JetBrains has officially launched the stable release of Kotlin Multiplatform. This innovative technology empowers developers to efficiently share code across an array of platforms, including iOS, Android, desktop, web, server-side, and many others. Kotlin Multiplatform has already gained traction among elite development teams at major corporations, such as Netflix, VMware, Cash App, McDonald’s, Electrolux, and Phillips. This groundbreaking release is poised to revolutionize the way we approach cross-platform development.

The framework offers a fully stabilized API, streamlined project configuration, enhanced interoperability with Objective-C and Swift, along with notable improvements in build times and
overall performance.

“Where other technologies abstract away or completely replace platform-specific app development, Kotlin Multiplatform is complementary to existing platform-specific technologies and is geared toward replacing platform-agnostic business logic. It’s a new tool in the toolbox as opposed to replacing the toolbox,” said David Henry and Mel Yahya, Developers at Netflix.

The foremost advantage of Kotlin Multiplatform lies in its flexibility. Developers have the liberty to selectively share a portion of their application’s logic, allowing them to craft native code when the need arises to interface with platform-specific APIs or construct native user interfaces. What’s even more enticing is the synergy achieved by combining Kotlin Multiplatform with Compose Multiplatform, a declarative framework designed for seamless UI sharing across diverse platforms.

“Now that Kotlin Multiplatform is stable, developers can feel much more confident about adopting it for their production projects, as JetBrains will be evolving Kotlin Multiplatform according to the strictest backward compatibility rules. Now is a great time to start using Kotlin Multiplatform for sharing code and to explore Compose Multiplatform’s capabilities for sharing UIs. We will continue improving the core technology, the libraries, and the tooling to provide the best multiplatform development experience to all,” said Ekaterina Petrova, Product Marketing Manager of Kotlin Multiplatform at JetBrains.

This synergy empowers developers with unparalleled creative freedom, enabling them to share as much as 100% of their codebase, all within the Kotlin ecosystem. While Compose Multiplatform stands as a stable solution for Android and desktop, it is being explored experimentally for web applications and is currently in its Alpha stage for iOS.

In addition to Kotlin’s enhanced cross-platform tools, future updates will improve the iOS developer experience by providing direct interoperability between Kotlin and Swift and support for SwiftPM.

With support for SQL databases, NoSQL key/value storage, OCI registry support, and a variety of popular languages, Spin 1.0 meets the needs of today’s full-stack developer. Spin’s applications are built with serverless APIs, such as AWS Lambda and Azure Functions, for example. They’re also easy to build. Microsoft has integrated Fermyon Spin into its cloud offerings, and other software vendors are in the process of integrating it into their offerings.

“Cloud native development has been slow and tedious for developers. Fermyon wants to reverse that trend. We want to make serverless apps fast. Fast to develop, fast to deploy and fast to run”,

said Matt Butcher, co-founder and CEO of Fermyon.

“With Spin, a developer can go from blinking cursor to deployed application in 66 seconds. The open source ecosystem gathering around Spin is propelled forward by WebAssembly, the underlying technology. Spin 1.0 is the culmination of a year’s development, and we could not have reached this milestone without the enthusiasm, contributions and support of this rapidly expanding community”,

he continued.

On top of its already voluminous feature set, new features in Spin 1.0 include:

– Key-value store, PostgreSQL and Redis integration enabling stateful applications

– Support for the OCI Registry standard enabling standard packaging alongside Docker images

– Support for today’s most popular programming languages including Javascript/Typescript, Python, Rust, Go, Java and .NET

– Substantial command stability improvements for a better developer experience

– Extensibility including plug-ins and trigger(s) for expanded application scope

– End-to-end testing enabling confidence in code completion and stability

Snap reports that it has reached a new milestone as Snapchat now has more than 750 million monthly active users. The company also noted recently that 375 million users log into the app every day.

