Tim Anderson
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Technology especially Microsoft, cloud, open source, software development, devops, mobile, occasionally audio
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Fishing, politics, cooking, gardening
Tech journalist. Currently writing mostly for The Register on software development, DevOps, cloud computing etc
Articles by Tim Anderson
A new era of AI-driven application rebuilds – now it is Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop
AI coding makes it easier and quicker to re-create existing applications with new code, side-stepping copyright concerns since copyright protects code rather than specification. In February this year Cloudflare rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week and then followed with a WordPress-compatible CMS (content management system) called EmDash.
Counterfeit Braun shaver heads on eBay
I have a Braun electric razor and needed a new 70S shaver head. There are plenty on eBay; some are advertised as compatible and sell from around £7.00 up, and some are presented as genuine Braun parts and sell for anywhere between £18.00 and £60.00 (the price from a Braun UK dealer is £45.00). I am sure that some of the Braun spare are genuine but I purchased one I that was a counterfeit. How can you tell?
Deno’s endo – team joins CloudFlare, runtime will be abandoned in one year’s time
Deno (and Node.js) inventor Ryan Dahl has posted that his team is joining Cloudflare and that after one more year of support “we will end our development of the Deno runtime. Deno will remain open source, and we welcome others who want to continue its development.” Deno 1.0 was released in 2020 as an attempt to fix what Dahl called “design mistakes in Node”.
JetBrains posts a loss (but revenue is up), puts spotlight on future of IDEs
A report that independent developer tools vendor JetBrains posted a financial loss for the first time in “tracked history” prompted much discussion on Hacker News, though the title of the thread was changed from one that was too negative, since the company is not in any sort of financial trouble, to one that is too positive.
Apple user interface catches me out
I’m in one of those long calls to support where you wait for ages before a human answers, which is my excuse for slipping up. I’ve had the iPhone keypad open to navigate menus but now I want to hide the keypad. There is a button for this: iPhone UI for hiding the keypad Unfortunately the text that looks like a caption is a button, and the button that looks like it is captioned is the button for hanging up. And I have to call back and wait again.
From Malaysian chicken to Caribbean crab: four global curry recipes
My favourite curries come from the Mamak Tamil Muslim cooks behind Malaysia’s all-night kopitiams, who make the best roti canai going. Go for the roti and the meat curries alongside, washed down with teh tarik – strong black tea sweetened with condensed milk, pulled until it froths. In my cookbook Simply Malaysian, I included my take on Dad’s Mamak lamb and potato curry.
From Malaysian chicken to Caribbean crab: four global curry recipes
Updated Wed, September 30, 2026 at 12:03 PM UTC Mandy Yin’s chicken and squash curry.Photograph: Photography: Laura Edwards/The Guardian. Food styling: Joss Herd. Prop styling: Tabitha Hawkins. Curry runs through Malaysia’s veins; it’s in every kitchen and at every food stall, whether run by Malays, Chinese or Indians.
Googlebook and Googlebook OS arrives – want one?
Google has released Googlebook OS, a replacement for ChromeOS based on Android and previewed in May this year, with the announcement accompanied by new devices from Acer, Asus, Dell HP and Lenovo. Unlike the Chromebook, Googlebook is not a budget device, with prices starting at $899.
Computer Science > Computation and Language
We consider the decision of whether to return an existing draft answer or revise it using retrieved evidence, as in answer-revision systems. Draft confidence estimates whether the current answer is correct, but the decision requires estimating the effect of a specified revision.
Shopify migrates from React Native to native Android and iOS development, citing AI as enabler
Cross-platform development fascinates because of its many nuances. Is it more important than an app works the same on each platform, or that it is optimized for the best experience? Is it more important to share code for better maintainability, or to have separate code bases to avoid compromising? And if one does go the for a cross-platform framework, what is the best choice? Back in 2020, Shopify decided on React Native as its solution; now it is changed its mind.
Why does a MAUI app store data under “User Name” on Windows?
