We've updated our privacy policy. This is the sentence we've seen too many times in recent days. It is funny to see how companies comply to GDPR. Most of the companies just updated the privacy policies. Some companies have stopped providing services for EU users. An interesting approach has been taken by USA Today. They've prepared a separate version of their website for EU users. What's interesting, the EU version doesn't have any tracking and ad scripts, so the size of the site has been reduced from 5.2MB to ~500KB.
Fortunately the GDPR is finally here, all companies must to comply to new law. but it looks like some of them have not managed to do that. Google and Facebook have already been hit with a lawsuits with total fine set to about 7.6 billion euro.

This week we also had a premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story. It is good summer blockbuster movie. If you are a Star Wars fans, you will enjoy it much more. The number of references to Expanded Universe and ester eggs is stunning. Ron Howard managed to create a fast paced and funny origin story of Han Solo and Chewbacca. Watching it, you can fell a climate of old adventure movies from 80's. In terms of acting, many people has been worried about Alden Ehrenreich. It turns out that he was really good, natural. But let be honest, the show has been stolen by Donald Glover. His portrayal of Lando was spot on.
I really enjoyed this movie and I can't want to see it again.

And here is list of interesting things.

Immersive linear algebra

Best Visual Studio Code Extensions

Adobe Photoshop Souce Code

Best iOS hacks from Twitter: March & April Edition

An iOS architecture approach for UIViewController states & error management in Swift

Google announced that is making their storage service cheaper. The Google Drive, we have right now, will become a part of the Google One.
Google One will start from a $2.99 a month plan for 200GB of storage. The 2TB option will cost $9.99 a month. This plan is really appealing, usually it costs about $20, now we'll get it for half a price. There will be no 1TB option, which is a little bit disappointing. Personally I don't need 2TB of cloud storage. The 1TB option would be more than enough, and if take the new prices it would cost about $5 which would be awesome.

Adobe announced the Starter Plan for Adobe XD. Adobe XD is great tool for designing and prototyping UIs and now it is free. With free plan we get the same tools as in premium version. Of course the are limits, and those comes to the number of prototypes we can work at a time. Free users can work on only one shared project at a time.
I personally think this is great. Now, with integration with Sketch and Photoshop and free tier, it became a product that we should keep an eye on.

Tapbots released a new version of TweetBoot. Tweetbot 3 for Mac is a brand new iteration of one of the best - if not the best - Twitter clients out there. The new version is not a revolution, but it comes with nice features like new sidebar, new media player and night mode. This looks like a solid update so I highly recommend getting one, especially if you haven't used Tweetbot before.

Vapor 3.0.0 has been released. Vapor is a web framework written in Swift. Maybe it's not the most popular framework out there, but it is the best tool if you want to create highly performant backend in Swift.

And here is the list of interesting articles.

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

Clean iOS Localizable Files

Tables & Collections with type-safe declarative approach

Restful Web API using ASP.NET Core 2.0 with MSSQL (using Dapper)

A Simple Guide to ES6 Promises

Supporting React Native at Pinterest

Image credits: Google.

Last week we had F8 from Facebook, this week we got 2 more conferences - Build from Microsoft and Google IO. Microsoft focused on integrations and IoT:

• iOS and Android can sync with Windows
• Cartana and Alexa can work together
• Timeline for iOS and Android
• Microsoft will pay developers up to 95% of the revenue
• Sets and new Alt-Tab
• Kinnect brought to the cloud
• Azure IoT Edge
• Microsoft Graph
• Mixed reality comes to the workplaces
• Visual Studio Live Share Public Preview
• .NET Core 2.1 RC1
• .Net Core 3 will support Windows Desktop Applications

Next day, Google showed us:

• Android P
• New Google Assistant Voices
• Google Duplex
• Smart displays with Google Assistant
• Gmail with intelligent auto completion
• Google Maps gets social features and augmented reality
• Google photos get new editing features
• Google News
• Ability to copy text from real world objects

Now, we know what 3 of 4 biggest IT companies are up to, Apple will unveil its plans during WWDC next month.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the iMac. Personally I'm not a big fan of the iMac line, but without a doubt this machine changed the way how people perceive personal computers.

