The Insider News

iFixit[^]:

Discover the Ouya: "a new kind of game console." This Android-powered system is the first of its kind. It's specifically designed to be open to professional and amateur game designers alike, with free software development tools included with every console. Full disclosure: The folks at Ouya tout this to be "the first totally open video game console." They have so much confidence in the Ouya, in fact, that they sent us a retail unit to take apart. Game on, folks.

Onion Inc.'s Tech Blog[^]:

After discovering that at least one account had been compromised, we sent a company-wide email to change email passwords immediately. The attacker used their access to a different, undiscovered compromised account to send a duplicate email which included a link to the phishing page disguised as a password-reset link. This dupe email was not sent to any member of the tech or IT teams, so it went undetected. This third and final phishing attack compromised at least 2 more accounts. One of these accounts was used to continue owning our Twitter account.

paidContent[^]:

Microsoft, which already has a stake in Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college bookstore businesses, is offering to buy them outright for $1 billion, according to a report in TechCrunch, based on leaked internal documents. The documents also reportedly say that Barnes & Noble plans to discontinue its line of Nook tablets by the end of fiscal year 2014, while letting the e-readers stick around for awhile longer.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day[^]:

On May 9, we invite you to participate in Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of the day is to get people talking, thinking and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) accessibility and users with different disabilities. The target audience of GAAD is the design, development, usability, and related communities who build, shape, fund and influence technology and its use. While people may be interested in the topic of making technology accessible and usable by persons with disabilities, the reality is that they often do not know how or where to start.

CodeProject[^]:

Welcome to our continuing series of Code Project interviews in which we talk to developers about their backgrounds, projects, interests and pet peeves. In this installment we talk to Dave Auld, a CodeProject star that continues to shine brighter.

Troy Hunt[^]:

A couple of days ago I wrote about Why I am the world’s greatest lover (and other worthless security claims) and it really seemed to resonate with people. In short, whacking a seal on your website that talks about security awesomeness in no way causes security awesomeness.... So let’s check out exactly what’s going on here and you really need video to understand the fatal flaw in the logic of SSL logos coming down over HTTPS.

Jon Gallant[^]:

I’ve struggled with the challenge of work/life balance because I’m interested in so many things. I’ve learned to go through life in seasons and focus on a few things at a time, but it hasn’t always been that way. I don’t have it all figured out, but I thought it was worth sharing my thoughts with the hope that it helps someone that is struggling with balance or someone interested in finding out more about what life is like at Microsoft.

Nettuts+[^]:

Today, ECMAScript 6 is in the process of being finalized. ECMAScript is the foundation of JavaScript and, hence, exploring the proposed features today also means that we get a sneak peak at how we will be writing JavaScript in the near future! In this article, we’ll explore ten new features, with a significant focus on tools, browsers and transpilers.

mezzoblue[^]:

Wow. It’s finally happened. The CSS Zen Garden is 10 years old today. The web has come a long way in the past decade. CSS3, HTML5, responsive web design, web fonts, a version of Internet Explorer that doesn’t make you want to commit seppuku every time you debug, and any other progress that we already take for granted. (You can get a sense of just how far we’ve come by reading the original cringe-worthy requirements.)

Devlicio.us[^]:

One of the really powerful features that TypeScript brings to the JavaScript world is some Static Typing, even if it is only at code/compile time. With TypeScript I can say that an object is of a certain type which implies there are only a limited set of properties/methods available to me. This is great, but it does limit the core power of JavaScript and dynamic languages in general.... Long story shot is that even though TypeScript tries to impose Static typing, which is AWESOME in most cases, you can still force it back to dynamic if you want.

Vladimir Vukićević[^]:

At the 2013 Game Developers’ Conference, Alon and I from Mozilla and Josh Adams from Epic Games presented a talk called “Fast and Awesome HTML5 Games”. We surprised people by showing off Unreal Engine 3 running in Firefox — compiled from C++ source with Emscripten, running smoothly and efficiently. Today, Epic is making the Epic Citadel demo available, so that you can try it out for yourself.

Ars Technica[^]:

Earlier this week, Adobe announced that it would be discontinuing the boxed versions of its Creative Suite software.... Microsoft is another company moving in that direction—with Office 2013, the company began offering subscriptions that allow consumers to install the software on multiple PCs while providing extra SkyDrive storage space. However, Microsoft continues to offer boxed, perpetual-license versions of the software as well.