Nodejs v4 out, Raspberry touchscreen and other news / blog posts of today
Node v4.0.0 (Stable)
"The collaborators of the Node.js project and the members of the Node.js Foundation are proud to offer v4.0.0 for general release. This release represents countless hours of hard work encapsulated in both the Node.js project and the io.js project that are now combined in a single codebase. The Node.js project is now operated by a team of 44 collaborators, 15 of which form its Technical Steering Committee (TSC). Further, over 100 new individuals have been added to the list of people contributing code to core since v0.12.7." More info
Raspberry touchscreen
"YouÔÇÖve been incredibly patient: thank you. The official Raspberry Pi touch display is on sale today, priced at $60 (plus local taxes and shipping): you can buy it at the Swag Store, at RS Components/Allied Electronics and at Premier Farnell/Newark. Other sellers will be receiving stock later this week." More info
Updates in Azure WebJobs SDK (1.1.0-alpha2)
"We recently released a preview of the WebJobs SDK. In addition to other new features and bug fixes, the release also opens up a new extensibility model allowing you to write your own triggers and binders. In this latest release we have added more extension triggers and binders in addition to introducing the Singleton feature which allows you to declaratively specify that only a single instance of a particular job function should run at any given time, even across multiple scaled out instances." More info
Minecraft mobile builds towards desktop version with latest update
The smartphone and tablet edition of Minecraft is now much closer to its desktop and console versions, after developer Mojang launched one of the biggest updates in its history.
The Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.12 update adds some prominent features that had previously been missing from the mobile version including hunger; sneaking and sprinting; the gameÔÇÖs Nether zone; and tameable ocelots.
Mobile gamers will also be able to play against people on PCs using the new Windows 10 version of Minecraft, and use physical controllers paired with their iOS device. The update has also launched for Windows Phone, with Android to follow. More info
Biggest VM Sizes in the Cloud (Azure)
Today, weÔÇÖre announcing the release of the new Azure GS-series of Virtual Machine sizes, which enable Azure Premium Storage to be used with Azure G-series VM sizes. These VM sizes are now available to use in both our US and Europe regions.
Earlier this year we released the G-series of Azure Virtual Machines ÔÇô which provide the largest VM size provided by any public cloud provider. They provide up to 32-cores of CPU, 448 GB of memory and 6.59 TB of local SSD-based storage. TodayÔÇÖs release of the GS-series of Azure Virtual Machines enables you to now use these large VMs with Azure Premium Storage ÔÇô and enables you to perform up to 2,000 MB/sec of storage throughput , more than double any other public cloud provider. Using the G5/GS5 VM size now also offers more than 20 gbps of network bandwidth, also more than double the network throughout provided by any other public cloud provider. More info @ Scott Guthrie's blog
VP9 Support on Microsoft Edge
Today, weÔÇÖre excited to announce that WebM/VP9 support is now in development in Microsoft Edge. VP9 is an open source codec that offers efficient compression to stream HD content at lower bitrates, and is well suited to UHD streaming. Initial support for VP9 will be available in Windows Insider Preview builds soon. This is part of our continuing effort to expand codec offerings in Windows. We continue to evaluate other formats and look forward to receiving feedback as we work on implementing them. More info @ Microsoft Edge Team