The Insider News

I. M. Wright’s “Hard Code”[^]:

After decades as a professional software engineer, working for six different firms (large and small), I can honestly say that Microsoft is by far the best. I can also honestly say that Microsoft is far from perfect. My monthly rants typically focus on problems that individual engineers or managers can change by being better individual engineers and managers, by using different approaches or tools, or by altering the way they think about issues. However, Microsoft also has system-wide issues. I know how to solve them, but Microsoft executives and engineers may not like my solutions.

8th Light[^]:

Browser cookies are a good way to provide a stateless protocol with some memory. Unfortunately, they're also good for hijacking application sessions and impersonating users. There are a number of attacks that utilize improper use of session cookies. Session hijacking is among the most common and potentially destructive cookie attacks.

GitHub[^]:

The earliest versions of the very first c compiler known to exist in the wild written by the late legend himself dmr. These are not capable of being compiled today with modern c compilers like gcc. I am only posting these here for the enjoyment and reminiscing of the spark that ignited a soon to be trillion dollar industry. Enjoy.

The Codex[^]:

Considering MySQL? Use something else. Already on MySQL? Migrate. For every successful project built on MySQL, you could uncover a history of time wasted mitigating MySQL's inadequacies, masked by a hard-won, but meaningless, sense of accomplishment over the effort spent making MySQL behave. Thesis: databases fill roles ranging from pure storage to complex and interesting data processing; MySQL is differently bad at both tasks. Real apps all fall somewhere between these poles, and suffer variably from both sets of MySQL flaws.

AnandTech[^]:

The move makes sense when looking at the market's state. 7200RPM mobile hard drives have always been a premium product and are mostly found in high-end laptops or built-to-order configurations. Due to the decline in SSD prices over the last few years, the market for faster hard drives has quickly faded away because users seeking for performance have opted for SSDs instead of 7200RPM hard drives. While 7200RPM 2.5" hard drives are still significantly cheaper per GB than SSDs, even a small (32-128GB) SSD will provide better overall performance when used as an OS and applications drive...

Redmondmag.com[^]:

Windows 8 hasn't exactly lit the world on fire so far since its release in late October. It's so different from the traditional Windows. Lots of PC fans are struggling with, or fearful of, the transition. In part, that's because Windows 8 is two OSes in one.... But even if you've avoided this new split personality, most new PCs come with Windows 8. And if Microsoft is correct about the world moving to touchscreen PCs, sooner or later you'll find a Windows 8 machine under your fingertips. In that case, you'll want to learn your way around as quickly as possible.... To motivate you, here are 20 tips and tricks for Windows 8 -- some useful, some quirky and some just great features nobody talks about.

TrenchBroom[^]:

TrenchBroom is a cross-platform level editor for the Quake engine. It has a different slightly philosophy than other editors. I believe that the traditional approach, where you work primarily in 2D views, forces you to think in 2D rather than in 3D. That is why this editor does not have 2D views at all - you do all work in one single 3D view.

Securelist[^]:

On Feb 12th 2013, FireEye announced the discovery of an Adobe Reader 0-day exploit which is used to drop a previously unknown, advanced piece of malware. We called this new malware “ItaDuke” because it reminded us of Duqu and because of the ancient Italian comments in the shellcode copied from Dante Aligheri’s “Divine Comedy”.... Together with our partner CrySyS Lab, we’ve performed a detailed analysis of these unusual incidents which suggest a new, previously unknown threat actor. For the CrySyS Lab analysis, please read [here]. For our analysis, please read below.

destructuring.net:

Name.com has created a system where any wildcarded third-level domain name that fails a real DNS query is treated like a real domain… a real domain that I don't control, but instead they do, and are trying to monetize.

Feross Aboukhadijeh[^]

The HTML5 Web Storage standard was developed to allow sites to store larger amounts of data (like 5-10 MB) than was previously allowed by cookies (like 4KB). localStorage is awesome because it’s supported in all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, IE 8+, etc.).

The standard anticipated that sites might abuse this feature and advised that browsers limit the total amount of storage space that each origin could use.

Quote: pcmag[^]

The most easily repairable tablet iFixit has reviewed is the Dell XPS 10 running Windows RT, a 10.1-incher that PCMag's Joel Santo Domingo rated as having perhaps the longest-lasting battery of any tablet currently out there. The iFixit team gave the XPS 10 a score of "9" on its repairability scale, one better than four "8's" the site has reviewed—the Amazon Kindle Fire (7-inch), Dell Streak, Motorola Xoom, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0.