TLDR 2022-02-10

Samsung held its first Unpacked event of 2022 on Wednesday. It announced the Galaxy S22 Ultra, S22, and S22+, the Galaxy Tab S8, Tab S8+, and Tab S8 Ultra, and live sharing on Google Duo for both its phone and tablet lines. The Galaxy S22 Ultra will feature a 108-megapixel primary camera, 12GB of RAM, and space for an S Pen stylus built-in. The Galaxy S22 and S22+ will feature 50-megapixel main cameras and Corning’s new Gorilla Glass Victus+. Samsung's new devices are available for pre-order today and will start shipping on February 25.

Software developers have discovered references to a new Apple operating system, realityOS, in App Store upload logs and GitHub repositories. Apple has been known to be working on a mixed reality platform for a while. The project has faced several delays. Reports and rumors about it have been mixed and unreliable. Apple could be working on multiple devices, which may explain the mixed reports.

The Joint European Torus (JET) has set a new record for released energy, releasing 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds. It is still well short of the break-even point where the fusion energy released matches the energy input required to trigger the fusion. The results are still an important validation of the approach being taken at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). JET is being used as a testbed for the technologies and materials that will go into ITER. ITER is expected to begin experimental runs in 2025.

40 of the 49 Starlink satellites launched on February 3 will be destroyed due to a geomagnetic storm that caused up to 50% higher drag than during previous launches. Starlink tried to save the satellites by flying them edge-on to reduce drag but it was unsuccessful. The satellites will burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Starlink has now launched over 2,000 satellites and plans to launch up to 12,000. A statement from Starlink explaining the incident is available in the article.

This article teaches readers how to build an adaptive favicon with SVG. Custom favicons are a great way to polish a web project. They are usually made using ICO files, but browsers have recently started allowing SVGs. A live demo, as well as a video version of the article, is available.

PgCat is a version of PgBouncer rewritten in Rust. PgBouncer is a lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL. PgCat features session and transaction modes, copy protocol support, query cancellation, round-robin load balancing of replicas, banlist and failover support, and sharding. It is still in alpha.

Drop servicing is where someone resells specialized services, for example, video editing, writing, or custom art. It recently became popular on TikTok as a profitable business model with low effort required. Many drop service providers use platforms like Fiverr to find freelance workers as it is very competitive with price. This article gives an insider's look at what it is like to run a drop servicing business. While drop servicing is sold as a get-rich-quick life hack, being the middle manager isn't easy, and it can be frustrating for the freelancers involved.

Intel has announced a $1 billion innovation fund that will bet on a couple of key technologies, including RISC-V, an open-source instruction set that shows promise in low-power and embedded systems. Arm may have the smartphone market, but simple, small, and low-power chips will be needed in everything from cars to smart light bulbs. RISC-V supplier Andes Technology shipped more than 3 billion RISC-V chips in the last year. Nvidia recently announced its intention to purchase Arm, but the sale was blocked by regulators. Arm may be in the process of filing for an IPO.