1) Select News sites, 2) Choose to see “Today’s News” or “All News”, 3) Set the app’s style, 4) Use the “Save Settings” button.
The app displays a list with the title and date for news articles from a curated list of southern Oregon news sources. Selecting one of the articles from the list displays the article in the Browser tab. At the top right of the Browser tab title you can use the button to share the article link.
Product and Technical Support:
The app’s Help tab allows you to send an email with questions, issues, suggestions and other feedback to the developer. You can also send emails directly to david.intersimone at gmail.com.
Thank you for using Ashland Oregon News Dispatches app! We value your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This app does not collect any personal or contact information.
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In decades of giving and attending thousands of presentations, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to give a talk, a webinar and a technology demonstration. Back in 2015, while I was working for Evans Data in Santa Cruz, I created a blog post “Most Everything I learned about presenting I learned from Jerry Weissman“, on the DevRelate site. In that post I covered some of the tips, tricks and techniques that I’ve learned (and co-opted from other great presenters) that helped me improve my presentation skills.
If you are looking for a few quick presentation tips, the following are some of my top suggestions:
Practice your presentation a few times to understand the pacing (if there is a time limit). If you have time, record the presentation and then watch it several times.
Get rid of distractions by turning off notifications, alerts, social/team apps, email, calendar, mute your phone, and set do not disturb on your phone/fitness band.
If you need to keep hydrated, drink still water that is room temperature. Also, use the bathroom before your presentation. Avoid alcohol and too much caffeine.
Watch talks by other great presenters from inside and outside of your field of expertise.
Use more than just a blizzard of bullet points. You can also use quotes, images, short video clips, visualizatons and other ways to avoid a presentation full of text.
There are a number of great books that can provide additional ways to improve your presentation creation, delivery and distribution. The following are just a few books you might consider owning.
This week in technology news contains links to articles of interest to software developers, UI/UX designers, hardware developers, devops team members, product owners, project leaders, engineering managers, software architects, QA engineers, business managers, business analysts, company executives and anyone interested in technology and programming.
IDEs/Editors
Cesium brings geospatial data to Unity via free plugin Read the Article
This week in technology news contains links to articles of interest to software developers, UI/UX designers, hardware developers, devops team members, product owners, project leaders, engineering managers, software architects, QA engineers, business managers, business analysts, company executives and anyone interested in technology and programming.
Apple Watch Series 8 review: watchOS 9, crash detection, and temperature sensors are excellent, but needs daily charging and the update is fairly incremental (Victoria Song/The Verge) Read the Article
10 years later, deep learning revolution rages on, say AI pioneers Hinton, LeCun and Li Read the Article
Researchers develop an AI model for autonomous driving Read the Article
Does AI Write Better Copy Than Humans? Most Marketers Think So Read the Article
Users trust AI as much as humans for flagging problematic content Read the Article
Study highlights how AI models take potentially dangerous shortcuts in solving complex recognition tasks Read the Article
Nvidia, Arm, and Intel Collaborate on AI Standard Read the Article
Researchers develop a new way to see how people feel about artificial intelligence Read the Article
Artificial intelligence is here in our entertainment. What does that mean for the future of the arts? Read the Article
Building a Computer Vision Model Using TensorFlow Read the Article
Exploiting GPT-3 prompts that order the model to ignore previous directions Read the Article
Collaborative machine learning that preserves privacy Read the Article
Teaching Robots to Laugh at the Right Time Is No Joke – CNET Read the Article
