The Insider News

Gamasutra[^]:

My name is Thomas Steinke, if you are not aware of me; I am the owner of DigitalDNA games, arguably the most successful Xbox Indie Developer, and the creator of the all time best selling Xbox Indie Game CastleMiner Z. In this article I wanted to spend some time and give advice to people that have aspirations of being full time Indie game developers like me.

ZDNet[^]:

What if Microsoft relented and granted users who are lukewarm about Windows 8 two of their biggest requests: Allow those who want to boot straight to the desktop, and bring back the Start button with Windows Blue, a.k.a. Windows 8.1? Though supposedly not part of the original plan for Blue, these two UI options are looking more likely.

Binpress[^]:

To progress, an open-source project needs the same resource as every software development project – developer time. You need dev time to fix bugs, you need dev time to add features, you need dev time to write documentation. If the donation stream is not regular and dependable enough to allow project team members to either quit their jobs (if working full-time) or reduce contracted hours (if working freelance), then donations are not going to add more dev time to the project. If you can’t depend on funds from donations, they are relegated into the “nice-to-have” category. You can use it to pay off some external costs like hosting or running some ads (if it makes sense), but you can’t use it for anything important like salaries.

PCWorld[^]:

It’s easy to wax nostalgic about old technology--to remember fondly our first Apple IIe or marvel at the old mainframes that ran on punched cards. But no one in their right mind would use those outdated, underpowered dinosaurs to run a contemporary business, let alone a modern weapons system, right? Wrong! While much of the tech world views a two-year-old smartphone as hopelessly obsolete, large swaths of our transportation and military infrastructure, some modern businesses, and even a few computer programmers rely daily on technology that hasn’t been updated for decades.

SIAM Connect[^]:

For many of us, maple syrup is an essential part of breakfast—a staple accompaniment to pancakes and waffles—but rarely do we think about the complicated and little-understood physiological aspects of syrup production. Each spring, maple growers in temperate regions around the world collect sap from sugar maple trees, which is one of the first steps in producing this delicious condiment. However, the mechanisms behind sap exudation—processes that trigger pressure differences causing sap to flow— in maple trees are a topic of much debate. In a paper published today in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, authors Maurizio Ceseri and John Stockie shed light on this subject by proposing a mathematical model for the essential physiological processes that drive sap flow.

TechBlog.Netflix.com:

But since Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021, we need to find a replacement some time within the next 8 years. We'd like to share some progress we've made towards our goal of moving to HTML5 video.

TechCrunch.com:

Microsoft has announced general availability for Windows Azure Infrastructure Services with a promise to match any price drop from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
[...]
Hilf that they will also offer new high memory instances of up to 28 and 56 gigabytes to accommodate applications such as Microsoft Sharepoint that just need more memory.

Ode to Code[^]:

Assuming I already have an existing web site or web application deployed, running, and working great for desktop browsers, my decision tree for getting the site working on mobile devices looks something like the following.... Like everything else in software, the decisions are all about tradeoffs and where the software has to go in the future.