TLDR 2021-12-22

OnlyFans founder and CEO Tim Stokely is stepping down. Ami Gan, the company's former head of communications and marketing, will be taking over as CEO. Gan has worked for brands like Red Bull, Quest Nutrition, and a cannabis cafe. She will invest in OFTV and other new tools for creators. OnlyFans was on track to do $2.5 billion in sales this year, but its decision to ban NSFW content - and the swift reversal of that decision - lost the trust of many of its creators.

TikTok saw more traffic than Google in 2021. This article looks at the most popular domains this year and compares them with 2020's results. It analyzes trends and links them with real-world events. The article focuses mainly on domains that relate to space, e-commerce, social media, streaming, chat, and the metaverse.

China Huaneng Group Co.’s 200-megawatt small modular reactor at Shidao Bay is now operational. The nuclear plant will go into full commercial operations next year after connecting a second reactor. Its reactors are designed to shut down passively if anything goes wrong. China is expected to invest up to $440 billion into nuclear power over the next decade and a half. Small module reactors are less costly to build and operate, faster to implement, and have shorter shutdown times compared to traditional nuclear plants, making them an exciting technology for nuclear experts.

Researchers at MIT have created a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in the form of a 460-foot-long fiber. The batteries can be manufactured to arbitrarily long lengths. They can be 3D-printed into any shape, opening up possibilities for wearable electronics and devices with batteries that double as structural parts. An image of a fiber battery wrapped around a toy submarine is available in the article.

Lit is a simple library for building fast, lightweight web components. It features a component base class that provides reactive state, scoped styles, and a declarative template system. Lit can be used to create shareable components, design systems, sites, and apps.

pre-commit is a framework for managing and maintaining multi-language pre-commit hooks. Developers can specify a list of hooks and pre-commit will manage the installation and execution of any hook in any language before every commit, without requiring root access. Pre-commit supports all repositories with installable packages or executables.

A network of radio telescopes in the Netherlands made detailed recordings of a lightning bolt during a summer storm in 2018. The recordings, which were processed only recently, show lightning starting up inside a thundercloud. They were used to create a 3D image of the lightning. The pattern of pulses recorded indicates that lightning starts with clusters of ice inside of a cloud. An animation of the lightning flash is available in the article.

DuckDuckGo is working on a desktop browser that will help users avoid being tracked. The browser will have robust privacy protection turned on by default and function in the same way as its mobile app. Early tests indicate that the browser is significantly faster than Google Chrome. It is currently in a closed beta test on macOS and there is no word on when it will be publicly available.