Weekly digest - 2018.52

Weekly digest - 2018.52

During this week I looked back on what happened this year and I decided to pick my top 3 news from each month. Here are my picks.

January

  1. Bitcoin bubble burst,
  2. Meltdown and Spectre discovered,
  3. EA became scared of YouTubers.

February

  1. SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy into space,
  2. Elon Musk started selling not a Flamethrowers,
  3. Apple started selling HomePods.

March

  1. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal,
  2. Apple fixed buggy iPhone X ad before fixing the actual iOS 11 bug,
  3. Current frequency deviations in Central Europe.

April

  1. Mark Zuckerberg testified before members of Congress,
  2. SpaceX reached the promised land of launching every two weeks,
  3. GTA V has become the most profitable entertainment product of all time.

May

  1. Google Duplex has been announced,
  2. GDPR has become effective,
  3. Premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

June

  1. Microsoft bought GitHub,
  2. Apple held WWDC,
  3. Apple Pay became available in Poland.

July

  1. Apple updated MacBook Pros,
  2. New MacBook Pros fixed keyboard but overheats,
  3. Clone Wars TV series has been renewed.

August

  1. Apple became first IT company to be worth 1 trillion dollars,
  2. Twitter limited access to the APIs,
  3. CD Project released first gameplay of the Cyberpunk 2077.

September

  1. Apple unveiled iPhone XS, XR and Apple Watch 4,
  2. Google was celebrating its 20th birthday,
  3. iOS 12 and macOS Mojave has been released.

October

  1. LucasFilm shared details about first Star Wars tv series - The Mandalorian,
  2. Apple shoved new iPad Pro,
  3. Google unveiled Pixel 3, a tablet and HomeHub.

November

  1. Disney announced new streaming service - Disney+,
  2. Stan Lee has passed away,
  3. Robert Kubica returned to F1.

December

  1. Microsoft announced that it's working on a new browser,
  2. YouTube Rewind 2018 became the most disliked video on YouTube,
  3. Google’s Home Alone ad.

That's all folks. This was an incredible year. I hope next year will be event better.
Happy New year guys and see you soon!


Image credits: Annie Spratt.

Weekly digest - 2018.49

Weekly digest - 2018.49

Couple weeks ago I released a Halloween watch face for Apple Watch. I was more a joke, but people really liked it. Since then they asked me weather I'm going to do a Christmas watch face. I wanted to do one, but I didn't know whether I would have time or even an idea to create something cool. Fortunately, last week I found both and created this.
Originally I wanted to do something else, but it didn't look good and I would have to spend much more time on this to make it work. After this failed idea, I decided to do a watch face inspired by Christmas decorations made out of paper. Paper town and Santa plus some particle effects create a perfect combination. I'm really happy with the end result. Usually Christmas designs are fancy and festive, but I really wanted to keep it clean and simple. After all the watch face should not distract you from its main purpose, telling time.
So far people like it as well, but its to early to call is a success, that I will be able to tell after Christmas. If you want this watch face on your Apple Watch, check out this my GitHub repository.

From other news. Microsoft announced that it is working on new browser that is going to replace Edge. I have mixed feelings about this because it's just another browser that we, as developers, will have to support. On the other hand it will be based on Chromium, so maybe it will not be that bad.

Apple released the watchOS 5.1.2 with long anticipated ECG feature. It is out for couple of days now, but it's already saving lives. Well done Apple.

It took seven miles to pull over a Tesla with a seemingly asleep driver. I was actually wondering whether you can drive Tesla on autopilot when you are drunk. Fortunately you can't. Autopilot is amazing technology that improves every year, but still I don't trust it that much to let it drive the car practically without the driver.

Marvel released the trailer for upcoming Avengers 4 movie. Together with the trailer we got the full name of the movie Avengers: Endgame. I know it is just a trailer, but I'm already hyped.

And finally, here is the list of interesting things.

How to Write a Game in Under 13 Kb While Taking Care of a Baby

Measuring the "Filter Bubble": How Google is influencing what you click

Xcode file variants without targets

Watermarking photos with ImageMagick, Vapor 3 and Swift on macOS and Linux

An Introduction to Flutter: The Basics

Weekly digest - 2018.46

Weekly digest - 2018.46

This week Stan Lee has passed away at the age 95. He lived wonderful life and left us his great legacy in form of superheroes: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, The X-Men, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four.
We have lost a great visioner and storyteller, but today his creations are more popular than ever. He and his life's work will be remembered by many generations.
Rest in piece Stan Lee.

