The Insider News

True Ventures[^]:

Almost exactly six years ago, Apple launched the first iPhone. It was a small device that many dismissed as a toy. In reality Steve put a supercomputer in our pocket — we just didn’t know it. And like super computers before, it came with immense capabilities and brought about an opportunity to rethink, reimagine and reinvent how we live, work, create and consume.... Cheap processors, cheaper memory, and even cheaper sensors means it’s a great time for people who like to tinker with hardware to tinker.

Ars Technica[^]:

Tampering with a car’s brakes and speed by hacking its computers: A new how-to
Among the attacks: suddenly engaging the brakes of the Prius, yanking its steering wheel, or causing it to accelerate. On the Escape, they can disable the brakes when the SUV is driving slowly. With an $80,000 grant from the DARPA Cyber Fast Track program, they have documented the cars' inner workings and included all the code needed to make the attacks work in the hopes of coming up with new ways to make vehicles that are more resistant to hacking.

TUAW[^]:

Google's developer preview SDK for Google Cast -- the streaming technology that's powering the Chromecast hardware -- is up and running. It looks like adding Google Cast support will be ridiculously easy with little coding overhead for anyone who wants to jump on the bandwagon.

Justin Abrahms[^]:

Big-O notation used to be a really scary concept for me. I thought this is how "real" programmers talked about their code. It was all the more scary because the academic descriptions (such as Wikipedia) made very little sense to me. This is frustrating because the underlying concepts aren't actually that hard. Simply put, Big-O notation is how programmers talk about algorithms. Algorithms are another scary topic...

Aha![^]:

The Alpha Engineer rules Silicon Valley and all great technology ecosystems. He holds the highest rank in technical communities worldwide and is rewarded with the greatest access to resources — which only leads to greater domination. Tough to find, he is a genius in thought, workhorse in productivity, and is worth 100 or more mediocre or lower skilled engineers.

Vik's Blog[^]:

Music has always fascinated me. It can make us feel emotions in a way few media can. Sadly, I have always been unable to play an instrument well. Generating music by computer lets me leverage one of my strengths, computer programming (which, contrary to popular belief, can be extremely creative), in order to make music.... I opted to pursue a strategy that “evolves” music out of other pieces of music. I chose this strategy in order to emphasize the process.

Locklin on science[^]:

One of the problems with modern computer technology: programmers don’t learn from the great masters. There is such a thing as a Beethoven or Mozart of software design. Modern programmers seem more familiar with Lady Gaga. It’s not just a matter of taste and an appreciation for genius. It’s a matter of forgetting important things.

Brendan's blog[^]:

When analyzing response time, or latency, you need much more information than an average provides. The average, commonly the arithmetic mean, shows the index of central tendency. But, as I found in earlier posts, the tendency is often not central, but may be skewed by outliers, or split by multiple modes. How often these factors occur was determined quantitatively, using tests and a survey of hundreds of production servers and different types of latency: over 95% had six-sigma outliers, and at least 20% had multiple modes.

The Australian Financial Review[^]:

Computers manufactured by the world’s biggest personal computer maker, Lenovo, have been banned from the “secret” and ‘‘top secret” ­networks of the intelligence and defence services of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, because of concerns they are vulnerable to being hacked.... The ban was introduced in the mid-2000s after intensive laboratory testing of its equipment allegedly documented “back-door” hardware and “firmware” vulnerabilities in Lenovo chips. A Department of Defence spokesman confirmed Lenovo ­products have never been accredited for Australia’s secret or top secret ­networks.

Ars Technica[^]:

I've spent about two days with the Leap Motion Controller, a Kinect-like PC accessory that uses infrared sensors to translate the motions of your hands into input for applications. The device I received is one I pre-ordered more than a year ago; I've been anxiously awaiting its arrival ever since I saw the first video of the device in action.... With visions of Minority Report dancing in my head, I connected the Leap Motion and installed its applications.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency[^]:

Helen’s bibliography contains 27 web sites, two-thirds of which Microsoft Word annoyingly converts into hyperlinks. If selecting “remove hyper link” requires two clicks of the mouse, how many clicks will Helen expend in this awful, time-consuming task?

ZDNet[^]:

NT's not ancient history, in spite of its age. The NT "core" is what's inside Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows Phone 8, Windows Azure and the Xbox One. In 1993, Microsoft launched Windows NT 3.1. It was followed up by NT 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0. Microsoft's Windows releases still rely on NT-inspired numbering conventions. Windows 7's build numbers commenced with 6.1; Windows 8's with 6.2; and Windows 8.1 with 6.3.

Pete Keen[^]:

Frequently I come across confusion with domain names. Why doesn't my website work? Why is this stupid thing broken, everything I try fails, I just want it to work!! Invariably the question asker either doesn't know what DNS is or doesn't understand how something fundamental works. More generally, people think that DNS is scary or complicated. This article is an attempt at quelling that fear. DNS is easy once you understand a few basic concepts.

Code and Things[^]:

Software requirements change, it's just a fact of life. A project is either changing, or going stale. In order to deal with this these changes, many people have come up with systems that can help developers to deal with change. We are constantly trying to write a system that will not only satisfy the current requirements, but also give us a leg up on the next batch of changes.... Unfortunately, this is the wrong approach to take when writing software, and new use cases will stretch our code to the point of breaking.

The Visual Studio Blog[^]:

We made a number of exciting changes to MSBuild for Visual Studio 2013, including rethinking the fundamental relationship between MSBuild, Visual Studio, and the .NET Framework. MSBuild has shipped as a component of the .NET framework since it was first introduced in 2005 with .NET 2.0, despite the fact that it is, first and foremost, a development tool leveraged primarily by Visual Studio developers. Starting with Visual Studio 2013, the 2013 version of MSBuild will ship as a part of Visual Studio instead of the .NET Framework. This transition allows us to more rapidly evolve MSBuild.