I am experimenting with Microsoft’s MAUI (multi-platform app UI) and have encountered various little problems. MAUI apps run on Android, iOS, Windows (WinUI 3) and Mac (Mac Catalyst), though in my case I am mainly interested in Windows and Mac. The application needs local storage and follows the mobile app principle of isolating this into a directory largely buried from the user’s view.
GitHub reliability and scalability: a consequence of AI and too much for free
GitHub’s CTO Vlad Fedorov has posted apologetically about the 17th August outage which, he said, “lasted 7 hours and 47 minutes.
Linux on the desktop: growing, but not by as much as some claim
My attention was caught by the claim that Linux desktop use “surged to 22% on one workday.” Unfortunately the claim does not stand up to scrutiny. The figures are drawn from Cloudflare data and based on North America only. The 22% is there but only at 9:00 UTC, which is 4:00am on the east coast and 1:00am on the west coast, or in other words, when most of the USA is asleep. At 15:00 UTC on the same day, Linux share was down to 6%.
First steps with MAUI: some friction
I am evaluating Microsoft’s MAUI (Multi-platform app UI) for use on a cross-platform project. I mainly develop on a Mac with Visual Studio Code. Setup for MAUI development is well explained here though getting everything in place for Mac Catalyst, iOS and Android is tedious. There is a tricky issue related to Apple’s Xcode, needed for MAUI for the Apple targets. Apple’s recommendation is that you install Xcode from the App Store.
Running Visual Studio 2008 in Windows 11
One thing Microsoft is generally good about is keeping old applications running. Applications built with Visual Basic 6.0 (first released in 1998) still run well (in most cases) on the latest Windows. I maintain an application which is not quite that old, but which was built with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 2.0. It still runs but needs modernizing and taking cross-platform.
Can AI write as capably as humans?
Although I make mistakes when I write, it is an activity that comes easily to me. Sometimes it is difficult: finding the best title, opening paragraph, closing paragraph, how to express a thought with the right nuance; all these things can be hard. If I know what I want to say though, the words come naturally and I have never felt the need for AI assistance. Nevertheless, AI can generate content, lots of it, and on the surface it is pretty good.
Vercel’s Scriptc is a TypeScript to native code compiler – how did we get here?
Vercel has previewed Scriptc on GitHub, a native compiler for TypeScript which is open source under the Apache 2 license. Scriptc takes TypeScript code as input and outputs a native code executable, along with an embedded JavaScript engine if needed, using the existing QuickJS ng project. The JavaScript engine is needed if there is code included that cannot be statically compiled, including JavaScript code, such as npm dependencies, or code typed as “any” in TypeScript.
Getting started with Azure Artifact Signing
Signing applications is a requirement for deploying a desktop or mobile application and can be fiddly. Microsoft’s Azure Artifact Signing always looked to me like a good solution in that the pricing is reasonable at $9.99 per month for up to 5,000 signings, and it is run by Microsoft so one would think that the certificates will be satisfactory for Windows users. This week I got started with the service.
Kimi K3 and Qwen 3.8: is AI becoming a commodity?
Last week Moonshot AI introduced Kimi K3, with the promise that “the full model weights will be released by July 26 2026;” while Alibaba said on X that “Qwen 3.8 is launching and going open-weight soon”. These are capable LLMs (large language models), and the open weights promise means that developers will be able to download them from Hugging Face and run them locally.
No Mono in Microsoft’s cross-platform MAUI framework on .NET 11 – and a quick hands-on
Microsoft has released preview 6 of .NET 11, for which release is expected in November, including a big change to MAUI (Multi-platform App UI): it now runs only on .NET Core, rather than the Mono runtime. Principal product manager David Ortinau reports that “your app builds and runs on CoreCLR, the same runtime behind ASP.NET Core, your cloud services, and desktop .NET.” According to Ortinau, performance is generally faster than Mono on iOS and Mac Catalyst.
