“With this release, .NET reshapes the way we build intelligent, cloud-native, applications and high-traffic services that scale on demand. Whether you’re deploying to Linux or Windows, using containers or a cloud app model of your choice, .NET 8 makes building these apps easier. It includes a set of proven libraries that are used today by the many high-scale services at Microsoft to help you with fundamental challenges around observability, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and more”, Gaurav Seth, partner director of product for developer platforms at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

In .NET 8, developers can integrate large language models, such as GPT, into a .NET application. To improve compatibility with generative AI workloads, the company also added several enhancements to the System.Numerics library.

The platform update includes a new code generator, called Dynamic Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO), that optimizes code based on “real world” usage and improves application performance by as much as 20%. PGO is enabled by default. Support for the AVX-512 instruction set enables parallel operations on 512-bit vectors of data to process more data in less time. Microsoft noted that it is seeing improvements in the JSON API scenario of 18%, with nearly one million requests per second with ASP.NET Core Minimal APIs.

To make it easier for developers to get started with AI, the company also created several samples and reference templates that showcase AI patterns and practices. Currently these include Customer Chatbot, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and Developing Apps using Azure AI services.

As for containers, Microsoft sought to make packaging applications easier and more secure. Every .NET image includes a non-root user for more secure containers and one-line configuration. The .NET SDK tools publish container images sans a Dockerfile and are non-root by default.

.NET 8 is supported by the Visual Studio family of tools including just-released Visual Studio 2022 17.8. Developers also can create .NET 8 applications using Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit or the GitHub Codespaces template for .NET.

“The past year has brought to the world an almost unparalleled and diverse array of technological change. Advances in artificial intelligence are accelerating innovation and reshaping the way societies interact and operate. At the same time, cybercriminals and nation-state attackers have unleashed opposing initiatives and innovations that threaten security and stability in communities and countries around the world”, Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

The Secure Future Initiative consists of three main components: defences that use artificial intelligence, advances in software engineering, and international norms to protect civilians from cyber threats.

In the realm of artificial intelligence, the company aims to establish an “AI-powered cybersecurity barrier” geared towards safeguarding both customers and nations. The company is actively enhancing its internal protective capabilities, with the intention of applying these technologies directly to bolster customer security.

Furthermore, there are plans to leverage AI in addressing the existing shortage of cybersecurity professionals, which stands at approximately 3 million individuals. A key player in this endeavor is the Microsoft Security Copilot, utilizing AI for the detection and response to security threats. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint will also harness AI-driven detection mechanisms to enhance device security.

“As a company, we are committed to building an AI-based cyber shield that will protect customers and countries around the world. Our global network of AI-based datacenters and use of advanced foundation AI models puts us in a strong position to put AI to work to advance cybersecurity protection”, Smith wrote.

Microsoft is set to enhance its security stance against identity-based attacks by refining the user, device, and service verification procedures throughout its product range. To achieve this, Microsoft intends to transition to a novel key management system with an architecture that renders keys inaccessible in cases where the foundational security protocols are compromised.
The ultimate objective within this framework is to slash the time allocated to addressing vulnerabilities by half, all while promoting greater transparency in event reporting within the industry.

Lastly, the company is committed to promoting wider global adoption of security measures. This commitment follows the company’s establishment of the Digital Geneva Convention in 2017, which outlined a framework of “principles and norms governing the conduct of both state and non-state entities in cyberspace.” While acknowledging the progress made by many governments since then, the company believes that going forward, a more comprehensive and overarching commitment is imperative.

Managers must be able to balance the needs of the employees, the company and the customers. A manager must be a team leader who can recognize and develop each employee’s strengths.

Bad management can lead to low employee productivity and can even cause the best employee to leave.

Top 5 Qualities of a Good Manager

Communication skills
As a manager, you are the bridge between the company and its employees. You need to be clear and precise when communicating information to your team. At the same time, you must also be an active listener when your team members have questions or suggestions. Communicate in a way that makes employees feel comfortable approaching you about any problems.

