Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Rewriting Apple’s Password Monitoring Service in Swift

Ricky Mondello et al. (2025, Mastodon, Hacker News): The migration from Java to Swift was motivated by a need to scale the Password Monitoring service in a performant way. The layered encryption module used by Password Monitoring requires a significant amount of computation for each request, yet the overall service needs to respond quickly even […]

Swift Server Powers Things Cloud

Vojtěch Rylko and Werner Jainek (2025): The robustness of this work is ensured by a rigorous theoretical foundation, inspired by operational transformations and Git’s internals. After twelve years in production, Things Cloud has earned our users’ trust in its reliability. But despite the enduring strength of the architecture itself, the technology stack lagged behind. […] […]

iPhone and iPad Approved to Handle Classified NATO Information

Apple Newsroom:

Today, Apple announced iPhone and iPad are the first and only consumer devices in compliance with the information assurance requirements of NATO nations. This enables iPhone and iPad to be used with classified information up to the NATO restricted level without requiring special software or settings — a level of government certification no other consumer mobile device has met.

That’s nice, but the iPhone is only the second phone to be approved for handling classified information for the Board of Peace. The first, of course, was the T1.

Microsoft Adds Additional Markdown Features to Windows Notepad

Still feels a bit ridiculous to me that Markdown is now an editing mode in Notepad.

Prediction ‘Market’ Kalshi Accuses MrBeast Editor of Insider Trading

Bobby Allyn, reporting for NPR:

An editor who works for YouTube’s biggest creator, MrBeast, has been suspended from the prediction market platform Kalshi and reported to federal regulators for insider trading, Kalshi officials said on Wednesday. It’s the first time the company has publicly revealed the results of an investigation into market manipulation on the popular app.

The MrBeast employee, who Kalshi identified as Artem Kaptur in regulatory filings, traded around $4,000 on markets related to the streamer, the company said. Kalshi investigators discovered that Kaptur had “near-perfect trading success” on bets about the YouTuber’s videos with low odds, making the wagers appear suspicious, according to company officials.

Call these things what they are — prediction casinos, not prediction markets — and the problems come into focus.