The Daily Index — Friday, November 17, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

APPLE ANNOUNCES THAT RCS SUPPORT IS COMING TO IPHONE NEXT YEAR

Apple has announced that it will adopt the Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging standard. The feature will launch for iOS later next year. It will bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users. iMessage will continue to exist as the messaging platform used for all communication between iPhone users.

9to5mac.com · 5 min

TLDR AI

DEEPMIND AND YOUTUBE PARTNER ON MUSIC SYNTHESIS

DeepMind has been working on music synthesis for a number of years and now just announced a powerful new system. Interestingly, much of the boost came from a data partnership with revenue sharing. Meaning it trained on artists’ music for a better performing model while ensuring that the artists were compensated. The model will be available in a number of forms, one of which is via YouTube Shorts Studio.

deepmind.google · 12 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW TO SCALE A LARGE CODEBASE

Vercel uses a monorepo architecture to organize and reuse code efficiently across teams. Its team suggests using Turborepo for monorepo management and emphasizes the importance of feature flags for safe code release, incremental builds for quick iteration, and skew protection to handle version discrepancies. Thanks to their monorepo and these tools, they are able to have frequent and confident code releases, easy adoption of new technologies, independent work on UI parts, and efficient sharing and reuse of code.

vercel.com · 8 min

TLDR InfoSec

ZIMBRA 0-DAY USED TO TARGET INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS

Google TAG discovered an exploit in the Zimbra email server 0-day (CVE-2023-37580) in the wild. It was used by 4 groups to steal emails, credentials, and tokens even after a public fix was released. This post-disclosure activity shows that delays leave orgs vulnerable. It urges rapid patching and updates to protect against ongoing exploits of known bugs.

blog.google · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

BLACKROCK FILES SPOT ETHEREUM ETF APPLICATION WITH SEC

A week after its registration showed up on Delaware’s site, BlackRock has officially filed for a spot Ethereum ETF with the SEC. The trust aims to mirror Ethereum's price performance, giving investors easy exposure to the asset in their brokerage accounts. Coinbase will be the trust’s custodian. This comes as BlackRock continues to wait for approval of the Bitcoin Spot ETF it filed in June.

decrypt.co · 2 min

TLDR

AMAZON WILL ALLOW AUTO DEALERS TO SELL CARS ON ITS SITE, STARTING WITH HYUNDAI

Amazon will allow auto dealers to sell cars through its site starting next year with Hyundai. Shoppers will have the option to pick up their vehicles or have them delivered by a local dealership. They will be able to search for available vehicles in their area and then check out using their preferred payment or financing method. Shares of used car dealers fell following the announcement of the new service.

cnbc.com · 2 min

TLDR

“MAKE IT REAL” AI PROTOTYPE WOWS DEVS BY TURNING DRAWINGS INTO WORKING SOFTWARE

tldraw's new Make it Real feature lets users draw an image of software and bring it to life using AI. It uses OpenAI's GPT-4V API to visually interpret vector drawings into functioning Tailwind CSS and JavaScript code. It can replicate user interfaces and even create simple implementations of games. A live demo of the feature is available online, but it requires an OpenAI API key. Users can opt to run the code locally.

arstechnica.com · 3 min

TLDR

SPACEX'S 2ND STARSHIP LAUNCH ON NOV. 18

SpaceX is planning its second Starship launch on Saturday. The launch was originally scheduled for Friday but it was postponed so SpaceX could replace a grid fin actuator on the launch stack. The flight will aim to send Starship's upper stage partway around Earth, with a splashdown targeted in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. This article goes into detail about how the test will work.

space.com · 4 min

TLDR

WHY SQLITE DOES NOT USE GIT

SQLite uses Fossil instead of the Git version control system. Fossil is a version control system specifically designed and written to support SQLite. This article details why SQLite built Fossil. It also provides a guide on how to use Fossil.

sqlite.org · 5 min