REPL Support for Swift Packages
The swift run command now includes a --repl option. This lets you start the Swift REPL and import library targets from a package.
Development
Blog
The Fox by Frederick Forsyth
In Frederick Forsyth’s thrilling modern espionage novel, The Fox, a British teen with Asperger’s, Luke Jennings, turns out to be a cyber-genius who can hack into the world’s most secure systems, like the Pentagon, NSA, and CIA.
Books
Monthly update #0341 • September 2018
Monthly update 341 • September 2018 • 2018-09-01 - 2018-09-30
Monthly Updates
Johnny English Strikes Again
Johnny English Strikes Again (2018), directed by David Kerr, follows Johnny English as he comes out of retirement to stop a cyber attack that has exposed every active spy in Britain. Rowan Atkinson plays Johnny, now a geography teacher who longs for the old days.
Movies
Privacy Roundup #0146 • September 2018
September 2018 brought a run of mass data breaches, fresh surveillance rulings and a wave of new privacy laws on both sides of the Atlantic.
Privacy
Eurobloat #0100 • August 2018
The month Brussels counted soybeans, refereed the clocks of an entire continent and let two ships full of people rot in port while twenty-eight capitals argued about whose problem they were.
Eurobloat
How Mirror Works
Swift provides runtime type inspection through the Mirror API. This allows developers to examine arbitrary values and traverse object graphs without prior knowledge of types at compile time.
Development
Swift 5.0 Release Process
Swift 5.0 aims to achieve ABI stability to enable a stable runtime for operating systems, with module stability as a key focus that may land in this release or a later 5.x update.
Development
Swift 4.2 Released!
Swift 4.2 is a major update that enhances compile times, debugging, the standard library, and moves closer to binary compatibility, while maintaining source compatibility with Swift 4 and 4.1 but marking the last release to support Swift 3 compatibility.
Development
What is nesessionmanager?
If you see nesessionmanager running on your Mac, here is what this VPN and network extension process does.
Mac
Remembering Opi
Opi, the father of my father, died today. He was born in March 1936 and lived to the age of 82 years. He worked as a pastor for many years.
Remembering
CMDeviceMotion
The Core Motion framework in Swift simplifies access to iOS and watchOS device sensors, enabling innovative user interactions beyond touch by leveraging a dedicated motion coprocessor for efficient accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data processing.
Development
CMMotionActivity
The Core Motion framework’s CMMotionActivityManager on iOS and watchOS uses a device’s motion coprocessor to process sensor data from accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, determining user activities like walking, running, cycling, automotive travel, or being stationary with varying confidence levels.
Development
Privacy Roundup #0145 • August 2018
August 2018 was dominated by Google's covert location tracking, fresh corporate breaches, and a sharpening fight over state surveillance.
Privacy
Monthly update #0340 • August 2018
Monthly update 340 • August 2018 • 2018-08-01 - 2018-08-31
Monthly Updates
Eurobloat #0099 • July 2018
The month Brussels fined Google more than four billion euros, told farmers their plants were now criminals, and asked 4.6 million people whether to change the clocks before promptly doing nothing about it.
Eurobloat
NSDataDetector
NSDataDetector finds dates, links, phone numbers, addresses, and transit details in natural language text. It is a subclass of NSRegularExpression.
Development
NSDataAsset
Asset catalogs in Xcode let you store not just images but also data files like JSON. This helps apps load faster on first launch by avoiding network calls.
Development
Experience Rot
Steve Jobs once said, “You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”
Development
NLLanguageRecognizer
Apple’s Natural Language framework (iOS 12+) finally lets developers use the same powerful language-detection technology that powers Siri and system features.
Development
Useful macOS defaults: Menu Extras
Handy defaults write commands for com.apple.menuextras, controlling legacy menu bar items.
Mac
Monthly update #0339 • July 2018
Monthly update 339 • July 2018 • 2018-07-01 - 2018-07-31
Monthly Updates
Norway Road Trip Day 12
Day 12 of the road trip my brother and I made in Norway.
Trips
Norway Road Trip Day 11
Day 11 of the road trip my brother and I made in Norway.
Trips
Privacy Roundup #0144 • July 2018
July 2018 brought a record antitrust fine, the first British penalty over Cambridge Analytica and a run of breaches and leaks that showed how loosely personal data was still being held.
Privacy