At its annual MongoDB World conference, MongoDB today announced a series of updates to its eponymous database, including the addition of querying encrypted data without having to decrypt it first, columnstore indexing and a new SQL interface. But maybe most importantly, the company is using the event to talk about what it describes as its "developer data platform."

As MongoDB's recently appointed CTO Mark Porter told me, he believes that today's announcements are the culmination of the last four or five years of work for MongoDB. While the company started out as a pure database service that was bringing a new type of architecture to the market, in recent years it built out the capabilities around this core service by adding features like integrated search, acquiring mobile application development platform Realm, launching the Atlas data lake service and more.

"We've hit so much traction with those things that we're pulling them all together into a developer data platform," Porter said. "We're leaving them composable, we're leaving them standards-based -- JSON, Parquet, all the things you would think -- and yet, what we're doing is we're taking those components and we're pulling them all together into the toolkit, which all the feedback is telling us is that developers want to write modern applications."

He stressed that while this is the first time the company is talking about this as a cohesive platform, these are not necessarily new features and products. In his view, in order to call something a platform -- a word that's often being used too loosely these days -- is something you can build on top of and where the different pieces work together naturally but also offer interoperability. In addition, he noted that a modern platform also has to be managed and secure.

Talking about interoperability, MongoDB is launching a new integration with Jamstack startup Vercel this week, for example, which will allow developers to more easily use MongoDB as the database to build websites and applications on top of Vercel's platform. And while people have obviously built similar integrations in the past, Porter called this an "intimate" and "elegant integration, where both companies worked on their products to enable a better developer experience.

Another new feature worth highlighting is the company's new Atlas SQL Interface. MongoDB, of course, offers its own query language, MQL. But for better or worse, data analysts are mostly familiar with SQL and Mongo is going after more of this market. Now, to be clear, this is only a read-only interface, so the set of use cases is limited. Porter also stressed that the company isn't planning to move away from MQL.

For those analytics workloads, MongoDB is now also adding columnstore indexing, which will be available later this year. With this, users can create and maintain purpose-built indexes and query those significantly faster than before ("hundreds of times faster," Porter said). The company is also bringing time series collections to the database to help developers build applications that monitor physical systems or track financial data, for example.

The highlight of today's release is the preview of queryable encryption, though. This allows users to encrypt their data on the client side and store it as randomized encrypted data in the database, while still being able to run expressive queries over it. MongoDB argues that this marks the first time a database offers this capability, which goes beyond most existing encryption solutions that only encrypt data in transit and at rest, but not when it's in use. In part, that's because in-use encryption is complex and adds quite a bit of overhead. In addition, MongoDB argues, it also put the burden on developers to understand cryptography and even then, the querying capabilities are limited. Porter stressed that this is not homomorphic encryption, the standard technology for building similar features.

Since its creation in 2017, Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA) has spent most of its existence trading for less than a dollar. In September 2021, the introduction of smart contracts caused the price to hit an all-time high just shy of $3. From that all-time high, however, Cardano has continued to put in lower lows week after week and currently trades for only about $0.50.

Bitcoin price is at a risk of major breakdown, Ethereum’s ether could decline below $1,000, and DOGE is struggling to stay above the $0.050 support.

The M-RCV, shown off by Elbit Systems at the Eurosatory defense expo in Paris this week, is based on the BLR-2 unmanned ground vehicle made by Israeli firm BL.

Apple unveiled its next-generation chip -- M2 -- at its annual World Wide Developers Conference keynote on June 7th. The 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro doesn't strike with a brand new look, but rather the classic sleek, rounded MacBook Pro in either Silver or Space Gray with a Retina display, Magic Keyboard, and a Touch Bar.

Elon Musk experimented with using short-form video app TikTok and described it during his first all-hands meeting with Twitter workers.

The internet could get cheaper for those who need it.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA), announced that the Cardano blockchain will be releasing a series of upgrades that will go live by the end of June. Known as the Vasil hard fork, the updates are meant to increase network capacity, thereby increasing transaction speeds and lowering fees. It will also create new smart contract capabilities and other general upgrades to support further development of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

STORY: This Internet Explorer gravestone has gone viral in South KoreaLocation: Gyeongju, South KoreaSoftware engineer Jung Ki-young spent a month and $300 designing and ordering the headstone after Microsoft decided to retire the web browser(Jung Ki-young, Software engineer) "Since I heard the news about a month ago, I prepared for it as I thought it would be great to make people laugh with this. The stonemason also asked me: ‘Is this for real? Why doesn’t it have a human's name? Is this something weird?’ I really enjoyed the whole process."Internet Explorer was launched in 1995 and became the world's leading browser for more than a decade But it started losing out to Google's Chrome in the late 2000s with some developers suggesting it was sluggish compared with its rivals(Jung Ki-young, Software engineer) "It was giving me a hard time as it takes one-and-a-half times as much effort to use it compared with other programs, but Internet Explorer also has historical meaning and a great role. For me, it's a love-hate relationship."

Score 40% off a popular mosquito zapper and a plush beach towel four-pack for under $40.

Tech junkies rejoice! Best Buy is hosting a limited-time flash sale on Apple laptops, tablets, earbuds and more.

The fab deals keep on coming, with great discounts on brands like Amazon, Ninja, Olay and more!

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference may have wrapped its first in-person event since the pandemic, but the features coming down the pipeline are still the talk of the town.

Litecoin has been referred to as the silver to Bitcoin's gold, but what is Litecoin, and how does it compare to its more famous counterpart?

Here's a list of the best midrange smartphones you can buy, as chosen by Engadget editors.

"There's no WeChat equivalent outside of China," Musk said at his first meeting with Twitter employees. "There's a real opportunity to create that."

More than 5,000 rave reviewers have already converted their priceless negatives and slides into digital memories.

When Microsoft effectively discontinued support for Internet Explorer earlier this week, one person decided to mark the occasion with a bit of humor.

TikTok said on Friday it is moving U.S. users’ data to Oracle servers stored in the United States. Overshadowing its migration announcement was a damning report that followed, claiming that TikTok staff in China had access to its U.S. users’ data as recently as this January. The report from BuzzFeed News, which cites recordings from 80 TikTok internal meetings it obtained, claims that U.S. employees of TikTok repeatedly consulted with their colleagues in China to understand how U.S. user data flowed because they did not have the “permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own.”

"She wanted data, she wanted money, and she wanted to brag," Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Friedman said.

Amazon is slashing the price of Apple's AirPods Max headphones ahead of Prime Day, making them the lowest price they've ever been on the site to date.