The Insider News

Polygon[^]:

It is possible to play SimCity offline indefinitely, according to a video of a modded version of the game posted to YouTube. Modder UKAzzer uploaded the video which shows him disabling the game's disconnection timer. Previous tests confirmed that SimCity will kick a user from the game after roughly 20 minutes of offline play; however, while its impact on a number of features in the game means this offline mode is still not ideal, the video demonstrates some form of unlimited offline play is indeed possible.

TechHive[^]:

Everybody knows the value of pi is 3.14… er, something, but how many people know where the ratio came from? Actually, the ratio came from nature—it’s the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, and it was always there, just waiting to be discovered. But who discovered it? In honor of Pi Day, here’s a semi-brief history of how pi came to be known as 3.14(1592653589793238462643383279502884197169…and so on).

A Curious Mind[^]:

The symbols for the arithmetic operations of addition (plus; “+”) and subtraction (minus; “–”) are so common today we hardly ever think about the fact that they didn’t always exist. In fact, someone first had to invent these symbols (or at least other ones that later evolved into the current form), and some time surely had to pass before the symbols were universally adopted. When I started looking into the history of these signs, I discovered to my surprise that they did not have their origin in antiquity.

CodeProject[^]:

Welcome to our continuing series of CodeProject interviews.

Rahul's space[^]:

LINQ to Entity is a great ORM for querying and managing database. It offers a lot of things, so it is mandatory to know about performance of it. These are right up to a certain point as LINQ comes with its own penalties. There are some tips and tricks that we should keep in mind while designing and query database using entity framework ORM. Here is a list of some tips that I would like to share with you.

Christopher Bennage[^]:

Something disgusting, like six years ago, I listed on 43Things that I wanted to write a video game. I’ve actually made numerous arrested attempts ever since I started programming with my TI-94a back in 1983. My last attempt has been much less arrested (though still incomplete). I’ve learned a lot in my most recent endeavor, so it’s time to share. You can follow the actual work in progress, but my plan it to recreate the steps I’ve gone though over the course of a few posts.

Nettuts+[^]:

Web apps can be split into two major components: a front-end that displays and collects information, and a back-end for storing the information. In this article, I’ll demonstrate what a relational database is, and how to properly design your database to store your app’s information. A database stores data in an organized way so that it can be searched and retrieved later. It should contain one or more tables. A table is much like a spreadsheet, in that it’s made up of rows and columns. All rows have the same columns, and each column contains the data itself. If it helps, think of your tables in the same way that you would a table in Excel.

Micro Focus Blog[^]:

Developing COBOL applications has, until now, been largely constrained to the desktop environment. One of the latest projects from the Eclipse Foundation is an online code editor named Orion. The Orion project aims to provide an environment for web based development tools. This means producing a platform that can be extended by developers, like us, to enable users to edit their code on the web.... We set out to change the limitations of developing COBOL applications on the desktop environment.

Intel Developer Zone[^]:

There’s a lot of talk these days about what makes a good “culture”, whether you’re an engineer, a software developer, or a chef. It’s all about finding a work environment that not only is conducive to getting stuff done, but also makes it a pleasure to get up in the morning and get there. In this article, we’re going to take a look at a few prominent developer voices that have discussed the idea of what makes a good developer culture. Is it the perks? Is it being extra “geeky”? Is it looking for collaboration where collaboration doesn’t normally happen? Or is it a combination of all these factors plus something more?

The Verge[^]:

The topic of DeRose's lecture is "Math in the Movies." This topic is his job: translating principles of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra into software that renders objects or powers physics engines. This process is much the same at Pixar as it is at other computer animation or video game studios, he explains; part of why he's here is to explain why aspiring animators and game designers need a solid base in mathematics. As Pixar's Senior Scientist, DeRose has more than a solid base: PhD in computer science, specialty in computational physics, a decade as a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.

AllThingsD[^]:

Apple tightly controls its software and hardware, and is fiercely competitive in battling its rivals, especially in the mobile market. And yet, while the company never creates apps for anyone else’s mobile system or device, each of its major mobile-platform foes — Google, Amazon and Microsoft — make many of their apps available for Apple devices. That makes those devices the sort of Switzerlands of the mobile world.

iFixit[^]:

Welcome to the future of watch evolution. The Pebble E-Paper Watch is the "first watch built for the 21st century." It can track your bikerides, display your text messages, and even tell the time! We had no choice but to bust the Pebble open and see what made it tick.

NYTimes.com[^]:

In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one. While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy.

The Next Web[^]:

Configuration Profiles (mobileconfigs) are small files installed with a single tap on iOS devices. They’re essentially instruction lists which can alter many settings, including network configurations and they’re used by thousands of companies around the world including app developers, corporations with IT departments and more. Their use is officially approved by Apple and there is nothing innately malicious about any given profile. But, if put to the right uses, they do open up the ability to read usernames and passwords right off of a screen, transmit data that would normally be secure (over HTTPS) to a malicious server where it can be read and a lot more.

Jon Gallant[^]:

My hard drive crashed today. As you can see in "My Backup Strategy" post, I am a rigorous backer-upper, but I got schooled today. My strategy includes "File History" from my C drive to my L drive and then backup the L drive to CrashPlan. When I setup my backup strategy I was under the impression that I'd be able to go to File History and restore all files to the latest version. Unfortunately that isn't the case.

A List Apart[^]:

Improving performance is a constant process. First we ditched tables, spacer gifs, and inline markup such as the element in favor of CSS, reducing page sizes, and separating style from layout. Then we became aware of all our DNS requests, caching, and the total number of files and started using CSS sprites, moving many small images out of the HTML and into a single background image. Now it’s time we embrace the third epoch in performance optimization: symbol fonts.