An anonymous reader writes: Broadband and TV providers can keep charging "rental" fees for equipment that customers own themselves until December 2020, thanks to a Federal Communications Commission ruling that delays implementation of a new law. A law approved by Congress and signed by President Trump in December 2019 prohibits providers from charging device-rental fees when customers use their own equipment, and it was originally scheduled to take effect on June 20. As we've written, this law will help Frontier customers who have been forced to pay $10 monthly fees for equipment they don't use and, in some cases, have never even received. But the law gave the FCC discretion to extend the deadline by six months if the commission "finds that good cause exists for such an additional extension," and the FCC has done just that.

The FCC ruling on April 3 (PDF), which we didn't notice at the time, extends the deadline to December 20 and says that providers need more time to comply because of the coronavirus pandemic: "As the nation tackles the COVID-19 pandemic, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) and providers of fixed broadband Internet access service are among the entities that are integral to the Commission's ongoing, nationwide effort to keep Americans informed and connected during this national emergency. So that these service providers may focus their resources on this critical effort, we provide appropriate flexibility for MVPDs and providers of fixed broadband Internet access service to fulfill their obligations under the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 (TVPA)... we find that good cause exists for granting a blanket extension of section 642's effective date until December 20, 2020."

Programming language Rust has entered the top 20 of the Tiobe popularity index for the first time, but it's still five spots behind systems programming rival Go. ZDNet reports: There's growing interest in the use of memory-safe Rust for systems programming to build major platforms, in particular at Microsoft, which is exploring it for Windows and Azure with the goal of wiping out memory bugs in code written in C and C++. Amazon Web Services is also using Rust for performance-sensitive components in Lambda, EC2, and S3. Rust has seen its ranking rise considerably on Tiobe, from 38 last year to 20 today. Tiobe's index is based on searches for a language on major search engines, so it doesn't mean more people are using Rust, but it shows that more developers are searching for information about the language.

Rust was voted for the fifth year straight the most loved programming language by developers in Stack Overflow's 2020 survey. This year, 86% of developers said they are keen to use Rust, but just 5% actually use it for programming. On the other hand, it could become more widely used thanks to Microsoft's public preview of its Rust library for the Windows Runtime (WinRT), which makes it easier for developers to write Windows, cross-platform apps and drivers in Rust.

Stack Overflow has released the results of its 2020 survey of nearly 65,000 developers, revealing their favorite and most dreaded programming languages, tools and frameworks. From a news writeup: The survey shows that TypeScript, Microsoft's superset of the widely-used JavaScript programming language, has overtaken Python as the second most beloved programming language behind Rust. This year 86% of respondents say they are keen to use Rust, while 67.1% want to use TypeScript, and 66.7% want to use Python. Stack Overflow attributes TypeScript's rising popularity to Microsoft's embrace of open source software as well as the existence of larger and more complex JavaScript and Node.js codebases.

Rust has been the most loved programming language for five years running, despite few developers having experience with it. This year, just 5.1% developers report having used Rust, compared with the 68% who use JavaScript, which is the most commonly used language. [...] Meanwhile, the top 10 most dreaded programming languages are VBA, Objective-C, Perl, Assembly, C, PHP, Ruby, C++, Java and R.

The report also looks at average salaries of each developer role. In the US, engineering managers attract the highest salary at $152,000 per year, followed by site reliability engineers who earn $140,000 per year. Salaries across the globe for these roles are lower, at $92,000 for an engineering manager and $80,000 for a site reliability engineer. Other high-paying roles with an average salary of at least $115,000 in the US include data scientist and machine learning specialist, DevOps specialist, engineer, back-end developer, embedded application developers, mobile developers, scientist, desktop application developer, and educator.

An anonymous reader quotes CNBC: The rise of artificial intelligence will make even software engineers less sought after. That's because artificial intelligence will soon write its own software, according to Jack Dorsey, the tech billionaire boss of Twitter and Square. And that's going to put some beginning-level software engineers in a tough spot.

"We talk a lot about the self-driving trucks in and whatnot" when discussing how automation will replace jobs held by humans, Dorsey told former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang on an episode of the "Yang Speaks" podcast published Thursday. But A.I. "is even coming for programming" jobs, Dorsey said.

"A lot of the goals of machine learning and deep learning is to write the software itself over time so a lot of entry-level programming jobs will just not be as relevant anymore," Dorsey told Yang.
Dorsey also told Yang that he belives a Universal Basic Income could give workers "peace of mind" that they'll be able to "eat and feed their children while they are learning how to transition into this new world."