Speaking of Apple computers. On Friday a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court. Apple is accused of knowing about flows and defects in MacBook Pro's keyboard before it launched in 2015.
Last week we saw report about high number of keyboard failures in MacBook Pro, so this lawsuit was just a matter of time. As this "keyboard gate" is developing rapidly I will keep an eye on this matter with a great interest.

Also this week we had a premiere of the Solo: A Star Wars Story. The first reactions are positive, saying that the movie is funny. It looks like Lucasfilm did it again, even with directors swap in the middle of shooting.

As we are on the topic of Star Wars, Jon Favreau give us a couple of news about his upcoming live action TV series. It will be set about 7 years after battle of Endor. It will introduce brand new characters. The technology used for the Jungle Book and Lion King will also be used to make the TV show.

As for the interesting links, I only have one - E3 2018 conference schedule.

Image credits: Google.

At the beginning of this week, Facebook hold the F8 developer conference. Let's face it, this year edition was in shadow of Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Nevertheless, Facebook announced couple of interesting things:

• Tool for removing cookies,
• Third party apps will go through the review process,
• Dating app built into Facebook,
• WhatsApp is getting stickers and group video calls,
• Instagram is getting integration with 3rd party apps,
• Oculus Go.

Also this week, AppleInsider presented report showing that 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard is failing twice as frequently as older models. I'm working on such MacBook Pro for over a year and I must admit, those stats don't surprise me. It has one of the worst keyboards I ever worked with.

Google and GitHub made one step closer to safer Internet. Google launched .app domains with HTTPS built-in. GitHub added HTTPS support for custom domains on GitHub Pages.

And finally, here is the list of cool things.

Portrait in pure CSS
Diana Adrianne did amazing female portrait using only css.

What's new in Swift
This site explains Swift new features. What's cool about this site, it contains changes and features introduced in every version of the Swift - since version 1.0 up to current release (4.2). Thanks to this, you can select your current stack and gradually move to newer versions.

How to make meetings (with your client) more effective
I know, putting my own article here is a little bit selfish, but screw this. I think it is worth reading, so I'm gonna promote it.

Image credits: Facebook.

This week Disney announced new TV series - Star Wars Resistance. It will be animated story of young pilot - Kazuda Xiono - recruited by the Resistance. For now we don't know much about the story, beside the fact that we'll meet new trilogy characters like Poe Dameron and Captain Phasma.
The series is created by Lucasfilm Animation veterans, including Dave Filoni.
Show will have its premiere this fall.

After many years Google decided to redesign Gmail. After Google Calendar, the mail client also got the Material design.
I must admit that after years of using old Gmail, now it feels strange, but I'm sure this is something that I'll get use to.

Unboxings of Nintendo Lobo started showing up on YouTube. I must admit, after watching first announcements I was skeptical. Now, after seeing how this works behind the scenes I am really impressed. I had no idea how much ingenuity and engineering was put to create Labo experiments.

And last but not least, here is the list of interesting articles.

Here are three common ways to create your Lambda functions with AWS
Serverless becomes more and more popular. Here you will learn how to create serverless functions using AWS.

Creating a Website with Nuxt.js and WordPress REST API
From this article you will learn how to create custom CMS using Vue.js, Nuxt.js and Wordpress as a backend.

I built a screenshot API and some guy was mining cryptocurrencies with it
Good reminder that we should always protect our APIs because they can be exploited to do unusual things.

Higher Order Function and its uses in Swift 4
Here you will find overview of functional programming in Swift.

Managing UI Colours with iOS 11 Asset Catalogs
Arnold Sakhnov explains how to manage and use UIColors in iOS projects.

JavaScript ES6 — write less, do more
Short but refreshing overview of new functionality introduced in ES6.

Vue.js & Electron: The easy way
Vue-CLI 3 is here and from this post you will learn how to use it to create Electron project.

Image credits: Disney.