Google says it may have found an effective cookie substitute based on successful tests of an API it's using as a replacement signal for third-party cookies. The Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) API tests indicate advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent on ads in comparison to advertising based on cookies. 

More: 

• The cookies replacement will be available for public testing in Q2 2021.
• Using machine learning algorithms, the FLoC API — which lives as a browser extension within Chrome — analyzes a user's data to create a group of thousands of people based on the sites that person visits. The data from the large group of thousands is then shared and used to target ads, not the individual user's data.
• However, Google says it is working on other ways to replace cookies, so FLoC may not be what the tech giant ends up going with. Nevertheless, the company says it's encouraged by the results. 
• Google's ultimate plan is to end support for all third-party cookies in Chrome and the Chromium browser engine by 2022 as a part of its Privacy Sandbox project. 
• Google first announced that Chrome will eventually phase out third-party cookies and will also stop updating its user-agent string last January, sparking controversy.

Alternative Python interpreter Pyston 2.1 beat the upstream performance of Python 3.8 and 3.9, a test conducted by the founder and principal author of Phoronix reveals.

More:

• The test author used a Ryzen 9 5900X system with Ubuntu 20.10, running some Python benchmarks using its Python 3.8.6 installation, Python 3.9.1 as the latest upstream and built from source in an optimized mode, and the Pyston 2.1 x86_64 Linux binary.  Check out more of the data here.
• Generally speaking, Pyston 2.1 outperformed Python 3.8 and 3.9 in the PyPerformance benchmarks analyzed. With the simply PyBench, Pyston 2.1 tested much faster than the upstream Python 3.8 and 3.9 performance. Pyston 2.1 tested at 464 milliseconds, while Python 3.8 and 3.8 tested at 727 and 722 respectively.
• Pyston 2.1 was released on Friday and features bug fixes and small improvements after Pyston 2.0 was shipped in October 2020.

📅   Dev Calendar: January 2021 Virtual Events and Hackathons:

JANUARY 25-31:

VIRTUAL EVENTS:

• Jan. 30-31: BelPy: Online Python conference open to all.
• Jan...

HACKATHONS:

• Jan. 29-31: Hoyahacks. Georgetown University hackathon for all students. 
• Jan. 30-31: HackViolet. Hackathon for students of all genders with a specific focus on "becoming change agents for the gender gap in technology."

TypeScript / JavaScript compiler swc v1.2.46 is now available. Highlights include: 

• Enums support, thereby completing support for namespaces
• Support for parsing and transcompiling TypeScript 4.2 files.
• Support for legacy decorators on methods with computed keys
• Various bug fixes relating to accessing private properties of classes, block scoping, and more.

For a full list of notable changes, click here.

⚒️ Trending Tutorials and Tools:

• This browser extension makes it possible to add "copy to clipboard" buttons on each code block and works with several sites, including GitHub, Stack Overflow, Medium, and more.
• Learn how to build your own notification service so you can receive notifications when a file on GitHub has changed.
• You can easily and quickly try out 100 programming fonts with this list. 
• This post argues DRY code isn't always the best, pointing out some of the disadvantages of the approach while offering alternatives to fill the gap, such as WET, which stands for “write everything twice" and more.

LAST WEEK'S TOOL RECAP: Below is last week's developer news and tools roundup, listing all the news and tool releases you need to know organized by language, browser, version control, and so much more.

BROWSERS:

• The stable version of Chrome 88 was released. Developer-related highlights include:
  • Support for the aspect-ratio property, which makes it easy to set the aspect ratio on any element.
  • The ability to upload extensions using manifest v3 to the Chrome Web Store.
  • The ability to use Play Billing in your Trusted Web Activity.
  • The File Transport Protocol (FTP) is disabled.
  • In addition to releasing Chrome 88, Google also published all of the videos from the Chrome Dev Summit.
  • For more details about new changes, click here.
• Google's Chrome team also revealed the new changes developers can expect to see in Chrome 89's DevTools, which is currently available to try out in the Chrome Canary channel. Highlights include:
  • Debugging support for Trusted Types violations.
  • The ability to capture node screenshots for a full node.
  • A new Trust Token tab for network requests.
  • The Styles pane now displays color pickers for custom CSS properties.
  • Lighthouse 7 in the Lighthouse panel.
  • For the full list of updates, click here.

IDEs:

• The Visual Studio team launched its first preview...

QUICK HITS:

• See how consumer electronics brand Nomad went headless with their existing Shopify store to increase their ecommerce conversion rate by 25%.*
• Despite having run an open-source business, one founder explains why he would never invest in an open-source company, noting the ratio of unsuccessful open-source businesses to winners is worse than in prop-tech.
• The Node.js team is asking users to take its 64-question 2021 user survey. 
• Developers with experience in C++ can apply to join the Node.js N-API working group's Mentorship Initiative as a mentee by Jan. 29.
• What are the costs of inefficiencies in your product release cycle? Read how top companies save over $1M each year.*

* This is sponsored content.