Sharing a laugh: Scientists teach a robot when to have a sense of humor Read the Article
This robot crossed a line it shouldn’t have because humans told it to Read the Article
Hardware
Arm beefs up Arm Neoverse infrastructure platform Read the Article
First-of-its-kind 3D-printed home blends concrete, wood Read the Article
Intel says the company plans to replace its Pentium and Celeron brands, debuted in 1993 and 1998, with Intel Processor, starting with notebooks in 2023 (Abner Li/9to5Google) Read the Article
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC Tipped to Launch With 3.5GHz High-Frequency Variant Read the Article
Arm fills in some gaps and details in server chip roadmaps Read the Article
The clock speed wars are back as Intel brags about hitting 6 GHz with 13th-gen CPUs Read the Article
IBM builds huge super-fridge colder than space to chill quantum computers Read the Article
Researchers create device to streamline interactions between ultra-cold computers and room-temperature ones Read the Article
Many crypto miners are shutting off rigs and plan to sell their GPUs, as GPU-based mining for most cryptocurrencies becomes unprofitable after Ethereum’s Merge (Michael Kan/PCMag) Read the Article
Security
Trojanized versions of PuTTY utility being used to spread backdoor Read the Article
Twitter Refutes Elon Musk’s Claims of Breach of Agreement Over Whistleblower Payment: Report Read the Article
How data detection and response are becoming cloud security essentials Read the Article
Hands-on cyberattacks jump 50%, CrowdStrike reports Read the Article
Is confidential computing the future of cybersecurity? Edgeless Systems is counting on it Read the Article
Report: Only 10% of orgs had higher budget for cybersecurity, despite increased threat landscape Read the Article
Researchers develop method to protect privacy and safety in encrypted messaging Read the Article
One-third of enterprises don’t encrypt sensitive data in the cloud Read the Article
Kaspersky report: malware attacks targeting gamers increase Read the Article
The worst “on-the-fly” (pun intended) Delphi demo I ever wrote was a thread based sort program (Dreaded Sorts). I created the code on the flight from San Jose to Seattle for the Microsoft Windows 95 launch. The launch took place on Thursday August 24, 1995 on the Microsoft campus. Multiple software vendors, including Borland, demonstrated their support for Win95 in tents on the lawn.
During the flight I realized that I didn’t have a Delphi 2 demo that took full advantage of Win95’s 32-bit OS and other features. So, for the duration of flight (approximately 2 hours) I hacked together a 32-bit VCL application using a pre-release version of Delphi. Note: the program still compiles and runs using the latest release of Delphi 11 Alexandria!
Charlie Calvert included my “Dreaded Sorts” program in his Delphi 2 Unleashed book (pages 240-243). The source code for the project can be found on the book’s CD.
To introduce my program Charlie wrote:
“The program shown in Listing 7.9 was written by David Intersimone, a fellow Borland employee. The code has some historical significance, as it was written on the flight to the Windows 95 launch in Seattle. The fact that David was able to do some serious coding on a West Coast shuttle flight shows that almost anything is possible if you set your mind to it!”
The Original Dreaded Sorts Source Code (THSORTS.DPR)
The original name of my on-the-fly demo was THSorts. I eventually called it my “Dreaded Sorts” program when Charlie Calvert asked to include it in his Delphi 2 Unleased book. Take a look at the source code below. You’ll see that it contains many bad programming practices and hacks that I used on the flight to get the demo working. Examples of bad programming practices include using magic numbers, offset coordinate hacks, hard coded array size (Delphi now supports dynamic arrays), changing the caption for the input error message instead of a Message Box popup, etc. The most glaring warning was the note at the top of the main form’s source code: “This example program shows how to set a thread’s priority. Don’t use Canvas property in program like this! Not unless you also use the TThread object and its Synchronize procedure!”
unit main;
{
Dreaded Sorts
copyright (c) 1996 by David Intersimone
This example program shows how to set a
thread's priority. Don't use Canvas property
in program like this! Not unless you also
use the TThread object and its Synchronize
procedure!
