Weekly recap

Weekly Tech Recap - № 136 - RIP SPARC and Solaris, new trackball, Python Superstar, 24K gold iPhone8, etc.

By Laurent Gloaguen,

September 8, 2017.

R.I.P. SPARC and Solaris

Requiescat in pace. © Spiria/iStock.

A page in IT history has turned. The San Jose Mercury News revealed that Oracle is about to lay off 983 employees at its Santa Clara facility. The cuts mostly affect the teams working on the company’s SPARC processor and Solaris operating system. Both these technologies came to Oracle along with the purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2010. SPARC processors, along with Acorn ones, were among the pioneers of RISC architecture at the beginning of the 1980s. Oracle simultaneously announced it was hiring 5,000 cloud-computing engineers.

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, “R.I.P. SPARC and Solaris.”

Trackball comeback

MX Ergo Trackball. © Logitech.

You thought that the “reverse mouse” had gone the way of the dodo? Logitech doesn’t think so; in fact, today, it released a new trackball mouse — the first in years. The wireless MX Ergo, with its thumb-operated trackball, promises a 20% decrease in muscle fatigue compared to a classic mouse. The mouse can be tilted from 0 to 20 degrees — either/or — for optimum wrist comfort. Available now for CA$130 from Logitech’s Web site.

⇨ Circuit Breaker, “Logitech resurrects the trackball mouse with the MX Ergo.”

Python on a roll

Growth of languages. © Stack Overflow.

On its site, Stack Overflow has remarked on the phenomenal growth of Python’s popularity, overtaking Java and JavaScript in rich countries and leaving in the dust languages like R, Swift, Go, TypeScript, Rust, Scala… In other countries such as India, China or Brazil, interest for Python is also picking up, but not overtaking JavaScript, Java, C# and PHP. David Robinson from Stack Overflow promises to explain the reasons for this growing popularity in a future article. We’re looking forward to it.

⇨ Stack Overflow, “The incredible growth of Python.”

Polishing Apple Park

Since 2015, Duncan Sinfield has been providing us with aerial drone footage of the mega-construction site of Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino. Just days from the next Keynote, he posted the latest one, showing the progress of the work at Apple’s campus. It looks like there’s still quite a bit left to do before next Tuesday, when Tim Cook and Phil Schiller unveil the latest iPhone in the Steve Jobs auditorium, to coincide with the phone’s 10th anniversary.

⇨ YouTube, “Apple Park: September 2017 | From Dreams to Reality.”

Going for Gold

If owning the latest iPhone is just too plebeian for you, why not try a gold-plated one or, better yet, a solid gold one? Would you like diamonds with that? London and Dubai-based GoldGenie had given the iPhone 7 Plus the bling treatment last year and is promising more of the same with the iPhone 8 and even the iPhone 7S, should it ever materialize. Prices have not yet been announced, but last year’s diamond-encrusted iPhone 7 topped CA$20,000. The iPhone8 will be available in 24k Gold, Rose Gold, Platinum and our Diamonds Cluster edition..

⇨ Mashable, “Hurry, you can already preorder your 24K gold iPhone 8.”