Visual Studio is Microsoft’s only flagship development system and this raised the question of why Expression Blend, the XAML user interface designer, was a standalone product. Not all Visual Studio programmers were even aware of what Expression Blend could do for them. For example, books on programming Silverlight or Windows 8 would often concentrate on using Visual Studio and mention Expression Blend as an afterthought.
Military turns to ESPN to help analyze drone footage
The amount of video streaming into this base, one of a number of sites that monitors and analyzes the images, is immense. Drone video transmissions rose to 327,384 hours last year, up from 4,806 in 2001.
Given the huge amount of feeds, the Air Force has launched an aggressive effort to seek out technology or techniques that will help them process video without adding more people to stare at monitors.
Learn Linux The Hard Way
This is a simple guide written in “Learn X the hard way” style, author of which is Zed A. Shaw. The purpose of it is to give you some experience in working with Unix-like system. There are many good UNIX-Like systems out there, for example FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris and even MAC OS X, just to name a few. When deciding which system to use in this guide I chose Linux mainly because it is most popular UNIX-like server operating system, which means what you have much bigger chance encountering it in the wild in comparsion to other UNIX derivatives. And Linux-related skills are relatively easy transferable to other UNIX-likes.
Automated Malware Analysis Under Attack
When it infects the system, UpClicker takes an innocuous first step, binding itself to the mouse. The malware then hibernates until a user clicks the left mouse button and then releases it. Unless security researchers emulate the button press, automated analysis systems will stop observing the malware before its actually does any malicious activity, and the code will not be flagged for further investigation.
Building Amazon cloud apps that span the world is now much easier
Despite being in “the cloud,” Amazon Web Services has always required developers to know what they’re doing. Customers still have to manage a lot of the infrastructure even though they’re not monitoring physical servers and storage. But that doesn’t mean everything has to be a hassle, so Amazon simplifying something as important as disaster recovery is a big step in the right direction.
via Building Amazon cloud apps that span the world is now much easier | Ars Technica.
Stanford Researchers Make Flexible Solar Cells that Stick to Just About Any Surface
Researchers led by Xiaolin Zheng, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, demonstrated a way to transfer the active materials of the solar cell from a rigid substrate onto another surface, such as a sheet of paper or plastic, the roof of a car, or the back of a smartphone. As with other solar cells, wires would then be connected to deliver power, but flexible solar cells could be used on curved surfaces, and, because they’re lightweight, they would be easier to install than conventional panels.
Ebook Readers: Device to Go the Way of Dinosaurs?
Shipments of ebook readers by year-end will fall to 14.9 million units, down a steep 36 percent from the 23.2 million units in 2011 that now appears to have been the peak of the ebook reader market. Another drastic 27 percent contraction will occur next year when ebook reader shipments decline to 10.9 million units. By 2016, the ebook reader space will amount to just 7.1 million units—equivalent to a loss of more than two-thirds of its peak volume in 2011.
Errata Security: Apple’s secret “wispr” request
The reason Apple does this is because you may be using an app other than the web browser. For example, the only thing you might be doing is syncing your e-mail. In such situations, you would never see the portal page, and your app will mysteriously fail to connect to the Internet.
Therefore, before your app has a chance to access the network, Apple does this for you. It sends out a request to the above URL. If the request gets redirected, then Apple knows there is a portal. It then launches a dialog box, containing Safari, to give you a chance to login.
via Errata Security: Apple’s secret “wispr” request.
At my local Starbucks, all web surfing is free. But, Windows presents a captive logon page where you must accept the Terms of Service, but the iPhone doesn’t. I assume the portal detects this URL, and automatically opens up the access-point without doing a redirection. I need to test witha Linux distro in order to figure out what’s going on.
Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT engineer, Limor “Ladyada” Fried. Her goal was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels. Since then Adafruit has grown to over 35 employees in the heart of NYC. We’ve expanded our offerings to include tools, equipment and electronics that Limor personally selects, tests and approves before going in to the Adafruit store. We pride ourselves on having great prices, the best customer service, technical support and fast shipping. We hope we can assist you on your journey of learning! Want to learn more? See what others are saying on the Adafruit press page!
via Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits.
From: Entrepreneur of 2012: Limor Fried
In October Fried moved her 35 employees from a 2,000-square-foot loft near Wall Street to a 12,000-square-foot industrial space in SoHo, then hired 15 more people. Just a week after the move, Fried was bubbling with excitement, obvious even over the din of 500 packages being prepped for the daily UPS shipment. “It’s a new chapter in the business,” she exclaims. “I think we can quadruple our current size.” No mean feat, considering Adafruit has shipped more than half a million kits in the last seven years, and revenue has doubled every year for the past three.
Here’s a comment from slashdot…
I’m near retirement and have worked in embedded software for four different companies. In all my years of experience, the best engineers I have encountered were those educated at MIT. Limor Fried is not only from MIT, but she did a stint at the MIT media laboratory. I’ve bought lots of products from her and the quality is first rate, her circuit boards are works of art with tin plating on the solder pads (compare that to a Velleman board) and legible annotation.
Introducing Qt 5.0 | Qt Blog
While we have cleaned up many things in our internal architecture and made Qt more modular, leaner and faster, we have managed to keep application compatibility in a way that most applications will work with very few changes and a simple recompile on Qt 5.
Of course, this also implies that Qt Widgets are fully supported and an essential part of Qt 5.