Hacker’s Tribute Vol. 73: A Swift Mutation

Greetings!

The world is just the beginning. Explore Visual Studio Code updates that open your connectivity. Or perhaps you wish to relish the search power of OpenSource 1.0? Feel the minty freshness of Linux Mint for that unbeatable sensation. Create your own Frankenstein as you mutate within defined values using Swift. Or combat ‘cherry picking’ with a little bit of help from our AI friends.

There’s a planet of truths and untruths out there, so let’s get exploring. Be the natural, intuitive hacker you were born to be.

Let’s go!

Dan ‘the Man’ Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief, The Hacker’s Tribute

Linux Always Brings the Freshness

Cool off this summer with a breezy new approach to system update notifications and automation. Based on the legendary Ubuntu, Linux Mint 20.2 is a new release offering an emphasis on stability and ease of use. We’re not going to cite any incredible new features this time – but when you’re ‘cool enough’, nobody will even mind. Enjoy the long-term support edition until April 2025. Upgrade today for years of minty freshness.

OpenSearch 1.0

It’s not the Oscars, but it’s exciting enough. The OpenSearch community is announcing the debut general availability release of its self-titled product. OpenSearch 1.0 is already making waves, with its Apache 2.0 powered analytics suite using Elasticsearch 7.10.2 and Kibana 7.10.2. Expect an advanced array of goodies such as Open Distro for Elasticsearch, alerting, and detection of pesky anomalies. Finally, it’s better than beta!

Cherry Picked Papers

Sometimes, even the best writers prefer the convenient facts and leave out their inconvenient counterpoints. In fact, it’s a dirty trick used to entice, convince, and even manipulate. But, in the interest of knowledge, we should always maintain access to the whole truth. So naturally, AI is here to help. A group of good Samaritans are developing an algorithm to identify suspicious publications and seek to recognise critical arguments. Hooray indeed!

A Swift Mutation

In true Jerry Maquire style, ‘value types’ help Swift to help us. They let us write stronger code and limit how states appear across API boundaries. First, read this post for a complete lowdown on mutating functions that change properties within their enclosing value. Then, explore mutating protocol requirements, perform mutations within initialisers, non-mutating properties, and much more. Finally, it’s time we created our own monster!

Lightweight Heavyweight Championship

Let’s get ready to rumble! Microsoft’s newest release of Visual Studio Code has reached the round figure of 1.58. It might seem unimposing, but expect colossal changes to the Workspace Trust feature, an updated UI, and more intuitive settings panels. Explore preview support for TypeScript 4.4, and view changes to critical boosts too. Lastly, take full advantage of the inclusion of an official web server extension.