The Daily Index — Friday, June 7, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

SPACEX'S STARSHIP TOOK A BEATING, BUT HELD ON FOR FIRST RETURN FROM SPACE

SpaceX's Starship launched successfully and made a controlled splashdown for the first time on Thursday. The test fell short of total perfection, but it was still a large success. Two of the 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed and there was damage to the ship's thermal protection tiles and one of its control flaps. SpaceX has already test-fired the ship for the next test flight, and the booster could be hot-fired soon. The next test flight, which could happen within a couple of months, may involve an onshore landing.

arstechnica.com · 9 min

TLDR AI

QWEN 2 LAUNCH

Qwen 2 is a new flagship language model from Alibaba Cloud. It slightly surpasses Llama 3 70B on benchmark performance in English while being a better multilingual model.

qwenlm.github.io · 8 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW DEEP IS YOUR DOM?

Excessive DOM size in websites can negatively impact performance, especially on lower-end devices. Deeper DOM trees, while not affecting page load time significantly in a simple experiment, slow down rendering when combined with many elements and complex CSS. This is because the browser needs more time to calculate styles and update the positions of each element, which potentially blocks the main thread and makes the site unresponsive.

frontendatscale.com · 5 min

TLDR InfoSec

TIKTOK FIXES 0-DAY BUG USED TO HIJACK HIGH-PROFILE ACCOUNTS

TikTok has fixed a 0-day vulnerability that allowed attackers to take over accounts. The vulnerability required the attacker to send a DM to the victim and the victim to open the message but did not require any further interaction such as clicking links. TikTok has not given details as to the number of accounts that were compromised.

bleepingcomputer.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

ROBINHOOD TO BUY CRYPTO EXCHANGE BITSTAMP IN EFFORT TO EXPAND OUTSIDE THE U.S.

Robinhood has announced Robinhood Crypto's worldwide expansion with the acquisition of crypto exchange Bitstamp. The U.K.-based exchange, one of the biggest in Europe, was sold for $200 million cash and is expected to close in the first half of 2025. Robinhood hopes this purchase will help them attract institutional customers.

coindesk.com · 2 min

TLDR

NETFLIX'S LATEST REDESIGN AIMS TO SIMPLIFY YOUR HOMEPAGE

Netflix is testing a homepage redesign on its TV app that replaces the static tiles with boxes that extend when they're selected. It is also removing the menu that pops out from the left side of its homepage and replacing it with a more streamlined selection of options at the top of the screen. The new homepage will be tested among a small group of users to start and expanded to more members if it goes well.

theverge.com · 3 min

TLDR

MOST LIFE ON EARTH IS DORMANT, AFTER PULLING AN ‘EMERGENCY BRAKE'

Researchers have discovered a new hibernation factor called Balon. The protein is very common, being present in 20% of all cataloged bacterial genomes. Balon inserts itself into every ribosome in a cell, interrupting even active ribosomes in the middle of their work. Its mechanism is a reversible process. Unlike other hibernation factors, Balon can be inserted to stall growth and then quickly ejected.

quantamagazine.org · 11 min

TLDR

SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ULTRA-THIN BATTERY FOR SMART CONTACT LENSES THAT COULD BE CHARGED BY TEARS

Researchers have created an ultra-thin battery about 0.2 millimeters thick. Powered by a biocompatible saline solution, the battery is thin enough to fit inside a 0.5-millimeter contact lens. The battery can use the glucose in tears to power up. Its capacity and voltage are currently very low and insufficient for powering data storage or an internet connection.

cnbc.com · 3 min

TLDR

DOWN FOR LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES A MONTH: HOW AWS DEPLOYS CODE

AWS gives customers service credits if it fails to maintain 99.9% uptime. It uses automation to respond to issues - its Monthly Uptime Percentage commitment means there's no time for manual action at all. This article takes a look at how AWS achieves this feat. While some of its deployment processes can be hard to adopt without AWS' scale and maturity, most of the core principles can be applied by startups.

graphite.dev · 7 min