The Insider News

BetterExplained[^]:

Linear algebra gives you mini-spreadsheets for your math equations. We can take a table of data (a matrix) and create updated tables from the original. It’s the power of a spreadsheet written as an equation. Here’s the linear algebra introduction I wish I had, with a real-world stock market example.

TechHive[^]:

Microsoft's Surface tablets are more than just an experiment. They're the first sign of a radical pivot for Microsoft, away from software licensing and toward one big ecosystem of hardware and services. In an annual letter to shareholders, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hinted at major changes for the company, saying that there is a “fundamental shift underway in our business and the areas of technology that we believe will drive the greatest opportunity in the future.”

Technology Review[^]:

A back door installed in networking hardware could be very difficult to detect, says Schneider. "If you siphon off lots [of data], then someone who was looking would notice," he says. But "if it's a small scale, it would be pretty hard to tell." That's because part of the Internet is designed to be fault-tolerant and allow the occasional piece of data to go missing. "It would be hard to distinguish between drops and retries and something nefarious..."

Badass JavaScript[^]:

As developers begin to explore building audio applications in the browser, we are beginning to see more and more interesting demos. Pedalboard.js is no exception. It is a framework for building guitar pedalboard effects in the browser, including both UI widgets like pots and switches, as well as the audio effects themselves and the routing between them. The demo allows you to play with a number of prebuilt effects and apply them to various prerecorded samples, as well as live audio input from your microphone if you’re running Chrome Canary.

Channel 9[^]:

Creating a robot that could be beaten up for 4 hours and still work proved to be an interesting problem. After doing some research on different configurations and styles, it was decided we should leverage a prior project to get a jump start to meet the deadline. We repurposed sections of our Kinect drivable lounge chair, Jellybean! This was an advantage because it contained many known items, such as the motors, motor controllers, and chassis material. Additionally, it was strong and fast, it was modular, and the code to drive it was already written.

Nettuts+[^]:

Lately, we’ve been hearing and reading more and more about test-driven development. This domain, however, comes with a series of expressions and specific jargon that can be confusing to newcomers. This article will walk you through the most common definitions, test types and test parts. Use cases will be provided, and, where possible, some code in PHP will also be presented.

ACM Queue[^]:

Among the hottest buzzwords in the IT industry these days is "big data," but the "big" is something of a misnomer: big data is not just about volume, but also about velocity and variety.... If we draw a picture of the design space for big data along these three dimensions of volume, velocity, and variety, then we get the big-data cube.

m. libby's above average software site[^]:

One thing I run into when working with legacy code that I haven't really seen addressed anywhere else: how to assess the difficulty of working with a particular code base. Why is this important? Because we are going to be asked to estimate the amount of time it will take to fix a bug or add a feature to said code base.

Wired.com[^]:

Nick Holonyak was sure the LED would replace the incandescent light bulb when he presented it to GE executives 50 years ago. While the incandescent is still king in homes across the nation, the LED has transformed lighting in more ways than Holonyak could have imagined. From those first dim red diodes to powerful streetlights in major cities, the LED has made its mark on the world.

Retro Thing[^]:

You may not know his name, but you've encountered Hans Camenzind's designs countless times. He was also one of the first independent semiconductor designers, famed for hitting a home run with his first solo design–the 555 timer chip that has been incorporated into countless inexpensive electronic devices. Incredibly, over one billion 555 timer chips are sold each year. It's a simple little 10 cent device that makes it possible to build devices that flash, buzz or turn on and off at variable intervals. Incredibly, he created the chip alone, spending a year designing it by hand as a freelancer.