Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I’ve been a bit obsessed with the idea of creating a CAD package for the Mac recently. For the challenge of it is why, but it would only be doable in a decent amount of time with financial backing large enough to hire a few folks to pull it off.
There is a way to jumpstart the process. The Open Design Alliance has portable libraries for reading and writing DWG files as well as rendering and so much more. All in portable C++.
Imagine a beautiful CAD app created just for the Mac. And yes, I know many already exist. 😁
Oh, right, I have a Mac app I need to finish.
Well, let’s get to it! Enjoy the links.
DNC 2024 highlights: Kamala Harris accepts historic nomination in speech capping Democratic convention
We have our nominee! Now, let’s push her across the finish line and get our first Madame President!
Today we launched Shareshot! We’ve been working on this app for almost exactly a year, and we’re so pleased to be able to finally ship it. Here’s a little backstory and behind-the-scenes for those of you into app development.
Congratulations, Marc! Shareshot is a beautiful example of iOS craftsmanship. Go give it a try!
I am an unrepentant advocate for migrating away from memory-unsafe languages (C and C++) to memory safe languages in security-relevant contexts. Many people reply that migrating large code bases to new languages is expensive, and we’d be better off making C++ safer. This is a reasonable response, after all there’s an enormous amount of C++ in the wild.
There is an enormous amount of C and C++ in the world. Too much to simply replace. I like Alex’s pragmatism on the matter. He has some proposals to improve the language without taking it too far down the path to incompatibility.
Just this week my interest in Rust began to grow. I’ve been using Swift daily since 2014, maybe 2015, and I really love the language and its ability to leverage the compiler to fix many of the memory issues seen in C and C++, like dangling pointers, forgotten allocations, and object lifetimes. We also have Rust to provide us with a solid memory protection model and the ability to be used for high performance code that is cross platform.
Rewriting software is costly and can also cost you your company. So taking that on should probably be avoided like the plague.
What if you picked your battles? How about writing new code in Rust or Swift? Perhaps improve public access to API’s by fronting it with Rust? How about picking some code known to cause a lot of crashes in your app and rewrite just that bit?
We can use tried and true methods in C++ to improve memory safety but it requires developers to be extremely disciplined.
Simple things like filling new memory allocations with known patterns. I prefer to fill the memory with zeros. You can also do the same when you delete it.
Reference counted pointers — AKA smart pointers — help.
Modern C++ has introduced mechanisms to transfer pointer ownership, always a tough problem to handle and the problem that lead to the creation of smart pointers.
Anywho, the piece is an easy read with good ideas. Go give it a gander.
Many Procreate users can breathe a sigh of relief now that the popular iPad illustration app has taken a definitive stance against generative AI. “We’re not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products,” Procreate CEO James Cuda said in a video posted to X. “I don’t like what’s happening to the industry, and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists.”
I can really appreciate this stance. Artists often have a deep psychological attachment to their work and the creative process — hell — they go through to bring it to life. Taking that work, that style, and using it to train an AI to rip them off is just slimy.
Caleb Newton • Bipartisan Report
A dozen individuals who served as lawyers in Republican presidential administrations are bucking Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and endorsing Democratic presidential pick Kamala Harris in a new letter that was publicized first at Fox News. The list includes prominent former judge J. Michael Luttig, who also served in the Reagan Administration.
Even with all of this at least half the country will vote for the Orange Man. It’s shocking, really.
The FreeBSD Project is, for the second time this year, engaging in a long-running discussion about the possibility of including Rust in its base system. The sequel to the first discussion included some work by Alan Somers to show what it might look like to use Rust code in the base tree. Support for Rust code does not appear much closer to being included in FreeBSD’s base system, but the conversation has been enlightening.
Speaking of Rust! Apparently Rust has found its way into the Linux Kernel and Microsoft has used it for Windows API development. It’s time for FreeBSD to get on board!
I wonder if Apple with push some Swift into Darwin or XNU at some point? Swift was written so it could be used for system level programming.
Carole Cadwalladr • The Guardian
Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America
Musk has gone deep down the MAGA rabbit hole. His ketamine addled brain lives in its own world of conspiracies and white supremacy.
He’s unraveling in real time. Dumping his, often wacko, thoughts on X. He behaves more like a two year old than a man in his 50s.
Why do people still believe this man is some kind of genius? He’s a man child who throws hissy fits until he gets what he wants.
Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy politicians.
Why does Apple feel it’s worth trashing their relationship with creators and developers so that they can take 30% of the money I pay an up-and-coming creator who is trying to make rent in time each month? This isn’t a hypothetical, I genuinely want to know. Is the goal to turn into Microsoft, because this is how you turn into Microsoft.
Hate to say it Matt but Apple is today what Microsoft was in the 90’s. They are the 800lb gorilla in the room throwing their weight around.
I really love Apple products and their development tools and can’t see switching away from them. I just wish they’d be a bit kinder to the development community, that’s all.
Kelly Dobkin • Los Angeles Times
chef and co-owner Eric Park serves a black sesame misugaru drink that combines espresso, oat milk, the multigrain powder and gets topped with black sesame cream. It’s nutty, sweet and frothy, but not too rich thanks to the bitterness of the espresso.
Ok, now I really want to try misugaru. The one described above sounds incredible. 🤤
Reading through the Ohio Revised Code, Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Atiba Ellis couldn’t help looking for an alternative interpretation. Was there an error? Shoddy drafting? Because why on earth, he wondered, would a person clear that third bar, and submit documentation proving they broke the law by registering to vote?
This is just another GOP scheme to kick people off voter rolls. 🤬
ahh, another startup that burnt out trying to build some silly AI project on crap hardware. I wonder what they did? I check their URL: ahh. healthcare. great, great.
This Mastodon thread is an interesting read and a cautionary tale. Before you sale off old hardware make sure you remove its storage or at the very least wipe the storage with a destructive reformat.
Around 2AM this morning I had a realization that this was the most stressed I have ever been. On verge of a complete breakdown.
Ahhh, the life of a software developer. I’ve seen and experienced this stress on numerous occasions. I don’t recommend it.
This MacBook app generated $100,000 in seven days, now Stripe won’t pay up
This is a wild story and I hope the developer is able to get paid and save his company.
