The Insider News

Macworld[^]:

Over the course of the intervening years... Mac OS X has evolved in a decidedly NeXT-skewed direction. Mac OS X technologies that began life at NeXT (such as Cocoa and Services) have thrived; technologies from the classic Mac OS (such as Carbon) have been deprecated and eliminated. AppleScript, however, is an exception to that evolutionary pattern—and, in many regards, an exceptionally surprisingly one.

ExtremeTech[^]:

Two researchers — Johannes Kopf from Microsoft, and Dani Lischinski from The Hebrew University — have successfully created an algorithm that depixelizes and upscales low-resolution 8-bit “pixel art” into lush vector graphics. The algorithm identifies pixel-level details to accurately shade the new image — but more importantly, the algorithm can create smooth, curved contour lines from only-connected-on-the-diagonal single pixels.

Ars Technica[^]:

Linus Torvalds has officially announced that version 3.7 of the Linux kernel has gone stable, and that means good news for developers who work with ARM-based CPUs: among its other changes, Linux 3.7 is the first Linux kernel to include generic support for multiple ARM CPU architectures, reducing the amount of effort required to get Linux-based operating systems running on phones, tablets, and ARM-licensed developer boards like the Raspberry Pi.

The Register[^]:

Yet still the users of Delphi turned out Windows code that was not so dusty, and demanded no runtime, and could fetch its backside off the disk and be begging for input before certain alternatives could so much as put up a 'Please wait' dialog....

HTML5Rocks Updates[^]:

A lot has happened with WebRTC over the last few weeks. Time for an update! In particular, we're really excited to see WebRTC arriving on multiple browsers and platforms.

The Real Adam[^]:

When modeling how our domain objects map to what is stored in a database, an object-relational mapper often comes into the picture. And then, the angst begins. Bad queries are generated, weird object models evolve, junk-drawer objects emerge, cohesion goes down and coupling goes up. It’s not that ORMs are a smell. They are genuinely useful things that make it easier for developers to go from an idea to a working, deployable prototype. But its easy to fall into the habit of treating them as a top-level concern in our applications.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots[^]:

Vim’s just not designed for demonstrations, and for a beginners talk at a Stockholm Vim meetup I needed something that looked a little less magical. The solution was to write Vimulator, a JavaScript Vim simulator that’s designed to explain each key stroke as it happens and delay the effect on the text long enough for a casual observer to see what’s going on.... Next time you’re explaining Vim to a colleague, give Vimulator a try, or if you’ve been put off before by introductions that felt like a magic show we’ve got some posts and videos to help you learn vim.

Made of Bugs[^]:

Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike chemists and biologists who are trailed to obsessively document everything they do in their lab notebooks, computer scientists are taught to document the end results of their work, but aren’t, in general, taught to take notes as they go, and document the steps they take in building a system. 6.005, MIT’s new introductory software engineering class, attempted to require its students to keep lab notebooks for a few semesters, and was met with near-universal complaints and ridicule from the students...

Hack a Day[^]:

The folks at Arduino seem to be stepping up their game. With the new Arduino Leonardo board able to emulate USB keyboards and mice right out of the box, it seems the perfect time for Arduino designers to come up with a proper video game controller. This new board is called the Arduino Esplora and packs enough buttons and sensors inside to capture just about any user input you can imagine.

ZDNet[^]:

Microsoft and its carrier partners have started pushing an over-the-air update to Windows Phone 8 users, starting with those outside the U.S.... The update includes the promised fix for the random reboots reported by a number of Windows Phone 8 users. Microsoft officials said a couple of weeks ago that an over-the-air fix for this issue would be available in December.

GeekWire[^]:

Inside the company, one of Ballmer’s greatest strengths over the years has been his ability to rally the troops to pursue big goals and fend off competitive threats. He listens closely to the company’s customers and partners, and because of that he serves as an influential channel for feedback to the rest of the company. But people who believe in Sinofsky’s approach view Ballmer’s habits as a source of problems when they’re not a methodical part of the process. Entire teams can be sent in completely new directions based on new signals from the CEO that may conflict, unbeknownst to him, with more important goals.

Agile Blog[^]:

Since others with better knowledge of history than I are writing this year about many aspects of Turing’s life and influence, I’ll discuss something that doesn’t make the rounds often: Alan Turing and randomness. Turing knew a great deal about randomness and talked about what kinds of things can and can’t be computed. If you would like to know why true randomness isn’t “computable”, please read on.

Masswerk[^]:

From the folks who brought us GoogleBBS and Spacewar! in the browser, “Google60” is an art project to explore distances and heroism in user interfaces.

Extreme Tech[^]

In an amusing twist that undoubtedly spells the end of some hapless manager’s career, Microsoft has accidentally gifted pirates with a free, fully-functioning Windows 8 license key. If you so desire, it is now possible to activate Windows 8 Pro for free, using a legitimate key provided by Microsoft itself.

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

No one likes to waste time by going through the submission and certification process multiple times. Many apps also require additional credentials or specific information that users of the apps would normally have access to. This is one spot where we see rejections that could be very easily avoided.

Jerry Nixon @work[^]:

Jerry Nixon welcomes Eric Battalio, Ayman Shoukry and Raman Sharma from the Visual C++ team as they discuss how you can develop Windows 8 apps using C++. Tune in as they provide best practices and reasons why you would want to use this language.

Ars Technica[^]:

The Linux kernel, of course, already runs on smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers, and supercomputers. While Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux desktop, it has done nothing to stop the dominance of Windows and it only runs on mobile devices in limited ways. There is Ubuntu for Android, which aims to turn Android phones into Ubuntu desktops when connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. And Ubuntu can be installed on the Nexus 7 tablet in an experimental fashion.