The Insider News

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

There are two ways to wipe your PC. The first, "Refresh", is good if you simply need to clean things up, but want to keep your data, music, videos, and more. The second, "Remove everything" is useful when you want to start from scratch, such as when you sell the device, or hand it over to another member of the family. (My old laptops generally end up with the kids).

Jayway[^]:

One of the big problems with long-running development projects, especially big ones, are that knowledge around certain areas tend to pile up on certain people, creating "knowledge silos". Unfortunately, this process is also self-perpetuating, as people tend to draw to working with things they know, and avoid what they don't know. Starting a code review process won't even out this landscape completely, but it will give people enough of a boost to dare venture into the code by themselves, hopefully breaking any negative spiral that may have been created. It also helps bring new members of the team into the code base quickly.

Scott Hanselman[^]:

Why do I think Rx matters? It’s a way to do asynchronous operations on event streams. Rather than hooking up click events and managing state with event handlers all over, you effectively “query” an infinite stream of events with LINQ. You can declaratively sequence events…no flags, no state machine.

UsabilityPost[^]:

So here is yet another plea for designers to stop “fixing” WebKit font smoothing by disabling subpixel rendering. Feel free to use it on light text on dark backgrounds, feel free to use it to fix custom font rendering on Windows or to style specific bits of text on the page to make it look more slender, but for main portions of text where readability is paramount please leave the default setting alone and let the operating system handle the smoothing.

Ars Technica[^]:

Using graphics to collect metrics is an old hack, going back to the "sprites" used on many early personal Web pages to track page views. Web request based tracking is also heavily used by both legitimate large-scale e-mailers and spam factories to collect information such as when and where e-mails are opened, and to test the "hit rate" for various subject lines and offer teases. But ContactMonkey gets even more personal about it, because it identifies each recipient explicitly, and reports back directly on them. It's a technique akin to those used by some "spear-phishing" attacks to inject code into e-mails—no, it doesn't execute code on the client. But it does create a way to collect information that might be useful for stalking someone.

PCWorld[^]:

They say no one can hear you scream in space, but if you so much as whisper on the Web, you can be tracked by a dozen different organizations and recorded for posterity. Simply visiting a website can allow its operators to figure out your general physical location, identify details about your device information, and install advertising cookies that can track your movements around the web. (Don't believe me? Check this out.)

Hal's (Im)Perfect Vision[^]:

Last week I overheard two of the top Microsoft “watchers” discuss the Office group having bet against Windows 8, presumably because Office 2013 is not fully a (set of) Metro (aka, Windows Store) apps. Ok, as much as it pains me to defend Office I’m going to do so. I’m going to defend them because they are more right than wrong. Especially when you take a shareholder perspective. Not only will I defend what Office did for Windows 8, I’m going to defend some of their licensing decisions. Oh that should be fun.

The Verge[^]:

Microsoft's Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android is a reality. Although Office Mobile has been rumored and reportedly spotted in the wild, Microsoft has remained persistently quiet about its plans for the product. The Verge has learned through several sources close to Microsoft's plans that the company will release Office versions for Android and iOS in early 2013.

Gizmag[^]:

As our smartphones and computers continue to become obsolete and get discarded, the environmental problem of electronic waste gets worse. Needless to say, the greater the number of electronic components that can be reclaimed and reused, the better. That’s why scientists from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have developed a printed circuit board that falls apart when immersed in hot water.

Windows 8 Design Handbook[^]:

The recent launch of Windows 8 brings a lot of new opportunities for both designers and developers to build beautiful apps that are fun and easy to use. This site is a collection of explanations of the most important aspects of the new Windows 8 design language.

Ars Technica[^]:

Piercing a key defense found in cloud environments such as Amazon's EC2 service, scientists have devised a virtual machine that can extract private cryptographic keys stored on a separate virtual machine when it resides on the same piece of hardware.... The attack relied on "side-channel analysis," in which attackers crack a private key by studying the electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or other manifestations of the targeted cryptographic system.

outcoldman[^]:

IntelliCommand - an extension for Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 which helps to find the short keys. It shows the help windows with all possible combinations when you press Ctrl or Shift or Alt or their combinations (hold it for about 2 seconds to see this window). Also it shows the list of possible combination when you press first combination of chord shortcut keys, like Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C (this combination comments selected text in editor).

Chris Love's Official ASP.NET Blog[^]:

I think the Metro CSS files are a good mix of how to structure a Cascading Stylesheet as well as provide some insights as to what we can and should do to make our web applications easier to maintain and add a performance boost.

Coding Journal[^]:

Many programmers learn one platform, one language and stay in their monoculture. Learning many different programming languages can definitely change your programming style and the way you think about problems. It was certainly beneficial for me, here is why.

ZDNet[^]:

On the back-end, in the months after Microsoft's acquisition of Skype was finalized, the pair have been moving Skype to use the Windows Messenger infrastructure. Storage of pictures, video and other Skype content is now happening on Windows Azure. Once users migrate from Messenger to Skype, they will be able to use not just Skype's instant messaging, but also its video calling, Skype's landline calling capability, screen sharing, video calling on mobile phones and with Facebook friends and Group Calling.

Patrick Stein[^]:

Since Apple has announced the Fusion drive, people have wondered if it’s possible to use the fusion drive on older machines with a SSD and HDD. Fusion drive uses a core storage VolumeGroup. Well, let’s try create our own Fusion drive...

Computerworld[^]:

Microsoft has confirmed what many had suspected, that it didn't offer a 16GB Surface RT tablet because there would have been virtually no room for customer content on the device. According to a FAQ published Monday, a 32GB Surface has approximately 16GB of storage space available after accounting for the Windows RT operating device, numerous built-in "Windows Store" (formerly "Metro") apps, OS recovery tools, and the bundled Office RT.

Jesse Spaulding[^]:

The key to my success, I believe, was not in a sophisticated financial equation but rather in the overall algorithm design which tied together many simple components and used machine learning to optimize for maximum profitability. You won’t need to know any sophisticated terminology here because when I setup my program it was all based on intuition.

Bloomberg[^]:

While Apple is now committed to Intel in computers and is unlikely to switch in the next few years, some engineers say a shift to its own designs is inevitable as the features of mobile devices and PCs become more similar.... Any change would be a blow to Intel, the world’s largest processor maker, which has already been hurt by a stagnating market for computers running Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows software and its failure to gain a foothold in mobile gadgets. A move by Apple may lead others to follow suit.