Leadership
Managers are responsible for being there for employees through changes and challenges. And you are the one who will have to make most of the decisions. You’ll need to be decisive and assertive. Learn what is good for your team and the company based on the strengths and weaknesses of your direct reports. After all, there is no one-size-fits-all manager. As a manager, you must also inspire your team to work toward a common vision and motivate them to go above and beyond. Effective leaders lead to better results.

Teamwork
One of the synonyms of a successful completed project is good teamwork. Good management encourages teamwork among its employees. This helps foster cooperation instead of competition among them. Managers need to learn how to make different employees work together effectively. Set an example by being open to your team members’ ideas. And while you may have the final say, it’s important to involve your team in decision-making so they understand that their thoughts and opinions matter, even if they don’t have the final say.

Emotional stability
In a study called “Key Personality Characteristics of Managers,” researchers examined the qualities of managers that positively influence their employees’ career satisfaction. These core personality traits include emotional stability, assertiveness, openness, optimism, and work drive. As a manager, when you are in charge of several people, you may be under a lot of pressure. This means that they will need you to be dependable and possess emotional stability, even if and when you are struggling with a project that is outside of your employees’ remit. It’s important to keep your composure when difficult situations arise so your employees know they can count on you.

Determination and perseverance
A successful manager must be able to be decisive and assertive. You must be able to present your opinion with confidence. Speaking up on important issues and defending your ideas are also important aspects of becoming an effective manager. As a manager, your employees will need a lot of support from you. You can think of yourself not only as a leader but also as a coach. When your employees face difficulties, guide them to generate their own solutions.

If you’ve finally found your dream Python job, but you’re worried about the interview and which Python questions they’ll ask, you’ve come to the right place. Today, we’ve chosen to bring you 10 of the most common Python interview questions and answers, according to EDUCBA.

Most Frequently Asked Questions and Answers about Python

What is Python, and name some key features of it?
Answer:
Python is an interpreter-based programming language, interactive and object-oriented scripting language. Python is designed to be highly readable. It is an interpreter-based language which means that, unlike other languages like C and variants, the compilation isn’t required before running. It’s dynamically typed, which means you need not define the data types of the declared variables or anything like that.

Functions are first-class objects in Python. Python can be used for cross-platform web apps, scientific models, big data applications, and many more.

Differentiate between tuples and lists in Python?
Answer:
The major difference is tuples are immutable, while a list is mutable. It means once you create a tuple, you cannot edit or change the value in a tuple, while in a list, we can edit the value in it.

What will the maximum length of an identifier be?
Answer:
Specifics no certain length for Identifier; Identifier can be of any length.

What do you mean by Decorators?
Answer:
We use Decorators in Python to modify or inject code in functions or classes. With the help of decorators, we can check for permissions and for logging the calls.

What do you mean by the dictionary in Python?
Answer:
The built-in data type of Python is known as a dictionary. E.g. “Country”.

Explain Memory Management in Python?
Answer:
Python memory management is done by Python private heap space. All the objects and data structures of pythons are in a private heap.

Explain Python in one Line?
Answer:
Python is a modern, powerful, interpreted language with threads, objects, modules, exceptions, and automatic memory management.

Explain the Interpretation in Python?
Answer:
Programs in Python run directly from the source code.

Explain the rules for local and global variables in Python?
Answer:
Global variable: If the variable is defined outside the function, it is Global.
Local Variable: If a variable is assigned a new value inside the function, it is local.

Stay tuned for part two of this article coming soon, where we’ll introduce you to the other questions that are most commonly asked during a Python interview, as well as the right answers that will win the heart of your future employer.

“Star Wars” fans will have to wait another month and a half to play the next chapter in the story of Kal Questis. On Tuesday afternoon, Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment announced the delay of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to April 28. Previously, the game was expected to release on March 17, Engadget wrote on the subject.

The studio said it will use the extra time to debug and polish the game to improve performance, stability and player experience. The delay means that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will launch on the same day as Dead Island 2, provided the title isn’t delayed at the last minute.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Now Arrives April 28th pic.twitter.com/PNtsL6kmER

— EA Star Wars (@EAStarWars) January 31, 2023

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor picks up five years after the events of Fallen Order and features an older and tougher Kal Questis.

