The Insider News

mathbabe[^]:

There’s really exciting news in the world of number theory, my old field. I heard about it last month but it just hit the mainstream press. Namely, mathematician Yitang Zhang just proved is that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by at most 70,000,000. His proof is available here and, unlike Mochizuki’s claim of a proof of the ABC Conjecture, this has already been understood and confirmed by the mathematical community.

llbit[^]:

It might seem like a strange idea to want to write a small crashing C program, but in one of the courses that I’ve been teaching labs this is one of the tasks! It’s actually a very educational thing to do.

smartbear.com[^]:

In George R.R. Martin’s masterful series, A Song of Ice and Fire (currently an HBO television show, Game of Thrones), many characters in the fantasy world of Westeros create goals, make plans, maneuver people and events toward the goal they want, and eventually realize their goal. It’s kind of like project management, but with more entrails.

GigaOm[^]:

Wikidata, a centralized structured data repository for facts and Wikimedia’s first big new project in the last 7 years, is now feeding the foundation’s main project, Wikipedia.... But the really interesting thing with Wikidata is that it’s not just for Wikipedia – although it’s worth remembering that its API is still under development, the database can be used by anyone as it is published under a Creative Commons 0 public domain dedication.

Shacknews.com[^]:

Independent developers cannot self-publish their own games on Xbox Live Arcade. Instead, they must get a publishing deal--either with Microsoft Game Studios or with a third-party partner. Games published on Xbox Live Indie Games are exempt from that policy, but that marketplace isn't necessary seen as viable. Limitations imposed by Microsoft have prevented a number of games from ever appearing on Xbox 360. And apparently, Xbox One won't change how Microsoft approaches indie games.

Ars Technica[^]:

Google is upgrading the digital certificates used to secure its Gmail, Calendar, and Web search services. Beginning on August 1, the company will start upgrading the RSA keys used to encrypt Web traffic and authenticate to 2048-bits, twice as many as are used now. The rollout affects the transport layer security (TLS) certificates that underpin HTTPS connections to Google properties. Sometimes involving the secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol, the technologies prevent attackers from reading the contents of traffic passing between end users and Google. They also provide a cryptographic assurance that servers claiming to be Google.com are in fact operated by Google.

JavaWorld[^]:

Left unchecked, certain developer personality types can sink your project -- or, worse, make themselves no fun to work with. In my long and storied career, I've personally encountered all 14 of these personality types. In fact, I have been several of these people to some degree or another; I've also knowingly hired them. You know who you are.

bryce.vc[^]:

I see the value of writing clearly and concisely becoming an increasingly important skill for digital workers. Partly for the reasons outlined above, but also because we’re moving into a massive wave of distributed work and self selected customers. This means our voice, and the voice of our companies, are often going to be discovered and engaged with via the copy of our services, the content of our social media channels and the clarity of our emails.

Encosia[^]:

Though it does serve a useful purpose in some compiled languages, I think switch is a clunky eyesore in most code. Its structure is prone to taking root and only growing larger and more cumbersome over time. If you’re coming to JavaScript from a background in procedural languages like C#, Java, or PHP, it’s natural to reach for the same tools, like switch, that you’re accustomed to using in those languages. However, JavaScript’s flexible object literal syntax and first-class functions offer alternatives to switch that I believe are cleaner, more extensible, and more maintainable.

F# for fun and profit[^]:

So we have a lot of these "one input -> Success/Failure output" functions -- how do we connect them together? What we want to do is connect the Success output of one to the input of the next, but somehow bypass the second function in case of a Failure output.... There is a great analogy for doing this -- something you are probably already familiar with. Railways! Railways have switches ("points" in the UK) for directing trains onto a different track. We can think of these "Success/Failure" functions as railway switches.

ReadWrite[^]:

The debate about app design largely centers around screen size. What if designers worried about digit size instead? Luke Wroblewski, a respected designer... thinks it's time to reconsider mobile design principles. Instead of worrying about questions like whether to upsize smartphone apps for tablets, designers should start by asking how their users will physically interact with their devices when using an app. The technical term for this is input type—keyboard versus touchscreen, one-handed or two-handed interactions, and the like. This requires designers to think about how a device is held, which fingers are used, and how the app in question can optimize the experience for users' dexterity.

Hack a Day[^]:

Once every 17 years, a population of cicadas ranging from Connecticut to the Appalachian highlands of North Carolina emerges to annoy everyone within earshot. The last time east coasters saw this brood was in 1996, making 2013 yet another year of annoying insect pests. The only question is, when will we start to see this year’s cicada brood? Radiolab, the awesome podcast and public radio show, has put together an awesome project that asks listeners to track when the cicadas in their area will emerge.

AnandTech[^]:

Microprocessor architectures these days are largely limited, and thus defined, by power consumption.... Both AMD and Intel... have two independent microprocessor architectures that they leverage to build chips for the computing continuum. From Intel we have Atom for low power, and Core for high performance. In 2010 AMD gave us Bobcat for its low power roadmap, and Bulldozer for high performance.... Today AMD officially launches Kabini and Temash, APUs based on the first major architectural update to Bobcat: the Jaguar core.

kotaku.com[^]:

Microsoft Excel isn't only for spreadsheets. It can also be used to create art. Don't believe me? Just ask 73 year-old Tatsuo Horiuchi. He'll tell ya. But why Excel? "Other specialized graphic software is expensive, and Excel came pre-installed in PCs," Horiuchi told Japanese website PC Online, adding that he found the program easy to use and more capable than actual paint.

The Next Web[^]:

Microsoft has clarified that the next iteration of Kinect, the motion tracking peripheral unveiled alongside the Xbox One earlier this week, will be coming to Windows next year. We had previously known that the device would eventually be supported by Windows, but didn’t know when. Unfortunately, Microsoft is keeping quiet in regards to how developers will actually be able to take advantage of the new Kinect; the firm simply stated that it will share more details at its BUILD conference next month.