Monthly update #0279 • July 2013
Monthly update 279 • July 2013 • 2013-07-01 - 2013-07-31
Monthly update 279 • July 2013 • 2013-07-01 - 2013-07-31
The Snowden disclosures reached full flood in July 2013, as fresh leaks exposed XKeyscore and corporate complicity while courts, lawmakers and breached websites scrambled to respond.
The month Brussels discovered it was being spied on, decided the answer was more Brussels, and locked twenty-five sleepless ministers in a room to invent new ways to seize your savings.
World War Z (2013), directed by Marc Forster, shows a fast zombie plague. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former UN worker pulled back to help. He flies from city to city. Mireille Enos acts as his wife Karin, who waits at home.
NSPredicate is a Foundation class that defines logical conditions to fetch or filter data. Its syntax mixes SQL WHERE clauses with regex for expressive queries on collections.
NSExpression is a class in Cocoa that simplifies complex data tasks. It evaluates mathematical expressions, such as 4 + 5 - 2**3, which gives 1.
If you see startupdiskhelper on your Mac, here is what this boot disk helper process does.
Monthly update 278 • June 2013 • 2013-06-01 - 2013-06-30
Several hardened criminals are murdered, and a line of verse by the poet Vondel seems to be linked to the killings.
June 2013 was the month the Snowden documents broke, exposing NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance and triggering a wave of lawsuits, corporate denials and diplomatic fury.
Enumeration makes computation powerful by applying logic to collections.
The month Brussels decided that the gravest threat to European civilisation was the open jug of olive oil on your restaurant table, while quietly drawing up report cards for sovereign nations.
Dan Brown’s Inferno thrusts Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon into a race against time in Florence, waking with amnesia to stop a bioengineered plague linked to Dante’s Inferno.
Apple stopped letting apps use the unique device identifier, called UDID, from iOS 5 onwards. Apple blocked new apps using it after May 2013.
The Office is an American comedy series. It aired on NBC from 24 March 2005 to 16 May 2013. Greg Daniels adapted it from the British series by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Steve Carell plays Michael Scott, the bumbling but well-meaning regional manager of Dunder Mifflin, a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
If you see cloudd running on your Mac or using a lot of CPU, here is what this iCloud process does.
An old woman vanishes on the road between Purmerend and Amsterdam, an architect is shot at three times, and an old man has also disappeared. De Cock walks into a hornets nest.
May 2013 brought government surveillance of journalists, corporate snooping, and a wave of breaches that exposed how loosely personal data was held.
Monthly update 277 • May 2013 • 2013-05-01 - 2013-05-31
The month Brussels capped the City's bonuses over Britain's objection, watched its own carbon market collapse, and quietly drafted rules on how restaurants may pour olive oil.
If you see DataDetectorsSourceAccess running on your Mac, here is what this data detection process does.
Pentecost continues to shape my adult life. The events of that first Pentecost bring lasting peace.
Apple gives options like Core Data or NSKeyedArchiver with NSKeyedUnarchiver. These turn objects into data and back again.
Ascension Day continues to shape my adult life. The events of that first Ascension Day bring lasting peace.
Three lawyers are found dead in the Brouwersgracht canal within a short time of each other. De Cock takes the case.