JetBrains Resharper for Visual Studio Code adds C# debugging support
One of the oddities of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is that it is free to use for almost anything other than the company’s own .NET platform. That is, there is nothing to stop developers from coding in C# with VS Code and using the .net command-line tools without paying Microsoft for a license; but the official C# Dev Kit extension requires a license for teams of 6 developers or more: For personal, academic, and open-source projects, C# Dev Kit can be used at no cost.
Notes from the field: when Remote Desktop cannot connect
Following a power outage, all my Windows servers (hosted on a single Hyper-V server) rebooted. They are configured to come back up, but I found that Remote Desktop was not working to many of them, including the domain controller. I found a workaround using the Hyper-V manager on one server to which I could connect; this lets you connect via a different route. Today I focused on what was causing the issue.
Cloudflare’s vinext project reaches beta 1 – not just an AI experiment
Cloudflare’s vinext project, which implements the Next.js API using Vite as the bundler instead of Turbopack or Webpack, has released its first beta, suggesting (if there was any doubt) that this is a project intended for production use and not just an AI experiment. Why does vinext exist? The introductory post grabs attention with its claim that using AI, Next.js was rebuilt in a week – though we note that some 20 weeks have passed since then, and here we are at beta 1.
Tim Anderson's IT Writing
Principal product manager Daniel Rosenwasser reports that TypeScript 7 is now generally available – a big release, since this is the first to have the native port of the TypeScript compiler built in Go. Rosenwasser claims “speedups between 8x and 12x on full builds.” There is a snag. Although TypeScript 7 is production-ready, it has no API; that will not come until TypeScript 7.1. It may come as a surprise to you that TypeScript has an API; it is not something highlighted in the TypeScript docs.
My writing here and elsewhere
I am no longer writing regularly for The Register or DevClass – I have loved writing there but made the decision to stop in order to free up more time for other things. I may still write there occasionally, and/or do freelance work elsewhere. One of the consequences is that I have a bit more time to post here on things that interest me – which includes running, music and audio as well as software development.
Avalonia UI vs Microsoft’s .NET MAUI
What framework to choose for a cross-platform .NET GUI application continues to be awkward, with multiple good-ish options but no obvious first choice. The three leading contenders are Microsoft’s MAUI (multi-platform app UI), third-party Avalonia UI, and third-party Uno Platform.
Microsoft authenticator cannot be backed up for Microsoft or Entra ID accounts
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) improves on username/password authentication by requiring the user to have a second proof of identity, traditionally “something you have” as well as “something you know.” In the Microsoft ecosystem MFA is typically implemented using an app called Microsoft Authenticator which generates one-time passwords (codes), used in addition to a password to sign in, or passwordless authentication where a request is sent to the authenticator app.
.NET's long-term support is not long-term enough, dev complains
DEVOPS Microsoft's support policy for its .NET runtime and development platform is too short for enterprises, according to a developer who has revived a long-standing complaint in a new GitHub issue. The current release lifecycle for modern .NET, formerly known as .NET Core, is an annual major release, with even-numbered versions being long-term support (LTS) for three years, and odd-numbered versions maintained for two years.
No more Java refills for Intel Macs after JDK 27, says Oracle
No more Java refills for Intel Macs after JDK 27, says Oracle Apple's final break with Chipzilla leaves another platform preparing to wind down support Oracle is moving to stop maintaining the macOS/x64 port of the Java Development Kit (JDK) from version 27, which is expected in September.
.NET's long-term support is not long-term enough, dev complains
.NET's long-term support is not long-term enough, dev complains Three-year lifecycle leaves enterprises with barely a year to adopt each LTS release Microsoft's support policy for its .NET runtime and development platform is too short for enterprises, according to a developer who has revived a long-standing complaint in a new GitHub issue.
Apple takes over Swift Package Index, vows to remove GitHub dependency
DEVOPS The Swift Package Index (SPI), a search engine for open source packages for the Swift programming language, is now part of Apple, though it will remain open source. Dave Verwer, who created SPI over six years ago along with Sven A.
