Weekly digest - 2019.48

Weekly digest - 2019.48


Image credits: Pro Church Media

Weekly digest - 2019.47

Weekly digest - 2019.47

Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla has revealed its new car. This time it is,  Blade Runner inspired, electric pickup truck called Cybertruck. There will be 3 versions available:

  • Single motor rear-wheel drive with 250 miles of range, 7500-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 6.5 seconds. Starting at $39900.
  • Dual motor all-wheel drive with 300 miles of range, 10,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 4.5 seconds. Starting at $49900.
  • Triple motor all-wheel drive with 500 miles of range, 14,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 2.9 seconds. Starting at $69900.

All models are made of ultra-strong glass and polymer-layered composite that can withstand even bullets.  Also, all versions come with Autopilot, but "self-driving" costs additional $7000.

Cybertruck is available to preorder, but first models won't be delivered until late 2021.


Image credits: Tesla

Weekly digest - 2019.25

Weekly digest - 2019.25

Pixel 4

Google just tweeted an image of the Pixel 4, a phone that has not been officially announced and will not ship until October. This is probably Google's answer to a lot of leaks surrounding this phone. It might be unusual, but in my opinion, it is very smart move. As people already saw the phone, they might as well see it in high definition photo.

Also there another aspect of this "leak". As you can see, the new Pixel 4 has square camera bump, almost the same as new iPhone suppose to have. I'm wondering whether Google is trying to say, hey we were first.

iPhone 2020

We didn't even get this year's iPhone, but we already have rumors about its successor. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is planning to release 3 models:

  • High-end 5.4' with OLED display and 5G,
  • High-end 6.7' with OLED display and 5G,
  • Low-end 6.1' with OLED display.

It looks like the equivalent of the current iPhone XS will be downsized, where equivalent of the iPhone XS Max will be even bigger. The XR model will be untouched in terms of size, but it will gain the OLED display.

To be honest, I don't like those changes. The current size of the iPhone XS is perfect for me, and I don't want to get neither bigger or smaller phone.  

New MacBooks

The Eurasian Economic Commission database is amazing source if you want to know what companies are planing to release. This time the information about several models of portable computers from Apple have pop up.  

As 15' MacBook Pros have already been refreshed, it means that probably the 12' MacBook, MacBook Air or even 13' MacBook Pro are going to get the update.  Also, there are rumors about brand new 16' MacBook Pro, but I personally doubt we are going to see it this year.


Image credits: Google

Weekly digest - 2019.11

Weekly digest - 2019.11

This week World Wide Web turned 30 years old :). I think when Tim Berners-Lee created first WWW site, he didn't know how much he would change the world. Today it is in the center of our life. It's not only a source of information or entertainment. We shop there, we trust our savings in electronic bank. We not only earn money over Internet, but sometimes we even trust it with our lives.
Without a doubt world would not be the same without the WWW. Let's only hope that personal agendas of the politicians won't destroy it.

This week Tesla completed their S3XY car lineup with the brand new model Y. This model is a compact SUV, but it doesn't look like one. It's basically a bigger version of Model 3. The new car will be available in 2020 with price starting at $39,000 for model with 230 miles range. The 300 miles range model will cost $49,000 and the Performance version will cost $60,000.
SUVs are one of the most popular cars out there. We will see whether the people are interested enough in the electric one to boost Tesla's position on the market.

Apple finally announced the WDDC 2019. This year, conference will take place in the first week of June (3rd - 7th) in San Jose. This year's conference should be the interesting one. Of course we will get our first glimpse at iOS 13 and macOS 15. But I think we, as developers, are all waiting for more details about project Marzipan, as well as long awaited Mac Pro and maybe even rumored new MacBook Pro.

Microsoft announced that Windows will be able uninstall broken updates. This is the good step forward, especially after issues with last October update, but I'm wondering how fast we will see reports about this tool making even more harm than good.

Thats all for this week. If you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

The iOS Dev Directory

Ralph Küpper - Running Small Microservices in Swift on Production Environment

A little thread on generating and rendering a procedural trajectory mesh

Creating the Blockade Runner Engine Look for Rogue One

Designing Star Wars: Star Wars Resistance

Someone is recreating Star Wars: Dark Forces... in Unreal Engine 4

Real-Time AR Self-Expression with Machine Learning

A JavaScript-Free Frontend

Learning React Hooks by building a game - react.games Preview

Direct uploads to AWS S3 from the browser (crazy performance boost)

10 Programming Terms in Normal Human Language


Image credits: Pixabay.

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