The Daily Index — Monday, January 13, 2025 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

SUPREME COURT LEANS TOWARD UPHOLDING LAW THAT COULD BAN TIKTOK

The Supreme Court seems likely to uphold the law that would ban TikTok in the US. A preliminary decision is expected within days. There remains some uncertainty on how the court will handle the case, especially with President-elect Donald Trump taking office a day after the deadline for the law to take effect. The court has the authority to temporarily block the law even if it ultimately rules against TikTok.

nbcnews.com · 5 min

TLDR AI

BERKELEY'S NOVASKY RELEASED SKY-T1

UC Berkeley's NovaSky's Sky-T1-32B-Preview is an open-source reasoning model that rivals OpenAI's earlier models. Training costed under $450 with full replicability.

novasky-ai.github.io · 9 min

TLDR Web Dev

PUSHING THE WHOLE COMPANY INTO THE PAST ON PURPOSE

In 2015, the author prevented a repeat of a previous system failure caused by a leap second by implementing "leap smearing." This involved subtly slowing down the company's internal time for 20 hours before the leap second, making it effectively one second behind the rest of the world. The author tested this method extensively using custom-built clocks and various systems.

rachelbythebay.com · 5 min

TLDR InfoSec

MEDUSIND BREACH EXPOSES SENSITIVE PATIENT DATA

Medusind has reported a data breach affecting over 360,000 customers, exposing medical, financial, and personal data following a December 2023 cyber incident. The company is offering affected individuals two years of credit monitoring and has implemented enhanced security measures.

infosecurity-magazine.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

HOW STABLECOINS MAKE PAYMENTS BETTER

Stablecoins may not currently offer cheaper payment options for most use cases, but they provide better infrastructure by creating a programmable, global, and instant layer above existing financial rails. As adoption grows, Stablecoins will reduce reliance on intermediaries, unlock new capabilities, and drive a transformative shift in the payments landscape, positioning them as the foundation of a new financial stack.

fintechbrainfood.com · 12 min

TLDR

ELON MUSK WANTS COURTS TO FORCE OPENAI TO AUCTION OFF A LARGE OWNERSHIP STAKE

One of Elon Musk's lawyers has called on the California and Delaware attorneys general to force OpenAI to auction off a large ownership stake. Musk has previously launched lawsuits to attempt to stop OpenAI from restructuring to a for-profit company. He co-founded the startup with Sam Altman and nine others in 2015. OpenAI has no plans for an auction.

arstechnica.com · 4 min

TLDR

JEFF BEZOS'S NEW GLENN ROCKET LAUNCH CANCELED AFTER HOURS OF DELAYS

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida was called off this morning after hours of delays. As tall as a 32-story building, the rocket was set to launch on January 10, but the launch was postponed due to choppy seas in the Atlantic Ocean where the booster is supposed to land. New Glenn is designed to carry larger satellites and other payloads than other rockets in operation today. Its success could inject competition into the rocket business, which is currently dominated by one company - SpaceX.

nytimes.com · 11 min

TLDR

MUSK SAYS NEURALINK IMPLANTED THIRD PATIENT WITH BRAIN DEVICE

Neuralink has implanted its brain-computer device into a third patient. The company has plans for up to 30 more implants this year. It currently has two studies for its devices, one which enables patients to control devices such as computers or smartphones with their minds and the other enables patients to control assistive robotic arms.

finance.yahoo.com · 1 min

TLDR

APPLE IS KILLING SWIFT

This article looks at how modern programming languages are governed and explains how Swift's dictatorial structure is uniquely terrible. Swift was originally a passion project by Chris Lattner, the senior director of dev tooling at Apple. The language has evolved into a complicated mess - it now has 217 keywords. While Apple is unambiguously the dictator of Swift, its incentives put the company at odds with the open-source community. The company's updates to the language show how much it doesn't care about the community.

blog.jacobstechtavern.com · 14 min