TLDR 2020-12-09

The Samsung Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, and S21 Ultra are expected to arrive in January. Three brief teaser videos from Samsung have leaked, previewing the new phones' designs. The videos show a new camera bump with three cameras on the S21 and S21 Plus and five cameras on the S21 Ultra. It appears that the S21 Ultra has a curved screen, instead of the flat panels on the S21 and S21 Plus. All three phones will support 5G. The leaked clips are available in the article.

Apple has revealed its over-ear wireless headphones, AirPods Max. AirPods Max feature a custom acoustic design, H1 chips, and advanced software. It comes in five colors and will be shipped from December 15. The H1 chip in each ear allows AirPods Max to deliver a listening experience that includes Adaptive EQ, Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency Mode, and spatial audio. The batteries can last up to 20 hours while playing high-fidelity audio with Active Noise Cancellation and spatial audio enabled. AirPods Max are available to order now for $549.

France is building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to replace its Charles de Gaulle carrier by 2038. According to French President Emmanuel Macron, the decision is part of France's climate strategy, and a nuclear-powered warship would output lower emissions compared to one powered by diesel fuel. An aircraft carrier would also help France project its global influence, as only a few countries in the world maintain the huge, costly vessels. The new aircraft carrier will weigh around 70,000 tons and measure 300 meters long. It will be designed to accommodate next-generation warplanes and serve until 2080. The estimated cost of the warship will be 7 billion euros.

DroneSeed is a company that uses fleets of drones to reforest areas burned in wildfires. The Federal Aviation Administration has approved DroneSeed's heavy-lift drones for operation Beyond Visual Line of Sight in several states. DroneSeed is now allowed to begin reforesting an area once a fire is contained and airspace is clear. A swarm of five drones can reseed 25 to 50 acres each day. The drones are designed to drop tree seeds in places where they have a decent chance of survival.

This repository contains the curriculum that Linkedin uses for onboarding non-traditional hires and new college grads into the Site Reliability Engineer role. The course covers topics such as Linux Basics, Python and Web, Data, Systems Design, and Security. Every module has additional references for further learning.

This is a guide for writing better command-line programs. It is written for those who are looking for principles and best practices for CLI UI design. The guide covers the philosophy of CLI UI design first before delving into design guidelines. Further resources are offered at the end of the guide.

One of the largest cybersecurity companies in the US, FireEye, claims it was hacked by a foreign government. Internal tools used for testing clients' defenses were stolen in the attack. FireEye has an array of business contracts across the national security space in the US and around the world. The stolen kit targets a myriad of different vulnerabilities in popular software products. All of these vulnerabilities should already be public, but FireEye has not disclosed what systems may be affected. Typically, companies will release patches for known vulnerabilities, but users do not always download these patches.

Whenever you access a website, your browser gets the website's IP from a DNS resolver which is typically operated by either your ISP or a service such as Google's 8.8.8.8. These queries are unencrypted, so it is possible for someone to monitor which sites are being visited or even redirect the request to a fake website. A new technique developed by Cloudflare, Apple, and Fastly, called Oblivious DNS, can prevent this snooping and make the Internet more private. Engineers are still measuring the performance cost of implementing the protocol, but early results appear promising.