The Insider News

Dr. Techniko's Children's Stories[^]:

Learning how to program is going to be the most useful new skill we can teach our kids today. Last Sunday, I taught six kids of ages 5 to 7 how to program. “In what programming language?” you may ask. Well... I didn’t use a programming language, at least none that you know of. In fact, I didn’t even use a computer. Instead, I devised a game called “How To Train Your Robot”.

Metamarkets[^]:

Given a sea of trends, how do you surface the most important ones? In the era of big data, filters are necessary to prevent drowning users in a torrent of information. Surfacing only the starkest deviations from the expected brings focus to the unexpected and interesting. But what does it mean for a trend to be “interesting”?

Technology Review[^]:

One of the hot topics in computer science is the study of unconventional forms of computation. Various groups have tried computing with exotic substances such as chemicals like hot ice and even with a single celled organism called a slime mould. Today, we look at one of the more curious variations on this theme--a computer that exploits the swarming behaviour of soldier crabs.

Low Dimensional Topology[^]:

Here are four relatively concrete ways that researchers attempt to understand large data sets, and some of the more common algorithms that are used. There are lots of variations on these, but this list is at least a good start.

Jeremy Alles[^]:

I’m sharing the aspects I discovered this afternoon while trying to port one of the project from Windows Phone to WinRT. Let’s be clear my goal was just to see what it’s look like to port the code, I wasn’t able of course to port the WP7 app to WinRT in an afternoon, but here are the basics.

MapBox[^]:

Great, we’ve got a cool map. So let’s render the world! Not so fast. It turns out the world is a really big place. Big can mean a lot of different things, even in the context of rendering the world. For the purposes of this talk, big is going to mean two things. One, taking a long time to render. And two, taking a lot of space to store. This is what it means to you, the developer.

Linux Journal[^]:

Physical computing has been defined in various ways, but the central idea seems to be the same: physical computing is concerned with developing software that interacts with the world beyond the host computer through a combination of hardware and software. Here's an introduction to creating software that interacts with the world through Arduino.

Gustavo Duarte[^]:

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a project that required an all-out programming effort. When people hear about the crazy hours they often say they’re sorry. They really shouldn’t be. I would never do this often, or for long periods, but the truth is that these programming blitzkriegs are some of my favorite periods in life.

The Register[^]:

Quantum effects have already crept into the cryptography world, in which entangled pairs of photons are used for key exchange. However, in the new experiment, the researchers have gone a step further: they’ve combined two kinds of quantum systems to crate a more general purpose network. Here's how it works.

Valletta Ventures[^]:

From OS X Mountain Lion onwards, users will be able to switch on code-signing. I have no gripe with that as it makes the Mac more secure for an average user. Because code-signing will be configurable and won’t render my unsigned apps unusable. What worries me is the trend and whether or not, a few versions down the road, we are to face a possibility that unsigned and eventually unsandboxed apps are not allowed to run by the operating system at all.

Craig Mod[^]:

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over? We’re losing the throwaway paperback. The airport paperback. The beachside paperback. We’re losing the dregs of the publishing world: disposable books.

Slate Magazine[^]:

I came of age with Word. It’s the program I used to write my college papers, overcoming old-fashioned page counts with its magical font-switching technology. In those days, Word was an obedient and resourceful servant. Today, it's become an overbearing boss, one who specializes in make-work.

Synthtopia[^]:

The Kinectar Performance Platform is a toolkit that allows you to use your Microsoft Kinect sensor as a fully-fledged MIDI controller. Chris Vik explains a new work, Carpe Zythum, in which he uses a Microsoft Kinect to conduct a MIDI performance. Watch the video to see how it works.

InfoWorld[^]:

I've noticed an unfair, ongoing trend: If Microsoft does something a little off, it gets bashed into the ground for it. But if Google, Facebook, or Apple (all three of which can be categorized, like Microsoft, as The Man in their own rights) missteps, it generally gets mild reprimands and even support from the media and those drinking the Kool-Aid.