Swift
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Acer simplifies its Swift laptop lineup for 2023
Acer has simplified its naming scheme and made its mainstream Swift range of laptops a lot nicer to look at, and use.
OnlyFans temporarily halts services for Russian creators
The company said payment restrictions made it impossible to serve Russian creators.
Apple releases Swift Playgrounds 4, letting budding iOS developers create on iPad
The update is a big one for the app.
Acer’s Swift 3X is the first laptop with Intel Xe Max graphics
Acer's newest Swift is the first to showcase Intel's Xe Max graphics.
Apple is offering teachers a free coding course
To help advance computer science education in the US, Apple is launching a new, no-cost coding course for teachers.
The new Hot Wheels coding kit requires fine motor skills (updated)
Modern parents are faced with a bit of a tech dilemma. You want the kids to learn STEM skills, but you also don't want them spending all their time in front of screens. To combat this problem many coding tools incorporate some kind of physical element that kids have to put together or manipulate; with building toys like LEGO the marriage of physical play and computer programming makes a lot of sense. Then there's something like Hot Wheels, which never really claimed to be educational. This year the brand upgraded its basic racing experience with Hot Wheels ID, which added NFC to the cars and Bluetooth to the track, allowing the playset to keep tabs on how fast your vehicles are going and how far they've traveled. Now the product has a new coding aspect, via Apple's Swift Playgrounds. And it sounds great in concept. But after some time spent with it, I'm not sure this is a very good use of a very expensive playset.
Japan reportedly pushes 'international network for cryptocurrency payments'
As governments around the world try to figure out how to deal with everything from Bitcoin to Facebook's Libra, Japan has usually been a step or two ahead in dealing with cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has been a legal form of payment there since 2017 and it's begun issuing licenses for exchanges. Now Reuters reports, based on anonymous sources, that the country's government is at the lead of an effort to create a SWIFT-style system to manage cryptocurrency payments and supposedly battle money laundering. There's very little detail about what this means or how it would potentially work, but SWIFT is the network that banks use to securely send money around the world. Cryptocurrency users aren't necessarily looking for more government oversight -- and interference -- so the question of how regulators would insert such a system also needs to be answered. Even with the regulation Japan has now, just last week the Remixpoint exchange reported it lost $32 million worth of currency after being hacked. According to the report, the network is supposed to be implemented in the next few years" with cooperation from other countries.
Telegram's move to Swift on iOS promises a more battery-friendly app
Since January, Telegram has operated two versions of its messaging app on Android and iOS: the original and an experimental one called Telegram X. The app was rewritten from scratch for X; it's built on Apple's Swift programming language on iOS and the Telegram Database Library development tool on Android. Telegram is now set to replace its original iOS app with the Swift version within the next couple of weeks.
Karlie Kloss' coding camp covers more cities and languages this year
Kode with Klossy, Karlie Kloss' coding camp for girls, is expanding this year. Last year, the program offered 15 camps in 12 cities, but this summer, it's running 50 camps in 25 cities and will teach 1,000 young women between the ages of 13 and 18 about coding. Founded by Kloss in 2015, the free, two-week camp instructs attendees on front-end and back-end software engineering and covers Ruby, Javascript, HTML and CSS coding languages. This year, the camp is also adding Swift to its curriculum. "This year, we've also got a really exciting new track on Swift, so the girls at our camps not only learn the ABCs of code, but real-world examples of tech that touches our lives today," Kloss told Mashable. "They're learning what a loop is or how to interpolate using concepts or ideas that touch their lives, like Instagram, Twitter or Postmates."
Apple expands its free coding curriculum to schools outside of the US
Apple's free coding curriculum, which launched for high schools and community colleges in May, has been growing in popularity over the last few months. It had six community college systems on board at launch and in August, the company announced that over 30 had worked the curriculum into their course offerings for the 2017-2018 school year. Now, Apple has gone global with its coding instruction and over 20 colleges and universities outside of the US have now adopted the App Development with Swift Curriculum.
Meet R2-D2 and BB-9E, Sphero’s new ‘Star Wars’ toys
It's been nearly two years since Sphero introduced its app-controlled BB-8, a replica of the cute rolling droid that first appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That toy quickly became one of the most coveted by fans of Disney's franchise, and it wasn't long before the company followed it up with a Battle-Worn Edition, designed to look as rugged as the character does in film. And today at IFA 2017, Sphero announced it is expanding its connected-toy universe with two more Star Wars droids, R2-D2 and BB-9E. Naturally, Sphero worked closely alongside Lucasfilm to bring these to life, just as it did with BB-8. The idea, as you might expect, is to make them as close to the real thing as possible.