Deno project is going to add cross-platform desktop apps in next major update
DEVELOPMENT The next major release of Deno, a JavaScript/TypeScript runtime, will include new commands to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technology. Deno desktop will compile an application from a plain TypeScript file or from frameworks such as Next.js, Astro, Deno Fresh, TanStack Start or Vite SSR (server-side rendering). A distinctive feature is that the native WebView is used by default, rather than bundling the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF).
Apple takes over Swift Package Index, vows to remove GitHub dependency
Apple takes over Swift Package Index, vows to remove GitHub dependency SPI co-creator Dave Verwer joins Apple, says 'We will be moving away from that model completely' The Swift Package Index (SPI), a search engine for open source packages for the Swift programming language, is now part of Apple, though it will remain open source. Dave Verwer, who created SPI over six years ago along with Sven A.
Deno project is going to add cross-platform desktop apps in next major update
The next major release of Deno, a JavaScript/TypeScript runtime, will include new commands to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technology. Deno desktop will compile an application from a plain TypeScript file or from frameworks such as Next.js, Astro, Deno Fresh, TanStack Start or Vite SSR (server-side rendering). A distinctive feature is that the native WebView is used by default, rather than bundling the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF).
AWS debuts Lambda MicroVMs with up to 8 hours runtime
DEVOPS AWS has introduced Lambda MicroVMs, built on its Firecracker virtual machine monitor, which can run isolated Linux containers with runtimes of up to eight hours, in contrast to the 15-minute limit on containers in Lambda functions. MicroVMs form a new core feature of Lambda, the AWS serverless platform. Developers provide a Dockerfile defining a container along with application artifacts, and upload it to Amazon S3.
Vercel debuts eve open source agent framework, tries to fix shadow AI with Passport
DEvops Vercel introduced an open source agent framework called eve at its Ship event in London this week, along with other new features including Passport, an attempt to put employee apps created with AI under enterprise control. Agents are dominating the AI conversation currently, and in particular custom agents. Agent frameworks that simplify coding already exist, though eve has a few notable characteristics.
AWS hypes continuous agentic DevOps, puts Kiro in your pocket
DEVOPS AWS today introduced new and enhanced agents aimed at DevOps and code security at its New York Summit, including previews of Continuum for identifying and fixing application vulnerabilities, and an iOS mobile app for its Kiro coding tool. Matt Wood, chief AI and technology officer, said in a press briefing that the company sees AI tools operating continuously in the background, rather than being used on demand.
Homebrew 6.0 released with new security mechanism, Linux sandbox and more
DEVelopment The Homebrew team has released version 6.0 of this popular open-source package manager for macOS and Linux, with a new mechanism for trusting packages and support for sandboxing on Linux, to align with existing sandboxing on macOS. Homebrew 6.0 introduces tap trust, a "tap" being a collection of formulae, casks (a package of pre-compiled binaries) and commands which usually reside in a Git repository.
The new database world according to Google: Inexact queries and AI in everything
Databases Google Cloud Summit came to London last week, and we took the opportunity to sit down with database execs Sailesh Krishnamurthy (VP engineering) and Yasmeen Ahmad (product executive Agentic Data Cloud). The event was wall-to-wall agentic AI, and true to the theme, Ahmad told us that "we're putting agents at the center ... with the goal that humans are not going to be using data platforms in the next three to five years.
AWS debuts Lambda MicroVMs with up to 8 hours runtime
AWS debuts Lambda MicroVMs with up to 8 hours runtime Suitable for running untrusted code, AI agents, or any long-running task AWS has introduced Lambda MicroVMs, built on its Firecracker virtual machine monitor, which can run isolated Linux containers with runtimes of up to eight hours, in contrast to the 15-minute limit on containers in Lambda functions. MicroVMs form a new core feature of Lambda, the AWS serverless platform.
