Latest Tech News: Apple Probe, Facebook Outage, Android 12 & Cloud Native Boom

Apple Ex‑Employee Under Criminal Investigation

Former Apple materials manager Simon Lancaster has been charged with allegedly leaking unpublished product information and is now under criminal investigation for suspected theft of trade secrets. He left Apple in 2019 with a cache of “confidential” files, including the rumored AR/VR “Project X”.

Reference: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/04/simon-lancaster-responds-to-apple-lawsuit/

Facebook Experiences Its Largest Outage

On October 4 at 11:39 a.m. EDT, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffered a massive outage lasting nearly seven hours, marking the longest downtime since 2008. The outage affected users worldwide, with services down across Europe, the Americas, Oceania and parts of Asia.

References: https://www.futuriom.com/articles/news/speculation-swirls-around-facebook-outage/2021/10; https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/facebook-outage-analysis; https://eveningreport.nz/2021/10/05/what-caused-the-unprecedented-facebook-outage-the-few-clues-point-to-a-problem-from-within-169249/

Google Officially Releases Android 12

Google announced the push of Android 12 source code to the Android Open Source Project and began rolling the update to Pixel devices, with other manufacturers expected to follow later in the year. The release introduces the “Material You” design language, redesigned widgets, new notification designs, stretch overscroll effects, and splash screens, while improving performance and app startup times.

Reference: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/12

2021 Cloud 100 Highlights

Forbes, together with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures, listed the top 100 privately‑valued cloud companies, all unicorns, with the top ten valued over $10 billion. Notable IPOs include Toast, a restaurant POS platform competing with Square, and Freshworks, an Indian‑origin SaaS suite covering CRM, HR, and IT management.

Reference: https://www.forbes.com/cloud100/#588873065f94

Kubernetes Certification Demand Jumps 455%

The Linux Foundation and edX report shows enterprise interest in cloud technologies surpassing Linux, with Kubernetes certifications increasing 455% from 2019 to 2021, making it the fastest‑growing skill demand.

Reference: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/LFResearch_OpenSourceJobsReport_ver5.pdf

Cloud‑Native Course Recommendation

The “Cloud Native in Practice” course, created by KubeSphere core developers and DevOps coach, offers a free, hands‑on learning path covering container fundamentals, Kubernetes, DevOps, micro‑services, and advanced topics such as KubeSphere, Jenkins, Istio, Jaeger, Prometheus, ELK, and Spring Cloud Kubernetes, aiming to enable enterprise‑grade cloud‑native deployments.