StrongSalt’s new Open Privacy API offers ‘encryption as a service’

Encryption as a service provider StrongSalt has released its Open Privacy API to improve the security of developers’ applications.

StrongSalt was founded by Ed Yu, the former founding engineer of cybersecurity giant FireEye. Back in September, StrongSalt raised $3 million in seed funding from Valley Capital Partners.

Claiming it wants to “do for encryption what Stripe has done for payments and Twilio has done for communications,” StrongSalt offers APIs and...

10 December 2019 | API

Sony and Microsoft will partner on cloud, AI, and semiconductors

In a contender for the decade’s most surprising partnership, Sony and Microsoft have agreed to work together on cloud and AI technologies.

AI and cloud are increasingly vital technologies, and Sony isn’t exactly considered a leader in either. It’s easy to see what Sony is getting out of the partnership, but less so what Microsoft sees in the collaboration.

Microsoft and Sony are each other’s biggest competitor in the gaming space. Gaming is shifting...

17 May 2019 | Artificial Intelligence

Tax Justice Network: Google dodged £1.5bn tax in the UK last year

Ethically-minded developers may want to know how much tax companies like Google are getting away with avoiding.

In an analysis for The Mirror, the Tax Justice Group estimates Google should have paid an eye-watering £1.5 billion extra in corporation tax last year.

The publication notes how this figure could have paid for 60,000 nurses for the UK's struggling national health service.

In 2018, Google paid just £67 million in corporation tax. The figure the...

8 April 2019 | Android

Opinion: Why Kubernetes Managed Services are becoming a key trend

From augmented reality to AI-driven solutions, evolving technology trends have the potential to make our daily lives more efficient and more exciting – provided we understand and embrace them to their full potential. The same applies to the cloud industry.

Operators are looking for every opportunity to deliver simplicity and efficiency to their customers. Container technology has been instrumental in the progress businesses have made in these areas, having allowed them to manage...

28 March 2019 | Cloud

Phil Spencer: Google Stadia is impressive, but Xbox will ‘go big’ at E3

Xbox boss Phil Spencer his circulated an internal memo following the Google Stadia announcement promising that Microsoft will ‘go big’ at this year's E3 conference.

Microsoft has been working on a Google Stadia-like equivalent called xCloud for some time now and recently showed it off in a smaller demo. Google got the jump on Xbox by taking Stadia to the big stage at GDC yesterday.

In his memo, Spencer admitted that Stadia was impressive but had little...

20 March 2019 | Cloud

Google donates $2 million to Wikipedia along with free APIs

Google is donating $2 million to Wikipedia in addition to providing free access to APIs which help editors improve Wiki pages.

One important Google API is making free to Wikipedia is the Translate API “to provide editors with resources and insights to drive the creation of new Wikipedia articles across 10 languages in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and the Middle East and North Africa region.”

Elsewhere, the Google Cloud Custom Search API will help editors...

23 January 2019 | API

Google upgrades its speech APIs with improved features

Google has updated its Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text APIs with a range of feature improvements alongside support for more languages.

For many developers, the addition of 17 new WaveNet-based voices for a variety of languages will be the highlight of today’s update.

WaveNet is Google’s technology which uses machine learning to create a natural-sounding voice when performing text-to-speech.

Text-to-Speech now supports a total of 30 standard voices...

29 August 2018 | API

GitLabs shift from Azure to GCP is not due to ex-GitHub users

GitLab is shifting from Azure to Google Cloud but says its decision was not due to users who migrated from GitHub following its Microsoft acquisition.

Following the news of Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub, traffic spiked of people using GitLab’s tool for importing projects from the world’s biggest Git service. It’s clear developers still have very divisive opinions about Microsoft.

At first glance, it would be easy to believe GitLab’s migration...

26 June 2018 | Cloud

Google Cloud App Engine now supports the Node.js runtime

Google Cloud has announced support for the popular cross-platform Node JavaScript runtime in the standard App Engine environment

Node.js allows server code to be written in JavaScript. With the support added today, Google is seeking to make this process as simple for developers as possible.

 

To ensure simplicity, Google is not putting any limitation on the Node.js packages that developers can use — and it will not have any language or API...

13 June 2018 | Cloud