"Around 70% of our serious security bugs are memory safety problems," the Chromium project announced this week. "Our next major project is to prevent such bugs at source."

ZDNet reports: The percentage was compiled after Google engineers analyzed 912 security bugs fixed in the Chrome stable branch since 2015, bugs that had a "high" or "critical" severity rating. The number is identical to stats shared by Microsoft. Speaking at a security conference in February 2019, Microsoft engineers said that for the past 12 years, around 70% of all security updates for Microsoft products addressed memory safety vulnerabilities. Both companies are basically dealing with the same problem, namely that C and C++, the two predominant programming languages in their codebases, are "unsafe" languages....

Google says that since March 2019, 125 of the 130 Chrome vulnerabilities with a "critical" severity rating were memory corruption-related issues, showing that despite advances in fixing other bug classes, memory management is still a problem... Half of the 70% are use-after-free vulnerabilities, a type of security issue that arises from incorrect management of memory pointers (addresses), leaving doors open for attackers to attack Chrome's inner components...

While software companies have tried before to fix C and C++'s memory management problems, Mozilla has been the one who made a breakthrough by sponsoring, promoting and heavily adopting the Rust programming language in Firefox... Microsoft is also heavily investing in exploring C and C++ alternatives⦠But this week, Google also announced similar plans as well... Going forward, Google says it plans to look into developing custom C++ libraries to use with Chrome's codebase, libraries that have better protections against memory-related bugs. The browser maker is also exploring the MiraclePtr project, which aims to turn "exploitable use-after-free bugs into non-security crashes with acceptable performance, memory, binary size and minimal stability impact."

And last, but not least, Google also said it plans to explore using "safe" languages, where possible. Candidates include Rust, Swift, JavaScript, Kotlin, and Java.

May 23rd marks the 25th anniversary of the day Sun Microsystems introduced Java to the world, notes InfoWorld.

Looking at both the present and the future, they write that currently Java remains popular "with enterprises even as a slew of rival languages, such as Python and Go, now compete for the hearts and minds of software developers." Java continues to rank among the top three programming languages in the most prominent language popularity indexes — Tiobe, RedMonk, and PyPL. Java had enjoyed a five-year stint as the top language in the Tiobe index until this month, when it was overtaken by the C language, thanks perhaps to the combination of C's wide use in medical equipment and the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, Java represents a huge ecosystem and source of jobs. There were an estimated nine million Java developers worldwide in 2017, according to Oracle. A recent search of jobs site Dice.com found nearly 12,000 Java-related jobs in the USA, compared to roughly 9,000 jobs in JavaScript and 7,600 in Python. Plus, Java has spawned an enormous ecosystem of tools ranging from the Spring Framework to application servers from companies such as IBM, Red Hat, and Oracle to the JavaFX rich media platform.

The developers behind Java — including Oracle and the broader OpenJDK community — have kept the platform moving forward. Released two months ago, Java 14, or Java Development Kit (JDK) 14, added capabilities including switch expressions, to simplify coding, and JDK Flight Recorder (JFR) Event Streaming, for continuous consumption of JFR data. Up next for Java is JDK 15, set to arrive as a production release in September 2020, with capabilities still being lined up for it. So far, the features expected include a preview of sealed classes, which provide more-granular control over code, and records, which provide classes that act as transparent carriers for immutable data. Also under consideration for Java is a plan dubbed Project Leyden, which would address "longterm pain points" in Java including resource footprint, startup time, and performance issues by introducing static images to the platform.

Microsoft has explained why it's pursuing 'safe systems programming' through efforts like its experimental Rust-inspired Project Verona language and its exploration of the Rust programming language for Windows code written in C++. From a report: The short answer is that Microsoft is trying to eliminate memory-related bugs in software written in languages like C++, according to Microsoft Rust expert Ryan Levick. These bugs cost a lot to fix and make up a large share of Patch Tuesday hassles. Levick has now offered more insights into Microsoft's efforts behind safe systems programming. Systems programming includes coding for platforms like Windows, Xbox, and Azure, as opposed to programming applications that run on them.

Key systems programming languages include C++, Google-backed Go, and Mozilla-created Rust, but Rust and Go are 'memory-safe' languages while C++ is not. Other languages are memory safe, such as Swift and Kotlin, but they aren't for systems programming. The thing for Microsoft is that it writes a lot of its platform software in C++ and sometimes still in C. While it works hard to address memory issues, the company says it has "reached a wall". "We can't really do much more than we already have. It's becoming harder and harder and more and more costly to address these issues over time," says Levick, who joined Microsoft via its acquisition of Wanderlist, which has become Microsoft To Do. He gave a rundown of Microsoft's safe systems programming efforts in a session at Build 2020 this week.