The CEO of Weaveworks, Alexis Richardson,  commented:

“Enterprise customers have made it clear that trusted application delivery is critical to the success of their increasingly complex cloud-native platforms. With the acquisition of Magalix, Weaveworks introduces customizable policies, compliance capabilities, and comprehensive risk visibility into GitOps workflows, ensuring only authorized applications are deployed and there are no nefarious activities.”

The integration of Magalix’s policy engine will help DevOps teams to apply consistent policies and practices across multiple Kubernetes environments. This will empower Weaveworks customers to bridge the gap between developers, DevOps, and security teams.

According to Weaveworks, Magalix simplifies DevSecOps and enables cloud-native environments to be more secure by integrating directly into the source, build, and deployment stages of the software lifecycle.

The approach will be the same as Kubernetes so that users can scale their applications while maintaining regulatory requirements using Magalix’s security capabilities. Mohamed Ahmed, the founder, and CEO of Magalix said:

“We are seeing an increase in customers who run a zero-trust security model turning to GitOps to bring DevOps to cloud-native application development and IT operations.”

Ahmed also noted that they believe that integrating security into GitOps pipelines brings considerable agility and speed, preventing errors and protecting against attacks that could shut down the entire platform. He ensured that Weaveworks and Magalix share the same mission to ease innovation without jeopardizing security and stability.

MicroProfile 5.0 enables MicroProfile APIs to be used together with Jakarta EE 9.1 (Jakarta EE namespace). This release was mainly focused on updating dependencies from javax to jakarta, as well as overall stability and usability improvements.

Some of the additional benefits of MicroProfile 5.0 are: 

• Richer specification integration
• No vendor lock-in. Interoperability across different MicroProfile implementations provides users the freedom to select one or combine many MicroProfile implementations in a microservices architecture.
• Annotation-based and programmatic APIs
• MicroProfile Starter for MicroProfile project generation
  • VSCode Extension Pack for MicroProfile
  • Intellij plugin for MicroProfile
• A command-line interface (CLI) to generate gradle or maven projects.

The release lays the foundation for the rapid innovation of MicroProfile APIs for its 2022 releases.

More information about it you can find here.

Automation is a core principle for achieving DevOps success and CI/CD is a critical component. CI/CD comprises continuous integration and continuous delivery or continuous deployment. Put together, they form a “CI/CD pipeline”—a series of automated workflows that help DevOps teams cut down on manual tasks:

Continuous delivery or continuous deployment? Which one is better? 

When using continuous delivery, automation pauses when developers push to production. It automates the entire release process. As soon as all required tests pass, code changes are immediately deployed to the customers.

It is the best example of DevOps automation. Continuous deployment relies on rigorous testing tools and mature testing culture. That’s why most software teams start with continuous delivery and integrate more automated testing over time.

Why choose CI/CD?

It’s simple – speed. Organizations that have “mastered” CI/CD deploy 208 times more often and have a lead time that is 106 times faster than the rest.

Stability and reliability

The codebases remain stable and ready to be released at any time.

Business growth

Once they are freed up from manual tasks, all the organizations can focus resources on development and improvement.

Buzzfeed

CI/CD are made a part of the development workflow with a combination of automated processes, steps, and tools.

Version control

CI begins its work in shared repositories, where teams collaborate on code using version control systems (VCS) which keeps track of code changes. It enables configuration as code, and in this way it allows teams to manage testing, infrastructure, and more as versioned artifacts.

Builds

Those tools package up files and components automatically. Once after clearing all the required checks, CD tools send builds off to the operations team for further testing and staging.

Reviews and approvals

In a CI/CD workflow, a code is being reviewed and approved in pull requests or leveraging integrated development environments for pair programming.

Environments

CI/CD tests and deploys code in environments, where a code is being built by developers. After that, applications become publicly available by operations teams. They have different protection rules and specific variables.

How does it work? 

