TLDR 2020-12-18

MindGeek is the company behind some of the world's largest porn sites. Despite its size, it is relatively unknown as it tries to keep itself out of the spotlight. This article discusses the many controversies that the company has been involved in over the years, including how it built its empire on stolen content, how it forced many production studios and performers out of business, its handling of content takedown requests, and more. MindGeek boasts access to big data on the next level, allowing its employees to uncover user habits overnight that might take other companies months to find. Around 15 terabytes of data is uploaded to its sites every day.

Coinbase has filed to go public, likely debuting in early 2021. It is unknown whether Coinbase will pursue a traditional IPO or a direct listing. Coinbase has raised extensive capital while private, and while there has been some reporting about its historical growth, there is little information about its profits and operations. Cryptocurrencies have seen a recent surge of interest. Coinbase lost dozens of employees in 2020 after its CEO declared that the company would not participate in political matters not directly tied to the company's mission.

Capella-2 is a satellite from Capella Space that can take images of anything on the planet at any time. It uses Synthetic Aperture Radar technology to detect the Earth's surface, even through dense clouds. About 75 percent of the Earth is covered by clouds or darkness at any given time. The system works by sending a 9.65GHz radio signal towards Earth and interpreting the reflected signal. Anyone can request images from Capella at any time, no questions asked. The company already has contracts with government agencies. It plans to send more satellites into space to increase the reach of its network.

Airbus is developing a hydrogen-fueled airliner to potentially unlock the prospect of zero-emission air travel by 2035. It has revealed three concept aircraft: a propeller-driven regional aircraft, a short-to-medium-haul airliner, and a radical ‘blended-wing’ aircraft. The company will continue to create concepts, choosing one of the concepts to focus on by 2025. One of the concepts uses a pod configuration, with pods that contain everything needed to lift the aircraft. The pods are designed so that they can be assembled, installed, removed, and disassembled quickly to provide an elegant solution to refueling issues.

Cloudflare Pages is a fast, secure, and free way to build and host JAMstack sites. It simplifies the process by tying deployment to your existing development workflow. Developers only have to select their repo and identify which framework they are using, and Pages handles CI on their behalf. Pages features unique preview URLs, infinite staging, collaboration, and modern standards. Cloudflare Workers is a global serverless platform that allows frontend developers to write scalable backends in JavaScript. It will be integrated with Pages over the coming months.

Docker has revolutionized the way we use Containers by allowing anyone to use Containers without dealing with any of the advanced topics related to it. This article discusses best practices for developing better Containers. It covers identifying cacheable units, reducing image size, image maintainability, and reproducibility.

Venezuela is mining bitcoin in a last-ditch effort to save its economy. Inside a bunker at a military base outside Caracas, a facility houses several S9 AntMiners, a specialized type of computer for mining bitcoin. The Venezuelan government is under sanctions by the US and it isn't able to buy and sell using dollars. It has rolled out a series of laws and regulations that it hopes will save its sinking economy. The Venezuelan military was accused of raiding mining farms and stealing equipment three years ago. Venezuela's cheap electricity made the country attractive to crypto miners. The country tried to launch its own cryptocurrency in 2018, but it failed.

The networks of the US Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration were breached by foreign hackers. Three states were also hacked in connection to the cybersecurity attack. Federal investigators are still assessing the damage and it is currently unknown what was accessed. The hackers likely gained access to the networks through SolarWinds' software. Microsoft may have been a victim of the attack as well. Russia has denied any involvement in the attack. Russian hackers have been highly active over the last month and were linked to recent attacks on the Treasury Department and NTIA.