Google today launched Android Studio 3.5, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE), with a specific focus on "product quality." From a report: This release is the last one under Project Marble, a fancy name for an initiative Google announced late last year to improve Android Studio. For eight months, the team focused "on making the fundamental features and flows of Android Studio & Emulator rock-solid." All the improvements were either to system health, feature polish, or bug fixes. To improve system health, Google created a new set of infrastructure and internal dashboards to better detect performance problems. The team ultimately fixed over 600 bugs, 50 memory leaks, and 20 IDE hangs, and improved XML & Kotlin typing latency. For the Android Emulator, the team decreased the CPU and memory impact. The team also took a look at app deployment flow to a device, replacing Instant Run with Apply Changes. The new system no longer modifies an APK during your build. Instead, it uses runtime instrumentation to redefine classes on the fly.

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Getting pretty close with the nightly-email version of Scripting News. Lots of moving interconnected parts.

Why would anyone get excited about what Susan Sarandon thinks? Her candidate Bernie is lookin good, but will anyone at all be persuaded by Susan Sarandon? She's had an incredible career for sure, but there are lots of stars at her level. Let's find out what Geena Davis thinks, or Brad Pitt or Kevin Costner.

I've heard said that Reagan introduced the trickle-down theory of economics, but apparently that's wrong -- it was an issue in the election of 1896, which McKinley, the Repub, won.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

Spokesman says the body will consult NGOs and national rights groups before deciding where and when event will be held.

IBM makes the Power Series chips, and as part of that has open sourced some of the underlying technologies to encourage wider use of these chips. The open source pieces have been part of the OpenPower Foundation. Today, the company announced it was moving the foundation under The Linux Foundation, and while it was at it, announced it was open sourcing several other important bits. From a report: Ken King, general manager for OpenPower at IBM, says that at this point in his organization's evolution, they wanted to move it under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. But IBM didn't stop there. It also announced that it was open sourcing some of the technical underpinnings of the Power Series chip to make it easier for developers and engineers to build on top of the technology. Perhaps most importantly, the company is open sourcing the Power Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). These are "the definitions developers use for ensuring hardware and software work together on Power," the company explained. King sees open sourcing this technology as an important step for a number of reasons around licensing and governance. "The first thing is that we are taking the ability to be able to implement what we're licensing, the ISA instruction set architecture, for others to be able to implement on top of that instruction set royalty free with patent rights," he explained. The company is also putting this under an open governance workgroup at the OpenPower Foundation.

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Refugees not registered but living in largest Turkish city face prospect of being expelled.

Refugees not registered but living in largest Turkish city face prospect of being expelled.