Firstly, developers have to open pull requests in order to trigger initial builds and unit tests. Secondly, the approved commits are deployed to a preview environment. After that, the mabl CLI is being installed by Custom-built GitHub Actions and run headless tests. Then, live check results are being provided by GitHub Apps. Finally, approved commits are merged to the main branch for additional tests or deployed to production.

Why is CI/CD so successful? 

Automation

It can be done manually, but the automation makes it easier to build, test, and deploy, in order to have more time for coding.

Transparency

If something goes wrong and suddenly a build fails, developers need to be able to quickly assess what went wrong and why. Logs, visual workflow builders, and deeply integrated tooling make it easier for developers to troubleshoot, understand complex workflows, and share their status with the larger team.

Speed

CI/CD helps your overall performance. The speed is being measured based on two indicators. The first one is how quickly commits are made to code in production and the second one is how often you commit code.

Resilience

CI/CD makes the software more resistant to errors. The stability is measured by DORA and its aim is to check how quickly incidents are resolved and change failure rate.

Security

CI/CD pipeline has been checked in place for code and permissions. It provides a virtual paper trail for auditing failures, security breaches, and non-compliance events.

Google Play Console metrics can help you understand your app’s performance across growth and acquisition, engagement and monetization, quality, and churn.

You can now customize and pin the precise metrics that matter to you in a personalized KPIs section at the top of your app dashboard.

On the dashboard for any app, scroll down to the KPI section and select “choose KPIs.” You can either build your own or start with suggested KPIs for job specialities, such as Growth, Quality and Health, or Monetization.There’s an extensive list of available metrics, including our new engagement data and peer comparisons. Search filters make it easy to find just what you want, and once selected you can edit the dimensions and filters to suit your needs. Once you’ve configured a list of KPIs that suit you, you can order them to control where they appear.

You can include up to 20 KPIs, so your dashboard can be as robust or as streamlined as you want.

There are as many ways to customize your KPIs as there are people using the console. Instead of seeing default KPIs, now everyone can have a customized dashboard showing exactly the metrics that matter to their individual workflows.

Want to see for yourself? Then log into Google Play Console to try it out.

Android vitals by device type

Using the Play Console, you can view data to help you understand and improve your app’s battery usage, stability, and render time.For more information about how Android users opt in to share data, go to the Accounts Help Center.

There are several data types:

Battery usage that includes Excessive wake-ups, Stuck partial wake locks, Stuck partial wake locks (background,) Excessive background Wi-Fi scans, Excessive background network usage

Stability that includes ANR rate and Multiple ANR rate, as well as Crash rate and Multiple crash rate.

App start-up time including Slow cold start, Slow warm start, Slow hot start.

Permissions including Permission denials.

You can find and review your app’s data. The date range listed on your Android vitals page includes all available data for your app and can’t be customized. Android vitals data is based on Pacific Time (PT). To open your app’s data, you have to:

• Open the Play Console.
• Select an app.
• On the left menu, select Quality > Android vitals > Overview.
• Choose how you would like to view your app’s data.

To help you organize, segment, and analyze your data, all of your app’s data is broken down by the following dimensions:

• Artifact: Version of your app
• Android Version (SDK): Android OS version reported from the user’s device
• Device Type: The type of device used to run your app (e.g. Phone, Tablet, TV, Wearable)
• Device model: Users’ device Marketing Name and Device Name (e.g. Google Nexus 7/Flo)
• Wake lock name: Tags that were programmatically set when using the PowerManager API in your app
• Wake-up name: Tags that were programmatically set when using the AlarmManager API in your app
• ANR activity name: Fully qualified name of the activity class where the ANR occurred (if available)
• ANR type: When the ANR occurred (e.g. while executing a service) if available

Supported locations for distribution to Google Play users

You appoint Google Commerce Limited as Your agent to make Your Products available in Google Play to users in the following countries. By virtue of Google acting as agent, and with You acting as a principal, You acknowledge that the purchase and sale of Your Product(s) is governed by a contract of sale directly between You and users, except where acting as Your agent, Google is the merchant of record for Products sold or made available to users in the countries/territories listed here.