}
interface
uses
SysUtils, WinTypes, WinProcs,
Messages, Classes, Graphics,
Controls, Forms, Dialogs,
StdCtrls, ComCtrls, Buttons;
const
aMax = 300;
type
TForm1 = class(TForm)
Edit1: TEdit;
Label2: TLabel;
Label1: TLabel;
Label3: TLabel;
Label4: TLabel;
Label5: TLabel;
BitBtn1: TBitBtn;
BubbleTrackBar: TTrackBar;
QuickTrackBar: TTrackBar;
procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
private
T1 : THandle;
T2 : THandle;
end;
var
Form1: TForm1;
a,b : array[0..aMax-1] of integer;
numItems : integer;
implementation
uses
secform, thform;
{$R *.DFM}
procedure BubbleSort(var ia:array of integer; items: integer);
var
i,j,t : integer;
DC: HDC;
begin
DC := GetDC(Form2.Handle);
for i := items downto 0 do
begin
for j := 0 to items-1 do
if ia[j] < ia[j+1] then
begin
t := ia[j];
SetPixel(DC, ia[j+1]+5, j+1+5, clBlue);
SetPixel(DC, ia[j]+5, j+5, clBlue);
ia[j] := ia[j+1];
ia[j+1] := t;
Setpixel(DC, ia[j+1]+5,j+1+5, clYellow);
Setpixel(DC, ia[j]+5,j+5, clYellow);
end;
end;
ReleaseDC(Form2.Handle, DC);
end;
procedure QuickSort(var ia:array of integer; iLo,iHi : integer);
var
Lo,Hi,Mid,T : integer;
DC: HDC;
begin
Lo := iLo;
Hi := iHi;
mid := ia[(Lo+hi) div 2];
repeat
DC := GetDC(Form3.Handle);
while ia[Lo] < mid do Inc(Lo);
while ia[Hi] > mid do Dec(Hi);
if Lo <= Hi then
begin
T := ia[Lo];
SetPixel(DC, ia[Lo]+5,Lo+5, clBlue);
SetPixel(DC, ia[Hi]+5,Hi+5, clBlue);
ia[Lo] := ia[Hi];
ia[Hi] := T;
SetPixel(DC, ia[Lo]+5,Lo+5, clLime);
SetPixel(DC, ia[Hi]+5,Hi+5, clLime);
inc(Lo);
dec(Hi);
end;
until Lo > Hi;
if Hi > iLo then QuickSort(ia,iLo,Hi);
if Lo < iHi then QuickSort(ia,Lo,iHi);
ReleaseDC(Form3.Handle, DC);
end;
function BubbleThread(parms:pointer) : LongInt; far;
begin
BubbleSort(a,numItems-1);
end;
function QuickThread(parms:pointer) : LongInt; far;
begin
QuickSort(b,0,numItems-1);
end;
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
i : integer;
ThreadID : dWord;
begin
numItems := strToInt(Edit1.Text);
if numItems <= aMax then
begin
form2.free;
form2 := TForm2.Create(self);
form2.top := 140;
form2.left := 2;
form2.clientheight := numItems+10;
form2.clientwidth := numItems+10;
form2.color := clBlue;
form2.caption := 'Bubble Sort';
form2.show;
form3.free;
form3 := TForm3.Create(self);
form3.top := 140;
form3.left := 320;
form3.clientheight := numItems+10;
form3.clientwidth := numItems+10;
form3.color := clBlue;
form3.caption := 'Quick Sort';
form3.show;
Randomize;
for i := 0 to numItems-1 do
begin
a[i] := random(numItems);
b[i] := a[i];
form2.canvas.pixels[a[i]+5,i+5] := clYellow;
form3.canvas.pixels[b[i]+5,i+5] := clLime;
end;
T1 := createThread(nil,0,@BubbleThread,nil,0,threadID);
setThreadPriority(T1, BubbleTrackBar.Position);
T2 := createThread(nil,0,@QuickThread,nil,0,threadID);
setThreadPriority(T2, QuickTrackBar.Position);
end
else
Form1.Caption := 'Too Large!';
end;
end.
A Much Better Version of a Delphi Multi-Threaded Sort Demo
A much better version of a Delphi multi-threaded demo shipped in the release version of Delphi 2 (release date: February 10, 1996) is available on GitHub. You can download the Delphi multi threading demo by Bob Ainsbury and Ray Konopka that first appeared at the 1995 Borland Conference.
My Best Delphi Program
The best Delphi program I ever created is one that I haven’t written yet!