The new database world according to Google: Inexact queries and AI in everything
Google Cloud Summit came to London last week, and we took the opportunity to sit down with database execs Sailesh Krishnamurthy (VP engineering) and Yasmeen Ahmad (product executive Agentic Data Cloud). The event was wall-to-wall agentic AI, and true to the theme, Ahmad told us that "we're putting agents at the center ... with the goal that humans are not going to be using data platforms in the next three to five years.
Apple gives Mac devs a WSL-ish thing to call their own
DEVOPS HANDS ON At WWDC this week, Apple introduced container machines, which are persistent virtual machines running Linux, bearing some resemblance to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Microsoft's operating system. Developers using macOS, as with those on Windows, face the problem that most applications are deployed to Linux, creating a mismatch between the development machine and the deployment target. The friction is less for macOS, which, like Linux, is Unix-like, but still exists.
GitHub pulls pin on npm's auto-run scripts
development GitHub will change npm's defaults so the install command no longer runs scripts automatically, disabling a feature commonly exploited by malicious packages such as the notorious Shai-Hulud worm. Maintainer Leo Balter said: "Install-time lifecycle scripts are the single largest code-execution surface in the npm ecosystem.
Devs know AI code is riddled with holes, but ship it anyway
security Research by AppSec biz Checkmarx finds that 70 percent of developers believe AI-generated code has more vulnerabilities, and 30 percent knowingly ship vulnerable code into production. The report is based on responses from 2,350 global developers, CISOs, and AppSec managers, and follows similar annual surveys since 2023.
Vercel debuts eve open source agent framework, tries to fix shadow AI with Passport
Vercel introduced an open source agent framework called eve at its Ship event in London this week, along with other new features including Passport, an attempt to put employee apps created with AI under enterprise control. Agents are dominating the AI conversation currently, and in particular custom agents. Agent frameworks that simplify coding already exist, though eve has a few notable characteristics.
AWS hypes continuous agentic DevOps, puts Kiro in your pocket
AWS today introduced new and enhanced agents aimed at DevOps and code security at its New York Summit, including previews of Continuum for identifying and fixing application vulnerabilities, and an iOS mobile app for its Kiro coding tool. Matt Wood, chief AI and technology officer, said in a press briefing that the company sees AI tools operating continuously in the background, rather than being used on demand.
Homebrew 6.0 released with new security mechanism, Linux sandbox and more
The Homebrew team has released version 6.0 of this popular open-source package manager for macOS and Linux, with a new mechanism for trusting packages and support for sandboxing on Linux, to align with existing sandboxing on macOS. Homebrew 6.0 introduces tap trust, a "tap" being a collection of formulae, casks (a package of pre-compiled binaries) and commands which usually reside in a Git repository.
Java's Project Valhalla finally lands a preview in JDK 28
Oracle software engineer Lois Foltan has confirmed that Java Enhancement Proposal 401 for Value Classes and Objects – part of Project Valhalla – will be integrated into the OpenJDK mainline early next month, targeting JDK 28. Previews of JEP 401 have so far been available only in early-access builds. The current JDK (Java Development Kit) is 26, with JDK 27 expected in September and JDK 28 in March 2027. The next long-term support version is likely to be JDK 29 in September 2027.
Apple gives Mac devs a WSL-ish thing to call their own
HANDS ON At WWDC this week, Apple introduced container machines, which are persistent virtual machines running Linux, bearing some resemblance to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Microsoft's operating system. Developers using macOS, as with those on Windows, face the problem that most applications are deployed to Linux, creating a mismatch between the development machine and the deployment target. The friction is less for macOS, which, like Linux, is Unix-like, but still exists.
GitHub pulls pin on npm's auto-run scripts
GitHub pulls pin on npm's auto-run scripts Shai-Hulud worm exploited exactly this. Better late than never, says everyone except the malware authors GitHub will change npm's defaults so the install command no longer runs scripts automatically, disabling a feature commonly exploited by malicious packages such as the notorious Shai-Hulud worm. Maintainer Leo Balter said: "Install-time lifecycle scripts are the single largest code-execution surface in the npm ecosystem.
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