The Insider News

The Verge[^]:

Google has announced a new suite of tools for activists and non-profits at their Ideas conference in New York today, including tools for evading web censorship and oppressive regimes. The biggest focus has been on DDoS attacks, a kind of brute-force action that can easily take down a small site without leaving any clues as to the culprits. DDoS has been a persistent problem for small-scale activists on the web, but Google's new Project Shield would aim to fix that, offering free DDoS mitigation services to sites serving "media, elections, and human rights related content."

Infoworld[^]:

With its vast portfolio of software and billions of dollars in data center infrastructure investment, Microsoft stands poised to rule the cloud

Jeff Atwood[^]:

My main complaint with the Surface Pro is the incredibly lackluster battery life. Granted, this is a classic Intel x86 box we're talking about, not some efficient ARM system-on-a-chip designed to run on a tiny battery. Still, I was hopeful that the first Surface Pro with Haswell inside would produce giant gains in battery life as Intel promised.

Infoworld[^]:

It's easy to forget the value of any given technology once its buzz has arced across our collective consciousness and died a fiery death beyond the hype horizon. Take Cobol, that "Mad Men"-era relic -- just like fish past its prime, as the hipster tech pundits say: worthless, smelly, out of date, bad for you. Java may be the next enterprise mainstay to find itself on the ropes of "relevance."

Infoworld[^]:

I asked -- and the people responded! Fun fact No. 1: Apparently only 28 percent of Java developers write Java full time.

InfoQ[^]:

With the current state of Java, there are several different SDKs for Java: Java SE 7, CDC 1.1 (based on SE 1.4.2), CLDC (based on SE 1.3) and Java ME, just to name a few. In the past, these implementations served their specific vertical markets very well, but each implementation has diverged and become more and more siloed over the years. With Java 8, there will be a compact profile that replaces CDC.

Internet Evolution[^]:

Surface is designed to function as both a tablet and notebook. It has its own purpose-built keyboard-cover that gets rave reviews even from Apple and Google fanboys. And the operating system and applications are designed to run in dual mode -- either as tablet software or laptop software, depending on the configuration.

The Verge[^]:

There is seemingly no end to the number of things you can do in Minecraft — and the latest thing is experimenting with quantum physics. A new mod called qCraft, built by none other than Google's Quantum A.I. Lab Team, adds blocks that exhibit quantum entanglement, superposition, and observer-dependency properties. Some of the new blocks can be "activated" simply by looking at them, while others are prone to disappear at any moment.

Dr. Dobb's[^]:

Well-known D developer Andrei Alexandrescu has committed the first 5112 lines of D language code to Facebook's repository — meaning that as of now, the social network giant can be said to be using D in live production. The language was developed by Dr. Dobb's blogger, Walter Bright, who previously was the main developer of the first native C++ compiler, Zortech C++.

Tom's Hardware[^]:

Microsoft reports on its Support website that Windows 8.1 falls under the Windows 8 lifecycle policy, which ends on January 10, 2023. However, the company also states that Windows 8 customers will have two years to move to Windows 8.1 starting this Friday, AKA the General Availability of the Windows 8.1 update, to remain supported under the Windows 8 lifecycle.

ZDNet[^]:

If you're a Windows power user, you probably have a collection of favorite tweaks to make the OS run faster and work better. If one of those tips involves moving the default user profiles folder, you're setting yourself up for heartache, as several Windows 8.1 upgraders have found out the hard way.

Neowin[^]:

One year ago, Microsoft launched the first public preview version of TypeScript, which was created to enable applications to scale using JavaScript. In June, Microsoft released version 0.9 of TypeScript with a number of new features. This week, the company revealed a roadmap that will include two more major releases before the 1.0 version is made available.

Neowin[^]:

Microsoft has pulled the Windows RT 8.1 update from the Windows store investigating a situation affecting 'a limited number of users' updating their Windows RT devices, which is a big move for Microsoft. The exact issue has not been revealed but for Microsoft to pull the update means that the issue must be quite serious.