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 “ensure contributions are...

A report from job site Freelancer highlights an uncharacteristic decline in the number of developer-related careers.

Developer jobs have been growing in demand for decades as most technological advancements require programmers to some extent or another.

To see a decline in developer jobs would be a surprise to many, especially given the emergence of technologies such as the IoT, AI, and cloud computing.

Freelancer’s report highlights a huge drop of over 70 percent in popularity for job titles such as...

Google has provided further details on the upcoming requirement for Android apps on the Play Store to have 64-bit versions.

The company first announced the change in late 2017, providing ample preparation time.

Android itself has supported 64-bit since 5.0 (‘Lollipop’) while the Play Store has required apps using native code to provide a 64-bit version in addition to 32-bit.

Starting August 1, 2019:

• All new apps and app updates that include native code are required to provide 64-bit versions in addition to 32-bit versions when publishing to Google...

While resisting the ‘despite Brexit’ often accompanying positive UK stories, a study has found the British games industry expects strong growth in 2019.

Games trade association TIGA has released its latest Business Opinion Survey. Around 60 companies were questioned for the survey about their plans for the coming year.

The strongest indicator of growth is employment. Over three-quarters (77%) of businesses plan to expand their workforce in 2019, an increase of nine percent over last...

Dark mode is an ‘approved Android Q feature’ that will be adopted system-wide, hopefully driving third-party developers to support in their own apps.

A Chromium Gerrit tracker created by Googler Lukasz Zbylut says the “[Android] Q team wants to ensure that all preloaded apps support dark mode natively.”

The tracker also states, “In order to ship dark mode successfully, we need all UI elements to be ideally themed...

According to figures by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), digital now represents 80 percent of UK video games revenue.

Digital games offer convenience to consumers with instant availability, no chance of retailer stock issues, pre-downloads for pre-orders, access on other devices with just a login, and often no requirement to switch a physical medium between games.

There are also benefits to developers and publishers who do not have to account for the overheads involved with creating physical...

Not all Android manufacturers are equal in supporting their devices with OS updates, leaving many users on ageing flavours.

AOSMark is a site which tells users the best manufacturers for updates while shaming those who are worst.

Naturally, manufacturers with heavily ‘skinned’ Android operating systems are generally slowest to update as they customise the OS before sending it for lengthy approval via Google and each mobile operator around the world (for carrier-locked...

A former Microsoft Edge developer has claimed Google kept making changes to reduce the performance of YouTube on competing browsers.

On Y Combinator, former Microsoft software engineering intern Joshua Bakita wrote:

“I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently added...

Blockchain developer has been ranked as the number one profession on LinkedIn’s emerging jobs list for 2018.

LinkedIn’s recently released report, which places blockchain development at the top, shows 33x growth in the number of blockchain developers, 12x growth in machine learning engineers, 8x growth in application sales executives, and 6x growth in machine learning specialists and professional medical representatives.

Guy Berger, the chief economist at LinkedIn, said that growth can also be seen...

The open internet advocates at Mozilla have shared their concern that Microsoft’s decision to ditch EdgeHTML hands too much power to Google.

Microsoft announced it would be dropping its EdgeHTML rendering engine for its desktop Edge browser in favour of Chromium next year. The company uses Chromium for its Android version but has now scrapped an EdgeHTML transition plan.

Chromium is an impressive engine, but a reduction in competition is a concern. There’s less incentive to invest when...