The Insider News

Elegant Code[^]:

Nancy is my passion. I truly believe there is enough room in the .NET market for ASP.NET alternatives, but could I make a living out of it? People seem to enjoy working with it, so why not? To some people that would be enough to quit their job and set off to work full-time in their project. That’s not me though. I’ve always been a bit cautious to life-changing decisions and even more so since I got married and had kids.

TechHive[^]:

ICANN was planning to use a "Digital Archery" contest to determine which applications for a new Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) such as ".security", ".beer" or ".download" should be evaluated first. A system like this is needed because not all the 1923 gTLD applications can be handled at once. Using Digital Archery, applicants would have to shoot their digital arrow as close as they could to the bulls eye of a time stamp. This method was cancelled in June after applicants complained about unexpected results and network latency issues which they said made the method unfair. And since than ICANN has been contemplating an alternative method.

Technology Review[^]:

A new way for websites and other online services to store passwords could prevent breaches like the one that resulted in 6.5 million LinkedIn users having their passwords posted online earlier this year. That kind of data dump happens when an attacker gains access to the server storing user passwords. Researchers at computer security company RSA have created a system that splits passwords in two and stores each half in different locations. The two halves never come together, even when a person logs in and has his password verified.

GigaOm[^]:

The cost of a Raspberry Pi computer you can buy today is $25. It has a 700 MHz CPU with 256 MB RAM.

 In 2001, the Power Mac G4 Cube, with 450 MHz CPU with 64 MB RAM, cost $1,799. That is how much hardware prices have fallen. Meanwhile, a LEGO X-Wing costs $59.99. So for $25 anyone can work on a project that uses computers at its heart, and if something breaks, they can just go buy a new one. This makes small Linux computers like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards the hardware DIYers’ new LEGO bricks.

Fabulous Adventures In Coding[^]:

One of the most basic ways to think about a computer program is that it is a device which takes in integers as inputs and spits out integers as outputs. The C# compiler, for example, takes in source code strings, and those source code strings are essentially nothing more than enormous binary numbers. The output of the compiler is either diagnostic text, or strings of IL and metadata, which are also just enormous binary numbers. Because the compiler is not perfect, in some rare cases it terminates abnormally with an internal error message. But those fatal error messages are also just big binary numbers. So here's an interesting question: are there functions which cannot be computed, even in principle on a machine with arbitrarily much storage, by any C# program?

Web Reflection[^]:

Nobody seems to be happy, nobody seems to understand it ... everyone is trying to change it, pretending to make it better ... and again, nobody seems to realize it has been here since ever, it has been working in any field, it does everything, and it keeps getting faster!

Rivertrail[^]:

RiverTrail is a specification that enables parallel array processing. The core idea is to add a new class, ParallelArray. Parallel arrays have some key differences from JavaScript arrays: They are immutable. They never have holes. They can be multidimensional but always in a regular way (e.g., in a two-dimensional matrix, each row has the same number of columns).

Channel 9[^]:

Anders Hejlsberg and other key members of the TypeScript team were attending and speaking at the goto conference. Google's V8 and Dart chief architect Lars Bak also happened to be at the event (he's currently leading the Dart team full time). Anders and Lars join us to talk candidly about TypeScript, JavaScript and Dart. Huge thanks to Anders and Lars for this excellent conversation.

browserver[^]:

Hello! I've got some good news for you: your web browser has just been upgraded to a web server. It's responding to HTTP requests on the Internet as you read this. True story.

circuits.io[^]:

Circuits.io was founded in 2012 by Karel Bruneel and Benjamin Schrauwen. After struggling for years to design and teach to design electronics using existing EDA tool, they felt that electronics design needed an urgent jolt. Learning from how software is designed, they came up with the following magic recipe which is at the heart of circuits.io: (i) allow to easily build on pre-designed electronics modules, (ii) use intuitive tools that hide much of the complexity in software, and (iii) embrace the open hardware movement.

The Newer Hacker's Dictionary[^]:

This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate.

Techonomy[^]:

The next time you shop for a vehicle, flip through a furniture catalog, or look at clothing online, the images you see may not be photography, but rather a collection of pixels assembled by an artist on a computer screen.

Feross.org[^]:

When you click on the link, you don’t actually navigate to https://www.bankofamerica.com. Instead, your browser automatically enters fullscreen mode and I load a fake version of Bank of America’s website (my demo uses a screenshot, but attackers would use a working website). The fake Bank of America site is adorned with OS and browser UI that indicates you are actually on https://www.bankofamerica.com. Of course, these UI components are just screenshots too! However, they’re pretty convincing because they actually take into account the OS and browser you are using!

TaskuMuro[^]:

Since 2005, a very small group of people with limited resources at Nokia developed a Linux based Maemo operating system and devices based on it. The team was known as OSSO (Open Source Software Operations) and according to one team member who worked there from the beginning, the goal was to produce a product that would change the world.