TLDR 2021-10-06

Project Pulse πŸ”, Brazil legalizes Bitcoin πŸͺ™, Facebook outage post-mortem πŸ“

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Big Tech & Startups

New Yubico security keys let you use fingerprints instead of passwords (2 minute read)

Yubico just announced its new YubiKey Bio Series, its first hardware security key to offer fingerprint logins. The new key supports the latest FIDO2/WebAuthn and U2Fopen authentication standards. It comes in both USB Type-A and USB Type-C models. The key works with OSes that support WebAuthn and browsers based on Chromium. It is crush resistant and water resistant. Yubico promises the key will work out of the box with various enterprise-facing platforms.

Amazon is reportedly working on a smart fridge (2 minute read)

Project Pulse is a smart fridge being developed at Amazon that will be able to track inventory and purchase habits, predict what customers need, and have those products delivered. Amazon has been working on the project for at least two years. It is unknown whether the company plans to release the product. Amazon is well-positioned to undercut its competitors on price, and it is another opportunity to integrate a new smart home device into its ecosystem.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Scientists Have Successfully Recorded Data to DNA in a Few Short Minutes (3 minute read)

Scientists have utilized a novel enzymatic system to synthesize DNA into data in minutes rather than hours or days. The method synthesizes completely new DNA instead of copying a template. It uses an enzyme that can be directly manipulated. The method could be a potential solution to the explosive growth in data storage needs. It could also have applications in brain research.

How Quantum Computers Can Be Used to Build Better Quantum Computers (3 minute read)

A team of Chinese researchers used a quantum computer to design a new type of qubit that significantly outperformed their previous designs. The new qubit design can hold its quantum state for longer and is less prone to errors. The researchers expect performance to increase even more as this was only a first prototype. By demonstrating that even basic quantum computers can help design future devices, the researchers have opened the door to significantly speedier innovation in the field.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Kubegres (GitHub Repo)

Kubegres is a Kubernetes operator that can deploy multiple clusters of PostgreSQL pods. It can manage replications, failover, data backups, and more. Kubegres is easy to learn, secure, and compatible with any PostgreSQL container derivatives.

React Preview (Website)

React Preview can preview any React component in a codebase. It can provide instant feedback inside the IDE without writing any extra code. GIF examples are available.
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Miscellaneous

Bitcoin set to become legal payment in Brazil (2 minute read)

A cryptocurrency regulation bill is expected to be presented to the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies in Brazil within the next few days. If the bill passes voting this week, Bitcoin will become legal tender in Brazil. The bill has widespread government support and agreements have already been made with the Central Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil for its recognition as a currency of daily use. Brazil’s Federal Deputy hopes that other countries will copy Brazil's regulatory model.

Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet (6 minute read)

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is a mechanism for exchanging routing information between autonomous systems on the Internet. The Internet is a network of networks bound together by BGP. BGP allows one network to advertise its presence to all of the other networks that form the Internet. Facebook's recent outage was caused by a configuration change that caused its servers to stop announcing the routes to its DNS prefixes, making Facebook's DNS servers unavailable. More details about how the outage occurred are available in the article.
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