The Insider News

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots[^]:

Vim’s just not designed for demonstrations, and for a beginners talk at a Stockholm Vim meetup I needed something that looked a little less magical. The solution was to write Vimulator, a JavaScript Vim simulator that’s designed to explain each key stroke as it happens and delay the effect on the text long enough for a casual observer to see what’s going on.... Next time you’re explaining Vim to a colleague, give Vimulator a try, or if you’ve been put off before by introductions that felt like a magic show we’ve got some posts and videos to help you learn vim.

Made of Bugs[^]:

Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike chemists and biologists who are trailed to obsessively document everything they do in their lab notebooks, computer scientists are taught to document the end results of their work, but aren’t, in general, taught to take notes as they go, and document the steps they take in building a system. 6.005, MIT’s new introductory software engineering class, attempted to require its students to keep lab notebooks for a few semesters, and was met with near-universal complaints and ridicule from the students...

Hack a Day[^]:

The folks at Arduino seem to be stepping up their game. With the new Arduino Leonardo board able to emulate USB keyboards and mice right out of the box, it seems the perfect time for Arduino designers to come up with a proper video game controller. This new board is called the Arduino Esplora and packs enough buttons and sensors inside to capture just about any user input you can imagine.

ZDNet[^]:

Microsoft and its carrier partners have started pushing an over-the-air update to Windows Phone 8 users, starting with those outside the U.S.... The update includes the promised fix for the random reboots reported by a number of Windows Phone 8 users. Microsoft officials said a couple of weeks ago that an over-the-air fix for this issue would be available in December.

GeekWire[^]:

Inside the company, one of Ballmer’s greatest strengths over the years has been his ability to rally the troops to pursue big goals and fend off competitive threats. He listens closely to the company’s customers and partners, and because of that he serves as an influential channel for feedback to the rest of the company. But people who believe in Sinofsky’s approach view Ballmer’s habits as a source of problems when they’re not a methodical part of the process. Entire teams can be sent in completely new directions based on new signals from the CEO that may conflict, unbeknownst to him, with more important goals.

Agile Blog[^]:

Since others with better knowledge of history than I are writing this year about many aspects of Turing’s life and influence, I’ll discuss something that doesn’t make the rounds often: Alan Turing and randomness. Turing knew a great deal about randomness and talked about what kinds of things can and can’t be computed. If you would like to know why true randomness isn’t “computable”, please read on.

Masswerk[^]:

From the folks who brought us GoogleBBS and Spacewar! in the browser, “Google60” is an art project to explore distances and heroism in user interfaces.

Extreme Tech[^]

In an amusing twist that undoubtedly spells the end of some hapless manager’s career, Microsoft has accidentally gifted pirates with a free, fully-functioning Windows 8 license key. If you so desire, it is now possible to activate Windows 8 Pro for free, using a legitimate key provided by Microsoft itself.

Pete Brown's 10rem.net[^]:

No one likes to waste time by going through the submission and certification process multiple times. Many apps also require additional credentials or specific information that users of the apps would normally have access to. This is one spot where we see rejections that could be very easily avoided.

Jerry Nixon @work[^]:

Jerry Nixon welcomes Eric Battalio, Ayman Shoukry and Raman Sharma from the Visual C++ team as they discuss how you can develop Windows 8 apps using C++. Tune in as they provide best practices and reasons why you would want to use this language.

Ars Technica[^]:

The Linux kernel, of course, already runs on smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers, and supercomputers. While Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux desktop, it has done nothing to stop the dominance of Windows and it only runs on mobile devices in limited ways. There is Ubuntu for Android, which aims to turn Android phones into Ubuntu desktops when connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. And Ubuntu can be installed on the Nexus 7 tablet in an experimental fashion.

Monday Note[^]:

Channels, shows, special events should all be presented as apps. Click, pay, and play, with standard fare for free. Catch the 6 pm news when you get home at 9:30; watch two programs side-by-side with Android 7 or iOS 9, all on your screen of choice: smartphone, tablet, PC, or TV. The technology isn’t an issue. There’s enough bandwidth on cable (or pretend-fiber) networks, plenty of storage on servers, and all the required computing power in current or future TV boxes, from Apple and its competitors. But there’s an obstacle in the tangled, encrusted business models that the Comcasts, CBSs, and Disneys cling to out of fear that Apple will wrest control of their content, that they’ll be disintermediated a la iTunes or the iPhone/iPad App Store.

Epeus' epigone[^]:

If you’ve read Nasim Taleb’s Antifragile, you know what comes next. By shielding people from the complexities of the web, by removing the fragility of links, we’re actually making things worse. We’re creating a fragility debt. Suddenly, something changes - money runs out, a pivot is declared, an aquihire happens, and the pent-up fragility is resolved in a Black Swan moment. The special place disappears entirely.

New Scientist[^]:

WHO runs the internet? For the past 30 years, pretty much no one. Some governments might call this a bug, but to the engineers who designed the protocols, standards, naming and numbering systems of the internet, it's a feature. The goal was to build a network that could withstand damage and would enable the sharing of information. In that, they clearly succeeded.... But perhaps not for much longer. This week, 2000 people have gathered for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to discuss, in part, whether they should be in charge.

The Windows Phone Blog[^]:

From the day Windows Phone 7 made its debut, we’ve gotten lots of kudos for its on-screen keyboard and intelligent suggestions and corrections. Engadget called it “one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards we've used on any platform.” Gizmodo declared: “The keyboard is boss.” Even the New York Times loved the “smart auto-suggestions.” In Windows Phone 8, we set out to make our critically-acclaimed keyboard even more intuitive, accurate, and personal. As one of the program managers for the feature, I wanted to tell you about improvements in the new release, and also explain some of the science behind our prediction technology, something we get a lot of questions about.

MIT Technology Review[^]:

By day, Matthew Zakutny works as a project manager at a trenchless sewer repair company. By night, he’s leading a group of volunteers working to revive a software project that once looked set to challenge the market leaders in the rapidly growing smartphone market. Zakutny and his fellow volunteers are hatching a plan to rescue webOS, the mobile operating software initially developed by smartphone pioneer Palm and later offered by HP, by making the software compatible with the latest smartphone hardware.