Weekly Tech News Digest: Google Outage, Linux 5.10, Docker Desktop 3.0, AI‑Piloted Aircraft and More

Google experienced a severe outage on December 14 affecting most of its services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Chat, Meet, Blogger and YouTube, caused by an internal storage quota issue in its authentication system; the incident lasted about 50 minutes and a follow‑up issue impacted Gmail the next day.

Following pressure from Visa and Mastercard, adult video platform Pornhub removed more than 60% of its videos, cutting its catalog from 13.5 million to roughly 4.5 million, and now only allows verified users and partners to upload content.

CentOS founder Gregory Kurtzer announced Rocky Linux, a new project to continue the stable CentOS lineage, which quickly garnered over 2.6 k stars on GitHub and launched its official website.

Richard M. Stallman (RMS) reflected on Emacs at EmacsConf 2020, emphasizing the power of Lisp for extending the editor and urging the community to prioritize defending software freedom.

Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.10 and set a Christmas‑before deadline for submissions to the upcoming 5.11 merge window, indicating he will not consider late patches during the holiday period.

Cognitect, together with Nubank, pledged six‑figure annual sponsorships to support dozens of Clojure ecosystem contributors, encouraging more commercial backing for open‑source development.

Oracle provided scripts and a dedicated website to help CentOS users migrate to Oracle Linux, positioning it as a stable, RHEL‑compatible alternative.

WPS Office was added as a new subject to China’s National Computer Rank Examination (NCRE) starting March next year, marking a milestone for domestic office software.

Security firm Avast discovered 28 malicious Chrome and Edge extensions that masquerade as download helpers but contain code to steal data and redirect users to ads or phishing sites, with combined downloads reaching three million.

Linux 5.10, a long‑term support release, introduced features such as Ext4 fast commit, io_uring limits, ARM Memory Tagging Extension, the process_madvise(2) syscall, and Sleepable BPF.

Docker Desktop 3.0 was released with a new dashboard, improved WSL 2 integration, Azure and AECS support, incremental updates, and extensive M1 Mac enhancements; Docker Hub also began rate‑limiting anonymous and free users.

Mozilla launched Firefox 84, adding native Apple Silicon support, expanded WebRender rollout, shared‑memory performance improvements on Linux, and the final version supporting Adobe Flash.

The U.S. Air Force successfully test‑flew an AI‑piloted U‑2 aircraft, designated ARTUµ, which autonomously handled radar targeting while a human pilot managed other tasks, demonstrating a step toward AI‑assisted military operations.

China’s market regulator fined Alibaba, Tencent’s WeRead, and SF Express‑related companies for illegal mergers, each receiving a 500,000 CNY penalty to signal stricter antitrust enforcement.

Huawei released HarmonyOS 2.0 Beta for smartphones, supporting Android apps and targeting over 100 million devices across more than 40 brands within the year.