The Insider News

bryce.vc[^]:

I see the value of writing clearly and concisely becoming an increasingly important skill for digital workers. Partly for the reasons outlined above, but also because we’re moving into a massive wave of distributed work and self selected customers. This means our voice, and the voice of our companies, are often going to be discovered and engaged with via the copy of our services, the content of our social media channels and the clarity of our emails.

Encosia[^]:

Though it does serve a useful purpose in some compiled languages, I think switch is a clunky eyesore in most code. Its structure is prone to taking root and only growing larger and more cumbersome over time. If you’re coming to JavaScript from a background in procedural languages like C#, Java, or PHP, it’s natural to reach for the same tools, like switch, that you’re accustomed to using in those languages. However, JavaScript’s flexible object literal syntax and first-class functions offer alternatives to switch that I believe are cleaner, more extensible, and more maintainable.

F# for fun and profit[^]:

So we have a lot of these "one input -> Success/Failure output" functions -- how do we connect them together? What we want to do is connect the Success output of one to the input of the next, but somehow bypass the second function in case of a Failure output.... There is a great analogy for doing this -- something you are probably already familiar with. Railways! Railways have switches ("points" in the UK) for directing trains onto a different track. We can think of these "Success/Failure" functions as railway switches.

ReadWrite[^]:

The debate about app design largely centers around screen size. What if designers worried about digit size instead? Luke Wroblewski, a respected designer... thinks it's time to reconsider mobile design principles. Instead of worrying about questions like whether to upsize smartphone apps for tablets, designers should start by asking how their users will physically interact with their devices when using an app. The technical term for this is input type—keyboard versus touchscreen, one-handed or two-handed interactions, and the like. This requires designers to think about how a device is held, which fingers are used, and how the app in question can optimize the experience for users' dexterity.

Hack a Day[^]:

Once every 17 years, a population of cicadas ranging from Connecticut to the Appalachian highlands of North Carolina emerges to annoy everyone within earshot. The last time east coasters saw this brood was in 1996, making 2013 yet another year of annoying insect pests. The only question is, when will we start to see this year’s cicada brood? Radiolab, the awesome podcast and public radio show, has put together an awesome project that asks listeners to track when the cicadas in their area will emerge.

AnandTech[^]:

Microprocessor architectures these days are largely limited, and thus defined, by power consumption.... Both AMD and Intel... have two independent microprocessor architectures that they leverage to build chips for the computing continuum. From Intel we have Atom for low power, and Core for high performance. In 2010 AMD gave us Bobcat for its low power roadmap, and Bulldozer for high performance.... Today AMD officially launches Kabini and Temash, APUs based on the first major architectural update to Bobcat: the Jaguar core.

kotaku.com[^]:

Microsoft Excel isn't only for spreadsheets. It can also be used to create art. Don't believe me? Just ask 73 year-old Tatsuo Horiuchi. He'll tell ya. But why Excel? "Other specialized graphic software is expensive, and Excel came pre-installed in PCs," Horiuchi told Japanese website PC Online, adding that he found the program easy to use and more capable than actual paint.

The Next Web[^]:

Microsoft has clarified that the next iteration of Kinect, the motion tracking peripheral unveiled alongside the Xbox One earlier this week, will be coming to Windows next year. We had previously known that the device would eventually be supported by Windows, but didn’t know when. Unfortunately, Microsoft is keeping quiet in regards to how developers will actually be able to take advantage of the new Kinect; the firm simply stated that it will share more details at its BUILD conference next month.

Electronic Frontier Foundation[^]:

In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing "Talk" platform with a new one called "Hangouts" that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users.

CodeProject[^]:

The challenge is actually 5 Challenges, each two weeks long, that when combined will result in an a web application hosted on Azure that uses Azure data services, virtual machines and provides a great mobile experience. Everything a modern cloud based application needs. As to what the application does - that's up to you. Be creative. Weave a story. Write something interesting, all the while writing about it in an article.

CodeProject[^]:

I love to write tools that simplify my life. Almost all the projects I have worked on and then published are tools that I originally wrote for myself before seeing a possible value for others.

Scientific American[^]:

There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, but in 2001 the Norwegian government established a million-dollar Abel Prize, which is widely considered as an equivalent of the Nobel for mathematicians. This year’s prize was awarded to Pierre Deligne, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Today, he is honored at a ceremony held in Oslo. Deligne’s most spectacular results are on the interface of two areas of mathematics: number theory and geometry.

Psychosomatic, Lobotomy, Saw[^]:

A few months back I was satisfying my OCD by reading up on java object memory layout. Now Java, as we all know and love, is all about taking care of such pesky details as memory layout for you. You just leave it to the JVM son, and don't lose sleep over it. Sometimes though... sometimes you do care. And when you do, here's how to find out.

EdSurge News[^]:

As people write, they learn to organize, refine, and reflect on their ideas. Clearly, there are powerful reasons for everyone to learn to write. I see coding (computer programming) as an extension of writing. The ability to code allows you to “write” new types of things – interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations. And, as with traditional writing, there are powerful reasons for everyone to learn to code.

ReadWrite[^]:

For years, the software industry has been trending away from so-called 'copyleft' licenses like the GNU General Public License (GPL) and toward permissive, Apache-style licensing. Given the rising importance of developers, this isn't surprising: developers just want to get work done without being bogged down by license requirements. It's perhaps not surprising, therefore, that permissive Apache licensing may simply be a way station on the road to no licensing at all. That's what GitHub seems to be telling us, anyway.