2018

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125 posts

Eurobloat #0101 • September 2018

The month Brussels voted to filter the internet, demanded terrorist posts vanish within the hour, put Hungary in detention and announced it would abolish the clocks. The hour of European sovereignty, apparently, belongs to everyone except the nations that make it up.

Eurobloat

Holy Roar by Chris Tomlin

Chris Tomlin's 2018 worship album built around the many old words the Bible uses for praise.

Music

What is touristd?

If you see touristd in Activity Monitor or in a firewall log, here is what this macOS process does.

Mac

The Elements by TobyMac

TobyMac's 2018 record blends Christian hip hop and pop rock into a steady set about faith under pressure.

Music

DateComponents

The article introduces DateComponents, a versatile Foundation type in Swift for representing either a specific calendar date or a duration of time, emphasising its use over hardcoded time intervals like 60 * 60 * 24 for a day.

Development

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

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

Burn the Ships by for KING & COUNTRY

for KING & COUNTRY's 2018 pop rock record about leaving the past behind and pressing forward with hope.

Music

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

Hallelujah Here Below by Elevation Worship

Elevation Worship's 2018 live album about lifting praise from the ordinary ground of everyday life.

Music

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

Look Up Child by Lauren Daigle

Lauren Daigle's 2018 album, a soulful Christian pop record about lifting your eyes when life feels low.

Music

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