This session was presented by David Intersimone as part of Embarcadero’s CodeRage 2018 virtual developers conference. The conversation took place live online on December 4, 2018.
Bjarne Stroustrup (designer and original implementer of C++, Managing Director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a Visiting Professor in Computer Science at Columbia University) participated in a C++ conversation with David Intersimone “David I” (Embarcadero MVP). Bjarne recently attended the ISO C++ committee meeting in San Diego where committee members continued work on the next International Standard (IS), C++20.
This CodeRage conversation covered some of the recent language proposals as well as other important C++ features that will be included in the future. Specific C++ areas David asked about included the future of generic programming (Concepts), how to better organize C++ code (Modules), and how to ensure stability in the language while also allowing the language to evolve.
The first personal computer I owned was an IMSAI 8080 kit computer that I bought and put together in December 1975.
Putting the IMSAI kit together involved a lot of soldering:
Soldered all twenty-two slot S-100 bus connectors onto the non-solder-masked motherboard
Soldered the front panel circuit board, Intel 8080 processor board and two 4K static RAM boards (lots of chips, connectors, resistors, capacitors, etc.)
Soldered the power supply with its large capacitors
Visually inspected all of the boards, motherboard, checked things with a voltmeter.
Assembled the Front Panel involved snapping on the cool looking blue and red paddle switches and the power switch, inserting the boards into the S-100 connectors.
It was time to plug in the power cord and turn the computer on for the first time (while crossing my fingers, toes, legs and eyes). When I turned it on, the front panel LEDs did light up, but pressing the stop and reset panel switches did nothing. There was no smoke or smell (always a good sign). I looked again at the boards. I pulled out and plugged back in the boards and tried again. No Joy!
I was a member of the Southern California Computer Society (SCCS) which met monthly at the TRW Space Park campus in Redondo Beach California (Note: at the time I was a real time Data General Nova assembly language programmer for a division of TRW – TRW Data Systems in El Segundo California). The monthly meeting was a place to talk about computers, buy kits, trade parts and keep up to date on what was happening in computing outside of work.
At the next monthly SCCS meeting at TRW Space Park (Redondo Beach), I left the computer with one of the vendors at the Saturday meeting, “The Computer Doctor”, who said he would find any soldering or component problems, get it running and give me a call. A week later, I got the call and the computer doctor said he had found some bad soldering, some solder that had spilled across some of the motherboard and computer board traces. I drove to his house and picked up my IMSAI. The doctor also suggested that I buy a bus terminator board from Godbout Electronics to “quiet” the non-solder-masked motherboard.
I brought my IMSAI back to my apartment, plugged it in, pressed the stop and reset paddle switches and my personal computer was ready for me to put some Intel 8080 instructions into memory and press the Run button. The IMSAI manual had a simple starting machine code program to display the LEDs on the front panel. It also had a “game” example where you had to try and turn the LEDs all off our on as they were changing.
The fun fact is that “The Computer Doctor’s” actual name was George Tate. Some of you remember George Tate as the co-founder of Ashton Tate Software and dBase fame.
I still have that original IMSAI 8080 computer and the last time I took it our and turned it on (a couple of years ago), it still worked.
This week in technology news contains links to articles of interest to software developers, UI/UX designers, hardware developers, devops team members, product owners, project leaders, engineering managers, software architects, QA engineers, business managers, business analysts, company executives and anyone interested in technology and programming.
