Swift 5 Exclusivity Enforcement
Swift 5 turns on runtime checks for exclusive access to memory by default in release builds.
Development
Blog
Monthly update #0345 • January 2019
Monthly update 345 • January 2019 • 2019-01-01 - 2019-01-31
Monthly Updates
What are nand.aspcarry and nand_task_scheduler?
If you see nand.aspcarry or nand_task_scheduler running on your Mac, here is what these storage maintenance processes do.
Mac
Maps of Meaning 01: Context and Background
Jordan Peterson opens this lecture with personal stories from the 1980s. He describes his fear of nuclear war during the Cold War. He recounts a visit to a decommissioned missile silo.
Gems
The Bridge
The Bridge is a Swedish-Danish crime drama series. It aired on SVT1 and DR1 from 21 September 2011 to 18 December 2018. Hans Rosenfeldt created it. A body is found on the Øresund Bridge, exactly on the border between Sweden and Denmark, forcing detectives from both countries to work together.
TV Series
What is accessoryd?
If you see accessoryd running on your Mac, here is what this accessory management process does.
Mac
What are the diagnosticextensions helpers?
If you see diagnosticextensions.osx.spotlight.helper or diagnosticextensions.osx.timemachine.helper on your Mac, here is what they do.
Mac
Dictionary Services
The article explores dictionary-related APIs in Swift across Unix, macOS, and iOS, highlighting their role in features like spell check and semantic analysis.
Development
Monthly update #0344 • December 2018
Monthly update 344 • December 2018 • 2018-12-01 - 2018-12-31
Monthly Updates
Exposing Floating Point
Despite everyday use, floating point numbers are often understood in a hand-wavy manner and their behavior raises many eyebrows.
Gems
Reflecting on the year 2018
Reflection on the year 2018, checking progress of the goals, and some numbers.
Journal
The Little Drummer Girl
The Little Drummer Girl is a British-American limited series. It aired on BBC One and AMC from 28 October 2018. Park Chan-wook directed it. The show adapts John le Carré's 1983 novel. Florence Pugh plays Charlie, a young English actress recruited by Israeli intelligence to infiltrate a Palestinian bombing network in the late 1970s.
TV Series
Merry Christmas
Christmas calls me to remember the basics with fresh eyes. The birth of Jesus stands as evidence of divine love.
Christianity
Bundles and Packages
The article clarifies the distinction between bundles and packages on Apple platforms, often confused due to overlapping use cases.
Development
CharacterSet
The article introduces CharacterSet, a Foundation type in Swift for manipulating Unicode scalar values, distinct from Set<Character> despite its name, as it conforms to the SetAlgebra protocol rather than storing Character values directly.
Development
Monthly update #0343 • November 2018
Monthly update 343 • November 2018 • 2018-11-01 - 2018-11-30
Monthly Updates
SecKey
SecKey provides one time passwords to be used with the two factor authentication of Dropbox, Google, Facebook, GitHub, Proton Mail and many more.
Projects
Past Tense by Lee Child
Past Tense follows Reacher to his father’s New Hampshire hometown, uncovering family secrets, while two Canadians face a deadly trap in a rural motel.
Books
Locale
Internationalisation (i18n) means building your app so it can support many regions and languages. Localisation (l10n) means actually translating and adapting it for a specific market.
Development
The User Experience of Chatbots
I absolutely hate chatbots! So much that I added a rule to Quiet to hide/block chatbots from websites.
Development
Useful macOS defaults: System UI Server
Handy defaults write commands for com.apple.systemuiserver, controlling the menu bar and system UI elements.
Mac
What is ctkd?
If you see ctkd running on your Mac, here is what this smart card and security key process does.
Mac
Monthly update #0342 • October 2018
Monthly update 342 • October 2018 • 2018-10-01 - 2018-10-31
Monthly Updates
It is time to leave the Facebook universe!
I left Facebook on 1 January 2012. I never used Instagram and stopped using WhatsApp on 30 April 2017. I have not missed them for a second. People often ask why I abandoned these platforms.
Essays
FileManager
On Apple platforms, the FileManager class in the Foundation framework provides a robust abstraction for file system operations like creating, reading, moving, copying, and deleting files and directories, using paths or file URLs.
Development