While that’s a far cry from Facebook’s 2.96 billion monthly and 2 billion daily active users, Snapchat’s audience numbers are trending upward. During an investor day event, Snap said it sees “a path for Snapchat to reach over 1 billion people in the next two to three years,” Engadget wrote on the topic.

Breaking those numbers down a bit further, the majority of Snapchat’s audience is outside of North America, where it currently has more than 150 million monthly active users.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the app reaches more than three-quarters of people between the ages of 13 and 34 in over 20 countries, and users post over 5 billion photos every day. Meanwhile, subscription service Snapchat+ has more than 2.5 million members just over seven months after its launch. More than 300 million people also use Snap’s card every month.

These are much-needed signs of positivity for Snap after a tough 2022. The company’s stock plunged more than 80% between late 2021 and the middle of last year, when it laid off about 1,300 employees. It also dropped its Pixy selfie drone after four months.

One of the new features is the TCPRoute Support. It gives the opportunity to manage route destinations and protocol connections between mesh services and external clients.

Next one comes the TLS Settings per Listener option. It’s purpose is to improve security controls by adding the ability to configure TLS settings on a per-listener basis.

The third available feature is the Helm Chart Support. The Consul Helm chart now supports the installation and configuration of the Consul API Gateway and underlying components.

Uber Technologies Inc.’s finance chief said the company is focused on boosting its revenue and income after achieving an important profitability milestone during its latest quarter. 

In early November, San Francisco-based Uber said that it recorded adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $8 million for the quarter ended September 30. This was the first time in its decade-long history that Uber announced a positive figure for this metric, helped by a recovery in its rides business and the continued strength of its food-delivery unit, Uber Eats.

However, the company’s quarterly net loss widened to $2.42 billion from $1.09 billion during the prior-year period. It was largely dragged down by a loss from its equity investments in companies such as Didi Global Inc, for example, which is a Chinese ride-hailing company. 

Uber has reported a net profit under generally accepted accounting principles twice – the first time was in 2018 and second time during the second quarter of this year, thanks to unrealized gains on investment holdings. Mr. Chai commented: 

“We have an intention to get to GAAP profitability.”

He has been Uber’s CFO since 2018. Before that, he used to bea chief executive at CIT Bank and Warranty Group and worked as finance chief at Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis and for NYSE Euronext. 

The company’s  plans are to update investors on its profitability targets and spending plans in February.  Mr. Chai refused to comment on when Uber could report a net profit based on the strength of its operations rather than investment gains.

During the pandemic, Uber’s ride-sharing business suffered heavily as bookings were temporarily failing which prompted the company to cut costs by about $1 billion, in part by laying off workers. Not only that but the company also sold various assets, including its autonomous driving unit and its bikes and scooters business, while holding on to its freight business.

Mr, Chai said that last year, the company withdrew from countries where it didn’t see itself achieving a market-leading position. A spokesman said that this move required about 20 actions, including exits and deals to sell operations to rivals.

Quantum science has the potential to revolutionize modern technology with more efficient computers, communication, and sensing devices. But challenges remain in achieving these technological goals, especially when it comes to effectively transferring information in quantum systems.

Quantum computers are based on quantum bits, also known as qubits, which can be made from a single electron.

The ability of individual qubits to occupy the so-called superposition states, where they are in multiple states simultaneously, underlies the great potential of quantum computers. Quantum computers need a way to transfer quantum information between distant qubits—and that presents a major experimental challenge.

Researchers demonstrate a route of transferring information between qubits, called adiabatic quantum state transfer (AQT), for the first time with electron-spin qubits. Unlike most methods of transferring information between qubits, which rely on carefully tuned electric or magnetic-field pulses, AQT isn’t as affected by pulse errors and noise.

AQT has the potential to improve the transfer of information between qubits, which is essential for quantum networking and error correction.

AQT is robust against pulse errors and noise, and because of its major potential applications in quantum computing, this demonstration is a key milestone for quantum computing with spin qubits.