The Insider News

Global Nerdy[^]:

Xcode 4.6 was released on January 28th, the same day that iOS 6.1 was released. It adds support for iOS 6.1 and Mac OS X 10.8, and two new devices, the iPad mini and the 4th-gen iPad with Retina display. There are also a number of improvements to the LLVM compiler and Objective-C language, including some new warnings to help find subtle bugs when using ARC and weak references.

DataStax[^]:

The big news for MySQL 5.6 was the inclusion of “NoSQL” features in the form of a memcached api for get and put operations. In cases like this, it’s tough to tell whether Oracle got this so wrong deliberately to sow confusion in the market, or because they really think that’s what NoSQL is about.

Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings[^]:

The Python community in my mind has the dangerous opinion that classes are unnecessary fluff that should be replaced with functions wherever possible. The fact that there is a talk of the title “Stop Writing Classes” with 50.000 views on YouTube is not helping. I want to give a counter argument to this idea that classes are evil by sharing some examples of why I think we can't have enough classes.

World Of Security[^]:

This is the second post in a series on cross site scripting(XSS). In this entry I examine cross site scripting and the way that it can creep into our programs and what different cross site scripting input strings look like. Once we develop a deep understanding of XSS, I’ll show you how to exploit XSS vulnerabilities in my next post before wrapping up with how to defeat input filters & remediation to cross site scripting vulnerabilities.

Jim O'Neil[^]:

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the fact your Windows 8 application will fail certification if it’s network-capable and you don’t have a privacy policy. I can’t fix the first two, but I can help with the last one. If you read the full text of the requirement, you’ll note that the policy needs to be accessible from the description of the app as it appears in the Windows Store (as well as from the Settings Charm when the application is running), and that means you’ll be hosting it on the web at a minimum. Enter Windows Azure Web Sites – create a free site and publish your policy in less than five minutes (yes, I timed it!).

Kotaku[^]:

I published an innocent little story yesterday about an N64 controller that provoked an unexpected response. You see, I hate the Nintendo 64 controller. All my friends hate it. Everyone I ever gamed on the console with hated it. I figured it was pretty safe to share that dislike. Others, on the internet, disagreed. Some said it was fine, others even said it was their favourite. Wow. A disconnect like that meant only one thing. Time for a Pecking Order, see where everyone's thoughts on the subject really lay.

NCZOnline[^]:

To summarize, the problem isn’t that there aren’t enough good minority speakers in technology. The problem is that there aren’t enough minorities in technology. Since you can only draw speakers from those who are in the industry then it follows that it would be harder to find minority speakers that it would white male speakers because of the available pool. That led me to realize, as a football fan, that the NFL is facing a similar issue right now.

Kevin Fox[^]:

Rather than speculate on whether Apple is making a watch, when they might unveil such a product, and how much it would sell for, I’m going to take a few minutes to talk about how such a device would fit into the ecosystem of products and why you’ll want one.

Data Nitro[^]:

Why do people keep using Excel to build giant, error-prone spreadsheets? Excel is a programming language. It lets users marshal their computers to crunch data. And it does this with a versatility that's unmatched by pre-designed programs: a spreadsheet can handle everything from planning the week's groceries to managing a billion dollars in assets. Excel is also the easiest programming language to learn.... This ease-of-use is a double-edged sword. It lets users build more and more complex models, making it natural for small projects to grow into gigantic, mission-critical spreadsheets.