Google hires a legendary Apple engineer to tackle AI
Legendary programmer Chris Lattner has had a roller coaster of a year. He left Apple (where he developed the Swift programming language) to help build Tesla's Autopilot technology, only to leave months later after realizing that he wasn't a good fit. However, Lattner might be settling down. He just announced that he's joining Google (namely, the Brain team) to make AI "accessible to everyone." While Lattner doesn't specify exactly what he'll be doing, Bloomberg sources say he'll be working on the TensorFlow language Google uses to simplify AI programming.
Apple launches free courses for the next generation of app coders
Apple has unveiled a free curriculum designed to teach high school and community college students app coding skills. The Swift language course has already been adopted by six US community college systems that will distribute it to half a million students this fall. While it's generous on Apple's part, Tim Cook acknowledged that it needs to address an industry-wide shortage of coders, especially for enterprise apps. "That's really in its infancy, in terms of explosion, and so there's just a ton of opportunity here," he told USA Today.
Honeywell recalls fire alarm gateway that can't detect fires
Tech-savvy fire alarm systems aren't without their share of problems, it seems. Honeywell is recalling its SWIFT wireless gateway after learning that the smoke detectors connected to the gateway (usually found in apartments, hotels and offices) won't always kick in -- in other words, they can't accomplish their one and only mission. The company hasn't received reports of real-world incidents and is offering a firmware update as a fix, but it clearly doesn't want to take any chances.
Shadow Brokers release also suggests NSA spied on bank transactions
Besides a cache of potentially damaging zero-day exploits against many versions of Windows, another element of today's Shadow Brokers release is a folder titled SWIFT. Inside, it has documents listing the internal structure at EastNets, a Dubai-based bank and anti-money laundering organization. Banks use the SWIFT messaging system to transfer trillions of dollars every day, and if the documents released are accurate, it appears the NSA wanted access to monitor transfers between banks in the Middle East.
Tesla hires the creator of Apple's Swift programming language
The fight between Apple and Tesla over engineering talent appears to be ongoing, with today's announcement that Chris Lattner is leaving Apple to join Tesla. Lattner was the Senior Director and Architect at Apple, where he created the open-source Swift programming language. Beyond his work on Swift, which Apple introduced during its WWDC 2014 event, Lattner is also the author of LLVM. At Tesla, he will be leading the Autopilot team that continues to develop its driver assistance and self-driving technology.
A second hacking group is targeting bank systems
It's bad enough that one hacker group has been wreaking havoc on banking systems worldwide, but it's apparently getting worse. Security firm Symantec reports that a second group, Odinaff, has infected 10 to 20 of its customers with malware that can cover up bogus money transfer requests sent through the ubiquitous SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) messaging system. Most of the attacks targeted Australia, Hong Kong, the UK, the Ukraine and the US. And unlike the initial attackers, Odinaff appears to be a criminal organization (possibly linked to the infamous Carbanak team) rather than a state-sponsored outfit.
Apple's kid-friendly Swift Playgrounds taught me to code
In 2014, Apple introduced a new programming language called Swift. Though that might not seem like much to everyday users like you and me, this announcement was actually a pretty big deal for the developer community. One of the reasons for that is that it's a lot simpler than Objective C, the lingo that Apple had been using for over 20 years. So simple, in fact, that Apple believes that Swift could be anyone's first programming language. That's why at this year's WWDC, the company introduced Swift Playgrounds, an iPad app designed to teach kids how to code. After a few days playing around with it, I can safely say that it also managed to teach me -- a clueless grownup -- a few Swift programming basics as well.
Kids' bot breaks into a dance to teach them how to code
DIY robots are becoming the gateway to coding. Over the last couple of years, a new wave of cute-faced bots has taken shape to make programming languages fun for kids. Instead of dense textbooks and complex online tutorials that are designed for a more mature audience, programmable toys are built to introduce young kids to the world of code. The latest entrant on the educational bot scene is the JIMU robot, a build-your-own-bot kit from UBTECH Robotics that snaps together to form a little dancing humanoid called MeeBot, or a more elaborate elephant that flips forward on its trunk for some awkward yoga asanas.
Apple's Swift Playgrounds is an app that teaches kids how to code
Apple introduced an iPad app that teaches kids how to code in its Swift programming language. It's called Swift Playgrounds, and in it, you're tasked with guiding a character called Byte in collecting gems. To do so, you essentially give the character directions using Swift code. A demo at the company's WWDC keynote showed an app with bright colors and big photos designed to make coding child's play.
