The Insider News

Hello, Savants![^]:

First of all we put our computers away. The tools to become a programmer are paper, pens, tape, candy, ping-pong balls, wooden boxes, cups and other common objects. We start from 0, so we have to tell some stories about numbers, and how influenced by your knowledge of numbers. Erase all you know, start learning to count and move on, through short stories, anecdotes, parallels, trial and error.

The Atlantic[^]:

"One small step for a man," would not be the iconic line it is today if it hadn't been captured on video, for millions of Earthlings to watch as the first human set foot on the moon. Shooting live video on moon was "crucial for credibility of the mission," but posed a serious logistical challenge. Westinghouse engineer Stan Lebar, who was the program manager of the Apollo TV Lunar Camera project, was tasked with developing energy-efficient cameras that would withstand temperatures of plus or minus 250 degrees.

DesignSpark[^]:

The GA144 from GreenArrays is a highly novel 144 core processor that combines high performance with low power consumption. This post covers initial experiences with breadboarding the GA144 and using the Forth IDE to drive its I/O.

Ars Technica[^]:

Enyo was originally the official development framework of webOS, the platform that HP obtained in its 2010 acquisition of Palm and later destroyed during Leo Apotheker’s rein of imbecility. Meg Whitman, who replaced Apotheker as CEO, decided to salvage the remaining value of webOS by opening the source code and building a community around the software.

Math ∩ Programming[^]:

It’s often said that the Age of Information began on August 17, 1964 with the publication of Cooley and Tukey’s paper, “An Algorithm for the Machine Calculation of Complex Fourier Series.” They published a landmark algorithm which has since been called the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm, and has spawned countless variations. Indeed, their work was revolutionary because so much of our current daily lives depends on efficient signal processing.

Computerworld[^]:

Harvard University scientists are working on an Iron Man-like smart suit that could improve soldiers' endurance in war zones.
The university received a $2.6 million research grant for the project from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The suit, which is expected to include sensors and its own energy source, will be designed to delay the onset of fatigue, enabling soldiers to travel further in the field, while also supporting the body and protecting it from injuries when the soldier is carrying heavy loads.

IT News[^]:

An international effort by spam fighters has taken down the infamous Grum botnet, slashing in half the worldwide amount of spam email.

Grum's last servers were taken offline in Russia on Wednesday, effectively killing the botnet that has no fallback mechanism, said Atif Mushtaq, a researcher at FireEye's security lab, which collaborated with the Russian Computer Security Incident Response Team and the Spamhouse Project in battling Grum.

New York Times[^]:

SEATTLE — An accounting charge related to Microsoft’s ill-fated acquisition of an online advertising business led to a loss for the software giant’s last quarter, its first in more than two decades as a public company.

Chris Patterson[^]:

Benchmarque (pronounced bench-mar-key) allows you to create comparative benchmarks using .NET. An example of a comparative benchmark would be evaluating two or more approaches to performing an operation, such as whether for(), foreach(), or LINQ is faster at enumerating an array of items. While this example often falls into the over-optimization category, there are many related algorithms that may warrant comparison when cycles matter.

ImperialViolet[^]:

HTTPS tends to cause people to give talks mocking certificate security and the ecosystem around it. Perhaps that's well deserved, but that's not what this talk is about. If you want to have fun at the expense of CAs, dig up one of Moxie's talks. This talk deals with the fact that your HTTPS site, and the sites that you use, probably don't even reach the level where you get to start worrying about certificates.

One Unicorn[^]:

As you have probably heard the Entity Framework source code is now available under an open source license. This means that the EF team are ready and excited to take your contributions. The process for getting and building the EF code and for making contributions are documented on the EF CodePlex site. This series does not cover that information again but instead gives some context to help you in working with the code. This is the same kind of information that you would get if you joined the EF team.

corkami[^]:

This graphic is a walkthrough of a simple windows executable, that shows its dissected structure and explains how it's loaded by the operating system.

Smalltalk.org[^]:

Smalltalk is a foundational programming language that is based on pervasive message passing, pervasive dynamic strong typing, pervasive reflection and pervasive object orientation. Alan Kay lead the team that invented the Smalltalk computer language and system. See what Alan had to say about learning, computer science and SmallTalk.

Slate Magazine[^]:

But for all its improvements, the first thing I noticed about the new Office was a big, terrible bug. It’s one of those bugs that masquerades as a feature, a bug so entrenched that lots of people—probably even you—believe it’s an integral part of how computers are supposed to work. This bug has been with us since the beginning of graphical computing... The bug is the Save button.

science in a can[^]:

It’s strange to think that the near-vacuum of space could have a smell, and stranger still that humans—atmospheric creatures—can actually experience it. Astronauts have consistently reported the same strange odour after lengthy space walks, bringing it back in on their suits, helmets, gloves and tools.

TIME[^]:

The Office news is relatively low-key by the standard Microsoft has set lately. This upgrade is nowhere near as radical as Windows 8, and it’s not a shocker like the company’s decision to enter the PC business with its own tablets. Everything about it is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Still, there’s a lot of aggressive evolution in the new Office.

Forbes[^]:

Quietly anticipating encroachment against basic Internet liberties, concerned cyber privacy advocates has been coding and releasing the tools that allow for private electronic communication and private web surfing. Proposed legislation like CISPA may or may not pass and become law, but if it does we have to understand the new landscape. Your privacy is up to you!

Jesse Liberty[^]:

There has been a great deal of confusion about the differences between and among WinRT, Windows 8, Metro, Metro Applications and etc. While there is no reason to be absolutist or pedantic about these differences, if we are going to communicate effectively we need to understand the fundamental differences. Thus, I offer the following simplifications to get us started...

ScottGu's Blog[^]

The Entity Framework source code is today being released under an open source license (Apache 2.0), and the code repository is now hosted on CodePlex (using Git) to further increase development transparency. This will enable everyone in the community to be able to engage and provide feedback on code checkins, bug fixes, new feature development and build and test the product on a daily basis using the most up to date version of the source code and tests. Community contributions will also be welcomed, so you can help shape and build Entity Framework into an even better product. You can find all the details on the Entity Framework CodePlex Site.