The Daily Index — Monday, February 19, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

MICROSOFT-BACKED OPENAI VALUED AT OVER $80 BILLION IN LATEST DEAL

OpenAI has finalized a deal that values it at more than $80 billion. The deal involves the sale of existing shares through a tender offer headed by venture firm Thrive Capital. It allows employees to liquidate their shares in the company. OpenAI was valued at approximately $29 billion early last year.

pymnts.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

ANTHROPIC TAKES STEPS TO PREVENT ELECTION MISINFORMATION

Anthropic is testing Prompt Shield, a technology designed to redirect U.S. users of its chatbot Claude seeking political and voting information to authoritative sources like TurboVote.

techcrunch.com · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

JAVASCRIPT ON DEMAND: HOW QWIK DIFFERS FROM REACT HYDRATION

Qwik, a web framework, offers a unique approach to managing client-side JavaScript, focusing on "resumability" and loading JavaScript on demand. This method contrasts with React's hydration process by aiming to improve performance and efficiency in web applications. Qwik's strategy reduces initial load times and enhances interactivity by only loading the necessary JavaScript code when needed.

thenewstack.io · 8 min

TLDR InfoSec

EXPRESSVPN USER DATA EXPOSED DUE TO BUG

ExpressVPN disabled split tunneling on Windows clients to fix a bug introduced in May 2022 which caused DNS requests to bypass its servers. This bug exposed domain visits to ISPs when using split tunneling with app-specific VPN routing. Though traffic stayed encrypted, the DNS leak defeated privacy protections.

securityweek.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

STABLECOIN WARS HEAT UP AS CIRCLE ASKS CONGRESS TO REIN IN TETHER

Circle and Coinbase are asking Congress to give the Treasury more authority to scrutinize the issuers of Tether, the leading stablecoin issuer, and its banking partner. The executives are accusing Tether of enabling illicit activities and promoting its own USD-backed cryptocurrencies as more compliant alternatives. Tether leads the stablecoin industry by a wide margin, but the competition between Circle and Tether has been intense over the past couple of years.

thedefiant.io · 3 min

TLDR

REDDIT HAS A NEW AI TRAINING DEAL TO SELL USER CONTENT

Reddit has signed a deal with an unnamed large AI company for access to its user-generated content platform. The deal is worth about $60 million annually. It is still subject to change as Reddit's plans to go public are still in the works. Companies like OpenAI and Apple are also seeking to make deals with other platforms to use their data to train AI models.

theverge.com · 2 min

TLDR

NEW FDA-APPROVED DRUG MAKES SEVERE FOOD ALLERGIES LESS LIFE-THREATENING

The FDA has approved an antibody drug called omalizumab (brand name Xolair) as an injection to lessen allergic reactions to foods in people ages 1 and up. The drug works by binding to a class of antibodies called immunoglobulin E, preventing them from triggering an allergic response. It doesn't eliminate food allergies, but it will help reduce the health impact if accidental exposure occurs. The drug's effects are not universal - in studies, around 17% of the people receiving the drug showed no significant improvement in their sensitivity to allergy-triggering food.

arstechnica.com · 3 min

TLDR

SOFTBANK FOUNDER REPORTEDLY AIMS TO RAISE $100 BILLION TO BUILD AI CHIP COMPANY THAT WOULD RIVAL NVIDIA — PROJECT IZANAGI MIGHT LEVERAGE ARM DESIGN

Project Izanagi is a new chip venture from Softbank's founder that aims to compete with Nvidia in the artificial intelligence processor space. The project seeks to complement Softbank's Arm Holdings, which designs processor architectures. It is unclear whether the AI processors designed by Project Izanagi will rely on technologies developed by Arm. The project may affect Arm's plans to create reference chip designs for various workloads. It is separate from any collaboration with OpenAI.

tomshardware.com · 2 min

TLDR

PWAS WON'T REPLACE NATIVE IOS APPS

Supporting progressive web apps (PWAs) on iOS takes a lot of time and effort. While there is support for push notifications, there are a lot of missing features and other issues. This article discusses issues and bugs discovered when developing a PWA for iOS. Companies building PWAs on iOS should not expect them to come close to a native experience. Apple's choice to restrict PWA use in Europe is concerning.

app.campsite.co · 5 min