The Insider News

The Setup[^]:

I’m Eric S. Raymond, aka “ESR”. I wrote some of the foundational papers on open-source development and maintain over 40 open-source projects and FAQs. You rely on my software every time you use a browser, a smartphone, or a gaming console.

Electronic Frontier Foundation[^]:

Who’s playing fast and loose with your data? The Big Brother Awards, billed as the “Oscars for data leeches” by the hackers and privacy advocates who hand out the prizes, shine a high-intensity spotlight on companies and individuals with poor privacy track records.

TorrentFreak[^]:

On May 13th, 2002 a new filesharing client called eMule entered into our world of sharing. Ten years later we’d like to take this anniversary as an opportunity to look back at some major technical achievements of filesharing applications since then and what might come in the years ahead. With further innovation, even the mighty BitTorrent can be improved to become impossible to shut down.

Ars Technica[^]:

Last year, The New York Times criticized usage-based broadband pricing, noting that “Moving an extra gigabyte of data at off-peak times costs virtually nothing.” More recently, a report by the advocacy group Public Knowledge suggested that broadband data caps, a form of usage-based pricing, are an inefficient way to manage congestion.

Daring Fireball[^]:

iOS is by no means feature-complete. But it’s getting harder to identify the low-hanging fruit — the things you just know Apple has to be working on, not just the stuff you hope they are.

Linux Hive[^]:

Linux has a reputation for robustness, but we're going to try and prove that there are still plenty of ways to damage a perfectly working system.

The Verge[^]:

Microsoft is currently testing a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 on its Xbox 360 console, according to our sources. The Xbox 360 currently includes Bing voice search, but it's limited to media results. Microsoft's new Internet Explorer browser for Xbox will expand on this functionality to open up a full browser for the console. We are told that the browser will let Xbox users surf all parts of the web straight from their living rooms.

Read/Write Web[^]:

Who needs browsers when we have apps galore on our smartphones and tablets? Well, fast forward 18 months and things have changed. Browsers are starting to trend up again and some online businesses are turning away from apps.

Lifehacker[^]:

Seeing as we live in a world filled with billions of people, chances are a few of them are going to be assholes—whether it's a temporary issue or a permanent birth defect. Those people might treat us poorly, take advantage of us, or just hurt us for no good reason. When this happens, it's our job to call them out on their BS. Here's how to do that productively without stooping to their level.

GigaOM[^]:

Almost since Tim Berners-Lee first came up with the original concept of the web, there’s been a new, improved version on the horizon: the much-promised Semantic Web. This, goes the thinking, is a way to make the online world more useful by categorizing everything on a page with a layer of extra information — data that can tell your browser that one particular series of numbers is a date, say, while another is a price. This, in turn, allows your computer to understand more about the information it processes, theoretically making it easier to identify events on the date you’re looking for, or items at the price you’ve chosen.

CNet[^]:

Redmond may be ready to launch its latest upgrade program, via which those purchasing Windows 7 PCs this summer will get a coupon to move to Windows 8 once it is available.

Infoworld[^]:

Cisco Systems has surveyed more than 1,300 IT professionals to determine the top priorities and challenges they face when migrating applications and information to the cloud. Guess what? It's harder, and it takes longer than many thought.

Bing[^]:

Over the coming weeks, we will be introducing a brand new way to search designed to help you take action and interact with friends and experts without compromising the core search experience.

PhysOrg[^]:

Microsoft’s Visual Basic programming language lets Excel users customize their spreadsheets in all kinds of time-saving ways, but few people take advantage of it. Although designed to be intuitive and easy to use, Visual Basic can still be daunting to users with no previous programming experience.

MSDN Blogs[^]:

Windows 8 is coming in the near future. You can download, use it, and develop apps for it today. As of May 2012, the Windows Store is not open for everyone to deploy. However, we are looking for the first wave of great applications which highlight the power of Metro and Windows 8, especially from developers who want to get to market first and build their brand.