The Insider News

The Netflix Tech Blog[^]:

We have found that the best defense against major unexpected failures is to fail often. By frequently causing failures, we force our services to be built in a way that is more resilient. We have written about our Simian Army in the past and we are now proud to announce that the source code for the founding member of the Simian Army, Chaos Monkey, is available to the community. Do you think your applications can handle a troop of mischievous monkeys loose in your infrastructure? Now you can find out.

devmag.org.za[^]:

Changing the colours of art can be a great way to increase the amount of content, and add variety and richness to your game. It is relatively easy to implement. What is not always as easy is to get a set of colours that look nice. This article gives some ideas for choosing colour palettes that look nice.

Code crumbs, by Clément Pit–Claudel[^]:

Obtaining long sequences of random numbers, as required by some cryptographic algorithms, is a delicate problem. There are basically two types of random number generators: true random number generators, and pseudo-random number generators. Let's take a look at both and see how well they work.

Codex 99[^]:

In perhaps the most famous design brief in electronics history Bill Hewlett challenged his engineers to shrink the 9100A into something he could fit in his pocket. Eventually Dave Cochran, the original HP-35 product manager, determined that it would be feasible using newly-developed integrated circuits and LEDs. A market research study, however, warned that the device would be too expensive and there was simply no market. That didn’t matter to Hewlett. He decided he wanted one and said “We’re going to go ahead anyway.”

Hack a Day[^]:

digitaltrails wanted the data on a few old IBM 80-column punch cards he had lying around, but didn’t have decades old computer hardware in his garage. He decided to build his own out of LEGO, an Arduino, a digital camera, and a bit of Python.

ongoing by Tim Bray[^]:

Standards-making is a boring, bureaucratic, unpleasant process, infested by difficult people and psychopathic institutions. Some “standards” turn out to be useful; most are ignored; some are actively harmful. And looking at which organization the standard came from turns out to not be very useful in predicting what’s going to happen.

hueniverse[^]:

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, that’s OAuth 2.0. Last month I reached the painful conclusion that I can no longer be associated with the OAuth 2.0 standard. I resigned my role as lead author and editor, withdraw my name from the specification, and left the working group. Removing my name from a document I have painstakingly labored over for three years and over two dozen drafts was not easy. Deciding to move on from an effort I have led for over five years was agonizing.

Wired.com[^]:

Who invented e-mail? That’s a bit like asking, “Who invented the internet?” Even those with intimate knowledge of its creation can’t agree on the moment it actually came to life. But amid all the bluster over the origins of e-mail, one man holds a claim that resonates well beyond the rest. Ray Tomlinson is the reason your e-mail address includes an ‘@’ symbol.

Iris Classon[^]:

Yesterday was a very special day for. Exactly one year had passed since I wrote my very first line of code, one year since I saw code for the first time in my life, one year since I completely and utterly fell in love with programming. It was love at first compile. I just knew me and this was meant to be!- And I have never looked back since.

Girl, Unallocated[^]:

Bacon is wonderful food, but the Windows registry contains a veritable treasure trove of configuration info and historical data.

The Endeavour[^]:

It’s worthwhile to learn some programming languages just to expand your thinking. Learn a language outside your comfort zone, even if you don’t foresee any practical use for it. Expanding your mind is practical enough.