Technology company ScreenHits is launching ScreenHits TV, a streaming video aggregator app that lets consumers bundle different services together in a single interface. From a report: The service creates a one-stop electronic programming guide where users can search the libraries of both free and subscription streaming platforms, as well as live online TV without jumping from platform to platform and without having to repeatedly sign up for new services. Subscribers of SVOD platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, MUBI and other streaming services, including BBC iPlayer, can integrate their existing services within the app, which is set to go live across multiple territories, including the U.S. and the U.K., by the end of this month. Entry-level subscriptions to ScreenHits will start at $1.99 per month and will initially be available on Samsung Smart TVs, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple Store, Google Chrome, Android and for the desktop.

Apple and Google announced today that they have rolled out a COVID-19 exposure notification system, "essentially a unified programming interface that will allow public health departments to create their own contact tracing applications," reports ABC News. "Apple and Google are not building contact tracing apps." From the report: "Starting today, our Exposure Notifications technology is available to public health agencies on both iOS and Android," Apple and Google said in a statement. "Today, this technology is in the hands of public health agencies across the world who will take the lead and we will continue to support their efforts."

After an individual downloads and enables a contact tracing application on his phone, he would subsequently receive an alert if he is exposed to anyone who is diagnosed with or likely to have COVID-19. Of course, that assumes that the COVID-19-positive individual also has the application enabled on his phone. The companies said that digital contact tracing is meant to argument traditional human-to-human tracing, not replace it. Digital contact tracing is faster than traditional tracing, requires fewer resources and since it doesn't rely on human memory, can make it easier to track exposure in crowded spaces, or contact with strangers. On the other hand, for such applications to be effective, they require users to download and enable the applications on their phones, and it's not yet clear that Americans will be willing to do so en masse. "Once they download the app, users will have to consent to make their information available to the health authorities and can turn it on and off when they choose to," the report adds. "Data collection will be kept private and only used by health authorities for COVID-19 exposure, not stored in a central database."

The companies said that they will not monetize the data that comes out of the system.

Apple is acquiring older movies and shows for its TV+ streaming service, aiming to build a back catalog of content that can better stack up against the huge libraries available on Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. From a report: The company's video-programming executives have taken pitches from Hollywood studios about licensing older content for TV+ and have bought some shows and movies, according to people familiar with the matter. The move represents a subtle strategy shift for Apple TV+, which launched in November with a lineup of original programs. The company plans to keep TV+ focused on original shows, and hasn't yet acquired any huge franchises or blockbusters for its back catalog, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

"The makers of the widely used JavaScript server-side runtime, Node.js, have released Deno 1.0, a new runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript that addresses 'design mistakes' in Node.js," reports ZDNet: Just like Node.js or Node, the Deno runtime is for executing JavaScript outside a web browser. However, unlike Node.js, Deno offers first-class support for Microsoft's increasingly popular Typescript, a superset of JavaScript designed for large projects... "With the changing JavaScript language, and new additions like TypeScript, building Node projects can become an arduous endeavor, involving managing build systems and other heavy-handed tooling that takes away from the fun of dynamic language scripting," writes Node.js creator Ryan Dahl in a blogpost co-authored by fellow Deno developers Bert Belder and Bartek Iwanczuk...

Deno is based on Google's Chromium V8 JavaScript engine.
While its standard modules are all written in TypeScript, Infoworld points out that Deno "can be a replacement for utility scripts that may have been written in Python or Bash... Deno was designed as a series of Rust crates to allow integration at different layers." (A blog post by its developers notes Deno "makes it easy to bind Rust future-based APIs into JavaScript promises.")

But "Like a web browser, it knows how to fetch external code," the developers wrote, calling Deno "a web browser for command-line scripts" while arguing that with Node, "the mechanism for linking to external libraries is fundamentally centralized through the NPM repository, which is not inline with the ideals of the web... Also like browsers, [Deno] code is executed in a secure sandbox by default. Scripts cannot access the hard drive, open network connections, or make any other potentially malicious actions without permission." In an interview Dahl tells JAXenter they're already keeping an index of third party modules that work on Deno at https://deno.land/x/.

"It's important to understand that Deno is not a fork of Node," the developers' blog post explains. "It's a completely new implementation..."

