The Daily Index — Friday, May 31, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

TIKTOK PREPARING A US COPY OF THE APP'S CORE ALGORITHM

TikTok is working on a clone of its recommendation algorithm for US users. This may result in a version that operates independently of its Chinese parent, which may make it more palatable to lawmakers who want to ban it. Work on the project started before the bill to force a sale of TikTok's US operations began gaining steam in Congress this year. While the project could lay the groundwork for a divestiture of TikTok's US assets, the company has no plans to sell its US assets.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min

TLDR AI

PERPLEXITY PAGES

The Perplexity search engine has announced a new product for creating long-lasting research artifacts that are shareable and created with AI.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW WE USED ESBUILD TO REDUCE OUR BROWSER EXTENSION BUILD TIMES BY 90%

1Password's browser extension build system, which was over half a decade old, had become slow and inefficient. The team integrated esbuild into the production build system, which achieved a 90% reduction in build times.

blog.1password.com · 15 min

TLDR InfoSec

MYSTERY MALWARE DESTROYS 600,000 ROUTERS FROM A SINGLE ISP DURING 72-HOUR SPAN

Last October, there was an incident where over 600,000 routers belonging to an unnamed ISP were permanently bricked by malware over 72 hours. The malware, known as Chalubo, executed custom code that overwrote router firmware, rendering ActionTec T3200 models unusable with a red light.

arstechnica.com · 5 min

TLDR Crypto

BIDEN CAMPAIGN RAMPS UP CRYPTO INDUSTRY OUTREACH IN SURPRISING TONE 'SHIFT'

President Biden's re-election campaign has been reaching out to cryptocurrency industry leaders, seeking advice on crypto community and crypto policy. Biden has previously said he would veto the repeal of SAB 121, an SEC ruling making crypto asset custody complex for institutions to offer. This change in tone comes after the Trump campaign's pro-crypto rhetoric, which includes accepting crypto donations, protecting the right to self-custody, and anti-CBDC remarks.

theblock.co · 2 min

TLDR

SPACEX SENT STARSHIP TO ORBIT — THE NEXT LAUNCH WILL TRY TO BRING IT BACK

SpaceX's Starship's next test flight could be on June 5. The main objective of the test will be to evaluate the second stage's reusable heat shield as the vehicle tries to safely reenter the atmosphere for the first time. Composed of around 18,000 ceramic hexagonal tiles, the heat shield is vulnerable to even the loss of a single tile in most places. SpaceX still needs to receive a commercial launch license from the US FAA before the launch can move ahead.

techcrunch.com · 3 min

TLDR

‘SMART' ANTIBIOTIC CAN KILL DEADLY BACTERIA WHILE SPARING THE MICROBIOME

Gram-negative bacteria are often hardy, virulent, and quick to evolve resistance to antibiotics. Scientists have developed an antibiotic that kills pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria without impairing the gut microbiome. Still untested in humans, the compound's usefulness will depend on whether the bacteria will develop resistance to it in the long run. The time from an antibiotic's discovery to its approval for clinical use can be more than two decades, and there is not much money to be made with a novel antibiotic - around ten to twenty new Gram-negative antibiotics have been discovered in the past decade but none have gained approval from the US FDA.

nature.com · 3 min

TLDR

1-BIT LLMS COULD SOLVE AI'S ENERGY DEMANDS

Large language models are demanding more and more energy and computational power as they get better. These models need to shrink to become cheap, fast, and environmentally friendly. Researchers use a process called quantization to compress networks by reducing the precision of their parameters. They are now pushing the envelope to single bit, producing models that are faster and more energy efficient than their full-precision counterparts. The quantized versions of the models perform almost as well as their original versions.

spectrum.ieee.org · 3 min

TLDR

UNEXPECTED ANTI-PATTERNS FOR ENGINEERING LEADERS

Engineering teams consisting of a couple hundred people might cost $50 to $100 million a year in salary, so it is frustrating for executives when they hear that engineering is an art and that outcomes are unpredictable. The misalignment between engineering leaders and other executives often stems from a lack of flexibility - too many well-meaning engineering leaders go by the book of conventional leadership advice. Applying rules too universally turns them into anti-patterns. The key to effective leadership lies in figuring out which scenarios are worth deliberately defying conventional logic and when to simply follow the rules.

review.firstround.com · 32 min