IDEs/Editors
Java on Visual Studio Code Update – February 2022 Read the Article
Exploring the Salesforce Mobile SDK Using Android Studio Read the Article
Paul Buck: Coder on Why They Chose the Open VSX Registry Read the Article
A deep dive into Android 13’s new features and changes, including a photo picker, per-app language preferences, Quick Settings tiles, a Hub mode, and UI changes Read the Article
Android is finally gonna ask you about notifs before bugging you with them Read the Article
A Linux expert tells why she thinks the kernel is so important Read the Article
Web3 and Decentralization: What it Means for Data Storage Read the Article
Social Platforms
To rival TikTok and Instagram, YouTube plans to double down on more creator tools, including NFTs, live shopping, and more video effects Read the Article
Workers are actually far more obsessed with Slack than Microsoft Teams Read the Article
What is Social CRM, and why should it be on your radar? Read the Article
Twitter complaint-tracking bot reveals most griped about tech products Read the Article
Business
Microsoft vows app store fairness with Activision merger Read the Article
What does the new era of location intelligence hold for businesses? Read the Article
How a Diverse Culture Drives Employee Engagement and Business Growth Read the Article
How to build and maintain a high-performing team Read the Article
Eight years into his tenure, Satya Nadella looks to diversify Read the Article
Learn the marketing skills to back up your products Read the Article
Here are a few technology news stories that I’ve read in the past week.
How developers scrambled to secure the Log4j vulnerability
The first line of defense was Log4j itself. Apache’s Logging Services team is made up of 16 unpaid volunteers, distributed across almost every time zone around the world. “We do this because we love writing software and solving puzzles in our free time,” Gary Gregory, a software engineer and member of the Apache Logging Services Project Management Committee (PMC), told InfoWorld. “Overall, I think despite the horrible consequences of this kind of vulnerability, things went as well as an experienced developer could expect,” Gregory said. “We were notified, provided a patch quickly and iterated on that release. That is something I have seen in professional environments time and time again.” Read more about the team’s efforts in the InfoWorld article.
Go 1.18 Beta 1 is available, with generics
The announcement was made in a Go development blog post: “Go 1.18 Beta 1 is the first preview release containing Go’s new support for generic code using parameterized types. Generics are the most significant change to Go since the release of Go 1, and certainly the largest single language change we’ve ever made.” Read additional information in Paul Krill’s Infoworld article.
Your Checklist for Launching a Profitable App Startup
If you can imagine an app, it most likely already exists. This article, by Tetiana Stoyko, says “it is still absolutely feasible to develop an innovative new concept that works effectively, stands out from the crowd, and provides something really beneficial to its customers”. Read Tatiana’s DZone article outlining some of the steps to creating the next great app.
Biggest tech IPOs of 2021 (So Far)
In this second year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there has still been a number of technology companies that have gone public. Some of the notable IPOs that have happened this year include GitLab, HashiCorp, ThoughtWorks, UIPath, Coinbase, Coursera and Udemy. Is your company next? Read Scott Carey’s ComputerWorld article for more companies and IPO details.
Runtime is a children’s book written and illustrated by Jasmine Patel – Author and Cal Poly Computer Science / Software Engineering (CSSE’20) Alumna. “Runtime,” is a children’s book that highlights the creative and fun elements of computer science to inspire youth to pursue computer science.
Front Cover
Amazon Description
“Runtime is a whimsical adventure jam-packed with educational computer science concepts. Follow the main character, Char, as she embarks on a colorful journey through the magical land of Runtime. She solves puzzles, finds bugs, and makes friends along the way!”
About the Book
The book’s character, Char, falls into her birthday gift, a new computer. Reading the readme file, Char is told, that in order to return home, to find bugs and some traveling objects. While I won’t spoil the story, Char explores heaps, algorithms, parenthesis matching, dining philosophers, decision trees, stacks, loops, queues, traveling salesperson, objects, object relationships, attributes and more.
“Computer science is a great field to get into, and as there are more and more computer science jobs available, it is important to get young children exposed and interested,” Jasmine said. “Also, there are not enough girls in computer science, and if little girls read this book where the protagonist is a little girl, that might inspire them to get into computer science.”
My Take
I ordered a copy of the book from Amazon last Friday and received it yesterday. The book is fun to read for computer scientists, software engineers and techies of all ages and genders. Runtime would make a great Christmas/Holiday/Birthday gift for every computer inclined child, grandchild or the child techie within all of us.
Note: I should mention that I am a graduate of the Cal Poly Computer Science department (BS CSc 1973) and long time member of the department’s Industry Advisory Board (IAB).