"One last thing," the blog post concludes. "Consider supporting this open source software work by pre-ordering a Deno v1.0 hoodie."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's AP Exams — a passing score on which earns high school students college credit — are open book/open note and taken from home. So it's no surprise that Google Trends registered a spike in searches for 'Java' during Friday afternoon's AP CS A exam (more detailed exam day chart) as students scrambled to solve the two Java programming questions that made up this year's abbreviated 45-minute AP Computer Science A exam.

Looking up answers online isn't banned, but a College Board video recommends against it, saying "the information won't be helpful." Similar spikes in exam content-related searches during testing times have also been observed for other AP subjects. The end-of-year AP exam for the "more approachable" AP Computer Science Principles course was canceled for 2020, although it was to have counted for 60% of AP CSP students' scores.

Long-time Slashdot reader bbsguru shares a story from the alternative newsweekly the Arkansas Times. "A computer programmer applying for unemployment on Arkansas's Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program discovered a vulnerability in the system that exposed the Social Security numbers, bank account and routing numbers and other sensitive information of some 30,000 applicants.

"Anyone with basic computer knowledge could have accessed personal information for malicious purposes." Alarmed, the computer programmer called the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services Friday morning and was told by an operator that there was no one available who could talk to him. He then tried someone at the Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division, who told the programmer he would find the person he needed to talk with to fix the situation. The programmer later called the Arkansas Times for advice on whom to call. The Times alerted the Division of Workforce Services to the issue at 4:30 p.m. Soon after a message appeared on the website that said, "The site is currently under maintenance...."

In exploring the website, the computer programmer determined that by simply removing part of the site's URL, he could access the administrative portal of the site, where he had the option of editing the personal information of applicants, including bank account numbers. From the admin portal, he viewed the page's source code and saw that the site was using an API (application programming interface) to connect with a database. That API was also left unencrypted, and he could access all of the applicants' raw data, included Social Security numbers and banking information...

The computer programmer said he thought he could have programmed a script that would gather all of the information from the API in under an hour.

Luminary Media, the money-losing podcasting startup, has raised more than $30 million in a new round and is seeking more funding as it tries to ride out the global pandemic, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. From the report: The funds were raised at a level below last year's $200 million valuation, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private. The company, which is also cutting costs after struggling to attract subscribers, plans to use the money to fund operations and future programming. This current round of investment would bring Luminary's total fundraising to more than $160 million, comparable to the value of the entire company. Luminary, backed by investors such as Sinai Ventures, NEA and former HBO executive Richard Plepler, previously raised at least $130 million to build what it said would be the Netflix of podcasts -- a subscription service packed with top-notch, exclusive shows from journalists, TV hosts and celebrities. Its slate of original shows includes Guy Raz's "Wisdom From the Top" and "The Trevor Noah Podcast." But the app has struggled to find an audience since its debut in April 2019. Only about 80,000 people who tried the app have remained paying subscribers, said the people.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Everyone is stuck at home, which you would think would mean a lot more TV watching, not less. And up to a point, that's true: millions of us are putting millions of hours into streaming content from Netflix, Disney+, and others. What we aren't doing, though, is watching cable -- especially sports, which aren't happening in the bars and restaurants we aren't going to. Residential customers have been cutting the cord for years, but now commercial subscribers to pay-TV companies have started jumping into the cancellation heap, The Wall Street Journal reports. Restaurants, bars, hotels, and airlines aren't continuing to pay for pricey channel bundles when nobody is coming in, and even if they could, those viewers would have nothing to watch.

Cable operators continue to charge fees for sports programming that currently doesn't exist thanks to a fairly tangled web of rights and contracts. And while some customers could receive rebates down the line, managing cash flow today may be easier if you just cancel the package altogether. That's even truer for small businesses, which are trying to shore up enough resources to survive long-term. One bar and grill in Arizona told the WSJ cutting off its cable plan is saving the business $1,600 per month. Although the restaurant does anticipate opening for in-person dining in the next weeks, tables will be spaced farther apart, capacity will be limited and the screens dark, as there are no professional or college sports to show. Last week, Variety reported that cable broadcasting's so-called "Pay TV" services have already lost 1.7 million paying subscribers in just the first three months of 2020. Meanwhile, satellite TV witnesses a higher 14.3% drop in paying subscribers in just those same three months.

It begs the question, will the pandemic finally kill cable TV?

The Python Software Foundation and JetBrains collected over 24,000 responses for the third annual Python Developer's Survey. Among its findings: 59% said they used Python for data analysis, "followed by web development at 51%, and machine learning at 40%," reports ZDNet: Other major applications of Python include DevOps and system administration (39%), programming web tools like crawlers (37%), software testing (31%), education (26%), software prototyping (25%), network programming (21%), desktop development (18%), computer graphics (14%), embedded system development (8%), game development (7%) and mobile development (6%).

