Weeknotes 2023.49
We’re heading for Christmas. Kevin is alone at home and John McClane is probably crawling through a ventilation shaft — like every year.
At work, we’re also experiencing the pre-holiday frenzy and it’s just getting started. Which means it’s time to relax with some Advent of Code.
OpenAI’s dust has settled in the meantime. Many articles, some interviews, few answers.
Changelog
- Quite a few changes to the website, mainly the variable font of the new version of Inter. I’m still tweaking the styling, which I probably shouldn’t, but it’s not yet quite sitting right.
- A few bugs and typos have been fixed. One of them (the title duplication in the RSS feed) meant some refactoring.
- Now that there is more content, the listings also need an update. It’s not quite finished, but should go live this week as well.
Links
Programming
- The yearly analysis of the iOS and Mac binaries shipped by Apple is always fascinating. It allows us to make an educated guess how mature the newer technologies are, by looking at what Apple is using. I wished it would exist for their stand-alone apps as well.
- The Advent of Code is always a fun exercise. This year, I will take some time to participate. Luckily the Swift team themselves have provided a project template for Swift this year.
- A great article on how to use on-demand resources to securely ship API keys in iOS apps. It’s a good practice and you should be able to do this on any platform.
- Finally Antoine van der Lee has an introduction to the public Swift evolution process and how it can help understand new features of the language and their motivation.
Systems
- Ampere has prepared a patch to the Linux Kernel for ARM64 to increase the default maximum of cores to 512 and the configurable dynamic maximum to 8192 (yes, you read correctly). They have probably something planned.
AI
- Technology Review reports that creating one image via AI uses as much energy as charging your phone.
- It was AWS re:Invent and it was AI, AI, AI. But the LOL moment was their thin client for enterprises that is effectively a Fire TV Cube with different software :laugh:
Hardware
- CNBC was allowed into one of Apple’s chip labs. Nothing ground breaking revealed but interesting nonetheless.