The Daily Index — Wednesday, January 15, 2025 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

TIKTOK PREPARING FOR U.S. SHUT-OFF ON SUNDAY

TikTok is planning to shut off its app for US users on Sunday. The federal law banning the app only mandates a ban on new downloads - existing users will still be able to use the app for some time. Users will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban. TikTok plans to give users the option to download all of their data so they can take a record of their personal information with them.

yahoo.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

RED HAT ACQUIRES NEURAL MAGIC

Neural Magic is one of the main contributors to the vLLM project. It has also done great work in sparse inference technologies.

redhat.com · 6 min

TLDR Web Dev

MILLIONS OF ACCOUNTS VULNERABLE DUE TO GOOGLE'S OAUTH FLAW

A flaw in Google's "Sign in with Google" OAuth allows attackers to access accounts of former employees at defunct startups by purchasing the company's domain. This vulnerability affects millions of Americans, granting access to sensitive data across various SaaS platforms like Slack, Notion, and HR systems containing social security numbers. Google is currently working on a fix.

trufflesecurity.com · 6 min

TLDR InfoSec

SCHOLASTIC EDUCATION GIANT BREACHED

A hacker going by the moniker Parasocial disclosed that they stole 8M records from Scholastic. The records contain a mix of names, email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses with a total of over 4.2M unique emails. The hacker stated that they gained access via a compromised employee and don't plan to make the data public.

dailydot.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

CRYPTO DERIVATIVES GIANT DERIBIT ATTRACTS BUYERS FOR POTENTIAL ACQUISITION

Deribit, a leading crypto derivatives exchange, is exploring strategic opportunities after attracting acquisition interest as its valuation potentially exceeds $5 billion. While the firm clarified it is not officially for sale, it has engaged FT Partners for advisory services.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 1 min

TLDR

CHATGPT BECOMES MORE SIRI-LIKE WITH NEW SCHEDULED TASKS FEATURE

OpenAI's new Tasks feature for ChatGPT allows users to direct the chatbot to send reminders or to generate responses to specific prompts at certain times. It is now available to Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers. ChatGPT will sometimes suggest tasks, but they won't go into effect unless the user approves them. Users can make changes to assigned tasks through the chat conversation or through a new Tasks section of the app. There is currently a 10-task limit.

arstechnica.com · 3 min

TLDR

BOOM XB-1 PUSHES THE SOUND BARRIER BEFORE SUPERSONIC FLIGHT

The Boom Supersonic XB-1 prototype reached a transonic speed of Mach 0.95 during Test Flight 11 on January 10. Transonic speed is when some areas of the airflow over the airframe exceed the speed of sound. During the flight, the XB-1 was subjected to dynamic pressures of up to 383 Knots Equivalent Air Speed, which is a pressure greater than what it would experience when flying supersonic at Mach 1.1. The company has now completed 11 test flights, each incrementing to reach supersonic speed.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 3 min

TLDR

2025 WILL SEE US CLOSER TO A WOOLLY MAMMOTH COMEBACK

Colossal Biosciences, a company that aims to bring back extinct species, says that it expects the first woolly mammoth calves to be born within the next three years. The company plans to start with the birthing of small mammals outside of the womb and then work up to the birthing of elephants, which will pave the way for mammoth births. While Colossal doesn't work on human applications for its technology, it has acknowledged the potential of its technology for use in IVF clinics. Colossal also plans to bring back the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo - its long-term goal is to work with countries all over the world to bring back extinct species and protect endangered animals.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min

TLDR

WHAT'S INVOLVED IN GETTING A "MODERN" TERMINAL SETUP?

A modern terminal needs to have multiline support for copy and paste, infinite shell history, a useful prompt, 24-bit color, clipboard integration, good autocomplete, colors in ls, themes, automatic terminal fixing, key bindings, and the ability to use the scroll wheel. This article discusses how to implement all these features into a terminal. It explains why it makes certain recommendations and how the setup benefits developers. There is no perfect way to configure things in the terminal to make it compatible with every single other thing, so developers need to try things out, figure out a locally stable state that works for them, and accept that new tools might disrupt their workflow.

jvns.ca · 11 min