However, at 28%, web development remains the top purpose when respondents were asked what they used Python for the most. It is followed by data analysis (18%), machine learning (13%), and DevOps, and system administration (9%).

Good news given that the final version of Python 2 was just released, the survey found that 90% are using Python 3, up from 84% in 2018. Of those still on Python 2, 45% are using it for web development, and 41% are using it for DevOps and system administration. PSF speculates that web development's dominance in Python 2 is because of legacy code...

Some 68% of Python developers are building on Linux, followed by Windows at 48%, while macOS has a 29% share...

The PyCharm integrated development environment (IDE) from JetBrains is once again the top IDE with a 33% share, followed by Microsoft's open-source cross-platform editor VS Code with a 24% share.

Python adoption is often attributed to its moderate learning curve. The survey found that 44% of users have just two years' experience and 30% had three to five years' experience.

Charlotte Web writes: Since 2001 the TIOBE Index has been ranking top results for the search query +"<language> programming" on the top 25 search engines. "This month, C moved up past Java and entered the number one position," reports JAXenter.

"There's a new number one. (Or, should we say an old number one?)"

"Java and C were already very close in April, but this month C surpasses Java again," explains Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software. He also points out that the last time C was number one was back in 2015, suggesting that today embedded software languages like C and C++ "are gaining popularity because these are used in software for medical devices."

"On another note, it is also worth mentioning that Rust is really getting close to the top 20 now (from #27 to #21 within one month)."

"Perl, on the other hand, might be on its way off of the charts," argues JAXenter, "if it continues its downward trend. This month it saw a rate of change of -0.51%. It is currently number 18 on the list, but in May 2019 it was number 13."
Python also passed C++ to take the #3 spot, while C# overtook Visual Basic for the #5 spot. ("Classic Visual Basic" also lost the #16 spot to PL/SQL).

Even PHP rose a notch, pushing past SQL to take the #8 spot, and Scratch also moved up one, overtaking Objective C for the #19 position.

Lots of developers really want to learn Go, a programming language for large systems created by Google, meanwhile most developers are sick of attending meetings, and most of those working at multinational corporations aren't happy there. From a report: That's according to the results of a survey of over 16,655 developers from 76 countries carried out by HackerEarth, a company with offices in India and San Francisco that provides tools for recruiters to remotely assess developer coding skills. Go comes out top of the languages most developers want to know. The survey finds that 32% of experienced developers pick Go as the programming language they want to learn, well ahead of Python, which 24% say they want to learn. The desire for learning Go lines up with the results of a similar survey by remote developer hiring firm HackerRank. Go is used at Google, Netflix, American Express, Salesforce, IBM, Target, Twitch, Twitter, Uber, and Dropbox.

Twitch, the online video site popular among gamers, is looking for its version of "The Bachelor." From a report: The company plans to fund a slate of original, unscripted series that would be live and interactive, airing two to three times a week, according to an internal document seen by Bloomberg. Its preferred genres are game shows, dating shows, sports, music and talk -- many of the cornerstones of reality TV. The global health crisis has provided Twitch, owned by Amazon.com Inc., a rare opportunity to broaden its audience and experiment with new kinds of programming. While many TV networks have struggled to produce shows during the pandemic, Twitch's most popular personalities have always filmed themselves from home.

Pioneering Australian scientist Robert May, whose work in biology led to the development of chaos theory, has died at age 84. The Guardian reports: Known as one of Australia's most accomplished scientists, he served as the chief scientific adviser to the United Kingdom, was president of the Royal Society, and was made a lord in 2001. Born in Sydney on January 8, 1938, May's work was influential in biology, zoology, epidemiology, physics and public policy. More recently, he applied scientific principles to economics and modeled the cause of the 2008 global financial crisis. On Wednesday, his friends and colleagues paid tribute to a man who they said was a gifted polymath and a "true giant" among scientists.

Dr Benjamin Pope, an Australian astrophysicist and student at Oxford from 2013 to 2017, said May was a role model, and meeting him was a highlight of his university career. "I became aware of his achievements almost as soon as I learnt anything about physics in university," Pope told Guardian Australia. "My first contact with computer programming was at the University of Sydney, in first year physics, where the example is to recreate Robert May's experiment with the bifurcation diagram and the logistic map. "His bifurcation diagram is one of the iconic diagrams in physics," he said. "[And] he made what was between three or four independent discoveries that lead to chaos theory. You might have heard of the butterfly effect ... May's is probably the other foundational, computational model of chaos."