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SD Times
June 2022
www.sdtimes.com
NEWS WATCH Microsoft’s new lab for inclusive tech The Inclusive Tech Lab is a successor to a lab that was created by the Xbox team. The purpose of the lab will be to “to learn and develop specifically for people with various types of disabilities.” Compared with the original lab, this one is larger and will be more equipped to bring in visitors who can participate in the product-making process. Though the lab will showcase Microsoft’s accessible hardware, software, and services, it will mostly serve as a design incubator for inclusive products. The company also revealed new adaptive accessories that will be released this fall for people who might have difficulty using a mouse and keyboard. The adaptive accessories consist of three main compo-
nents, an Adaptive Mouse, Adaptive Hub, and Adaptive Buttons. The Adaptive Mouse can be customized with the Microsoft Adaptive Mouse Tail and Thumb Support to make a unique mouse. The Thumb Support accessory also includes the ability to customize it to switch sides for left or right-handed users. The Adaptive Hub and Buttons can be used together to replace traditional keyboards. Options for button toppers include a d-pad, joystick, or dual button, or users can 3D print their own button topper to suit their specific need.
Hasura launches GraphQL Joins This new service lets developers join data from different GraphQL services. This new GraphQL Joins feature can be
People on the move n Talend has announced two new major executive appointments: Sam Pierson as chief technology officer and Jason Penkethman as chief product officer. Chief product officer is a newly created role within Talend, reflecting the company’s focus on developing new solutions for its customers. Pierson previously served as senior vice president of engineering at Illuminate Education, and Penkethman was Spireon’s chief product and strategy officer for the past five years. n Jamf has appointed Michelle Bucaria as its new chief people officer. She will oversee the company’s people operations, including attracting and retaining talent to meet the company’s needs. She was previously chief people officer at PointClickCare, chief human resources officer at Teladoc Health, and held executive human resources and recruiting roles at J.P. Morgan Chase. n Adi Sharabani is joining Snyk as its new chief technology officer, where he will drive the short- and longterm vision of the company’s developer security platform, as well as overseeing Snyk Labs. Prior to this role, he was SVP & GM of endpoint solutions at Symantec, as well as worked at IBM in security strategy and architecture after IBM acquired Watchfire where he was a security and research manager.
used to create a unified GraphQL API. According to the company, this feature builds on Hasura’s existing data federation capabilities. It also gives them the ability to mix and match data sources, which will reduce development time, security risks, and ongoing maintenance costs. Hasura explained that it’s important that developers have the ability to compose data from different sources. Even though data is coming from different places, usually it is semantically related. Previously, building relationships between this related data has required custom code where multiple APIs call each of the sources. GraphQL Joins provides a single schema that lets developers query, mutate, or federate data without having to write custom code. GraphQL Joins is best suited for developers who have more than one GraphQL API, existing investment in GraphQL servers, and databases for which they haven’t already created APIs.
Docker unveils platform updates This year at DockerCon 2022, Docker made two major updates to its platform to increase developer productivity. First, it announced the release of Docker Extensions, enabling developers to add development tools to Docker Desktop. This will allow developers to extend Docker Desktop’s existing capabilities to better suit their needs. As part of this announcement, the company also revealed the first 14 launch partners that are providing Docker Extensions: Ambassa-
dor, Anchore, Aqua Security, GOSH, JFrog, Layer5.io, Okteto, Portainer, Red Hat, Snyk, Tailscale, SUSE/Rancher, Uffizzi, and VMware. The second announcement made at the event is the availability of Docker Desktop for Linux. This new offering will give Linux users the same Docker Desktop experience those on macOS and Windows receive. Docker Desktop for Linux also includes access to the new Docker Extensions feature, along with all of the newest features being added to Docker Desktop. The current main focus of the Docker team when it comes to Docker Desktop for Linux is ensuring that installation and getting updates is as easy as possible, according to the company.
Flutter 3 brings multiplatform capabilities With Flutter 3, users are empowered to build experiences for six platforms from a single codebase, offering developers heightened productivity and enabling startups to bring new ideas to the full addressable market from the start. Additionally, this release offers added support for macOS and Linux apps, bringing users new input and interaction models, compilation and build support, accessibility and internalization, and platform-specific integration. According to the company, the goal of this is to provide customers with the flexibility to take advantage of the underlying operating system while sharing as much UI and logic as they choose. Flutter has invested in supporting both Intel and Apple Silicon on macOS, with Uni-