In terms of the tech news nothing special happened, so I just prepared the list of more interesting news:

As this week was pretty boring, maybe this list of cool things will be more interesting.

Gogs: a painless self-hosted Git service

web.dev - the ultimate resource for developers

What Web Can Do Today

To www or not to www – Should you use www or not in your domain?

My App Is Dead in the Water

Creating iOS 12 Shortcuts with JavaScript and Shortcuts JS

Emoji Builder


Image credits: Wikimedia.

Weekly digest - 2018.45

Weekly digest - 2018.45

This week Disney finally shared more details about their upcoming streaming service. Despite early rumors, it will be called Disney+ and will be launched in late 2019.
Along with the name of the service, Disney also announced brand new TV series. For the new Star Wars show, Diego Luna will reprise his role as the Rebel operative Cassian Andor in a prequel to the Rouge One. The remaining three shows will be set in Marvel universe. First one will be feature Loki and this is only officially confirmed TV show. Second will be about the Scarlet Witch and the last one will feature Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Both series has not been officially confirmed, but this is just a matter of time.
All announced series will join Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, which already is in production.

Speaking of TV shows. Industrial Light & Magic, one of the best VFX companies in the world, opened a TV division. Just in time for Disney’s new shows. According to a press release, the new group will focus on episodic and streaming television series. At the moment they are working on the Syfy’s Krypton and, mentioned earlier, The Mandalorian.

This is it. If you want to learn more, check this list of interesting things.

Learning CSS? Try CSS Diner, the fun way to practice selectors

Jerry Hargrove - Cloud Diagrams & Notes

Photographs of old computers

This is how i figured out how Instagram zoom works — Swift 4.2


Image credits: The Walt Disney Company.

Weekly digest - 2018.38

Weekly digest - 2018.38

At the beginning of this week, Apple finally released the iOS 12. The new version of the mobile operating system contains plenty new features and improvements:

  • Better performance especially for displaying keyboard or opening apps,
  • Better battery usage information
  • Screen time - tool that allows to track how much time we spent using particular app,
  • Grouped notifications - now, notification from the same app are grouped together,
  • New Animiji and Memoji - I think this doesn't need explanation 😛,
  • Grouped FaceTime - finally you can call multiple people,
  • Improved AR capabilities including new Measure app or AR elements in the News app
  • Shortcuts - tool for automating common task. With Siri this is very powerful, but so far underrated feature,
  • Siri suggestions - Siri show suggest what can we do based on what are we currently doing,
  • CarPlay supports third-party apps,
  • Location is automatically shared with 911 and first responders,
  • Do not disturb during bedtime - a new mode of the phone which will hide all notifications when we are sleeping,
  • Password Manager API - this allows password managers to fill your passwords right from the keyboard without switching between apps.

This release is not revolutionary, but brings couple of long awaited improvements, so I encourage you to update your devices.

With premiere of the iOS 12, we also got a new Beta version of the next release. Of course people were looking for new leaks and they found couple of interesting thing about upcoming iPad Pro:

  • No home button
  • Face ID (with support for both portrait and landscape)
  • No notch
  • Probably USB-C port instead of lightning

If those rumors are true, then I can't wait to see new iPhone next year. Hopefully without notch and finally with USB-C.

On Tuesday, Marvel released first trailer of the Captain Marvel movie. Movie is set in 90s and tell the story of Kara Danvers, who becomes one of the most powerful superheros in Marvel universe.
Speaking of Marvel universe, Disney is planning Loki and Scarlet Witch TV shows. Also, there are rumors that Disney is planning to create more TV series for characters who don't have their own movies. If any show is created, it will be for upcoming Disney's streaming platform.
I must admit, creating a TV show in popular franchise is a great strategy for promoting the new streaming platform. Let's face it, Disney owns most of the franchises, so they have plenty of material to use. They already confirmed that there will be Star Wars TV show created by Jon Favreau.

As we are talking about Star Wars. Disney's CEO, Bog Iger, said that they are going to slow down with Star Wars franchise.
Since 2015 we had 4 movies. First two movies have been huge success, especially commercially. But last two have been disappointing, they felt rushed. They also, have been confusing for the fans because we had movies from the trilogy interspersed with with anthologies, where fans have been expecting continuation like in Marvel movies.
I love Star Wars, and I would love to see new movie every year, but if we can get movies that are better quality then I can wait.

Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things.

iOS 12: The MacStories Review

Microcopy Inspirations

Why does the Zune HD have the message “For our Princess” on the inside of the case, and why is she a princess?

Dependency Management for iOS projects with the Swift package manager

Code to go - Find up to date snippets for common JavaScript use cases

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