Linked List: April 3, 2013

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Alex Russell, who works on Chrome for Google:

Blink gives developers much more assurance that when they change something, it’s only affecting the things they think it’s affecting. Moving without fear is the secret of all good programming. Putting your team in a position to move with more surety and less fear is hugely enabling.

Yes, there are losses. Separating ourselves from a community of hugely talented people who have worked with us for years to build a web engine is not easy. The decision was wrenching. We’ll miss their insight, intelligence, and experience. In all honesty, we may have paid too high a price for too long because of this desire to stay close to WebKit. But whatever the “right” timing may have been, the good that will come from this outweighs the ill in my mind.

Basically, according to Russell, the WebKit project has grown unwieldy, and the Chrome team decided it was time to spring clean and cut dead weight.

Big news in web rendering from Google:

However, Chromium uses a different multi-process architecture than other WebKit-based browsers, and supporting multiple architectures over the years has led to increasing complexity for both the WebKit and Chromium projects. This has slowed down the collective pace of innovation - so today, we are introducing Blink, a new open source rendering engine based on WebKit.

How Far Is It to Mars? 

Fun website-as-infographic by David Paliwoda.

Mozilla and Samsung Collaborating on New Web Browser Rendering Engine 

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich:

Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way. This means addressing the causes of security vulnerabilities while designing a platform that can fully utilize the performance of tomorrow’s massively parallel hardware to enable new and richer experiences on the Web. To those ends, Servo is written in Rust, a new, safe systems language developed by Mozilla along with a growing community of enthusiasts.

We are now pleased to announce with Samsung that together we are bringing both the Rust programming language and Servo, the experimental web browser engine, to Android and ARM.

It would be a win for everyone if Servo did to WebKit what WebKit did to Gecko.

Twenty Covers From the U.S. Space Program 

They don’t make them like they used to. (Via Jim Coudal.)

Godspeed, Roger Ebert 

Roger Ebert, announcing a “leave of presence” to fight a recurrence of cancer:

Typically, I write over 200 reviews a year for the Sun-Times that are carried by Universal Press Syndicate in some 200 newspapers. Last year, I wrote the most of my career, including 306 movie reviews, a blog post or two a week, and assorted other articles. I must slow down now, which is why I’m taking what I like to call “a leave of presence.”

His prolificacy and eloquence are a constant inspiration for me.

The Patent Protection Racket 

Joel Spolsky:

What does this sound like? Yes, it’s a textbook case of a protection racket. It is organized crime, plain and simple. It is an abuse of the legal system, an abuse of the patent system, and a moral affront.

Exhibit A: Lodsys, patent troll extortionists extraordinaire, who today filed nine lawsuits against companies ranging in size from Disney to PCalc developer James Thomson’s TLA Systems. Their claim: a patent on in-app purchases.

‘Count Me in With the Second Group’ 

My review of the original iPad:

The funny thing is, the iPad, in raw CPU terms, is a far slower machine than a modern Mac. But the iPad is running a lightweight OS and lightweight apps. It’s like a slower runner with a lighter backpack who can win a race against a faster runner wearing a heavier backpack. Thus, many of the things you do are faster, or at least feel faster (which is what matters), on the iPad than the Mac.

2010 iPad Claim Chowder 

Speaking of history, the original iPad went into customer hands three years ago today. Nice time to review the initial reactions. Some real gems in here.

The Untold Story Behind Apple’s $13,000 Operating System 

Fun bit of Apple history uncovered by Daniel Terdiman for CNet.

SEC Approves Using Facebook, Twitter for Company Disclosures 

Bloomberg:

U.S. companies will now be able to post their earnings on Twitter or update their status on Facebook as long as investors have been told in advance where to look.

Stems from that Reed Hastings Netflix thing back in December.