The Daily Index — Tuesday, March 18, 2025 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

OPENAI TO START TESTING CHATGPT CONNECTORS FOR GOOGLE DRIVE AND SLACK

OpenAI plans to start testing ways for business customers to connect apps to ChatGPT. It will soon begin beta testing a new feature called ChatGPT Connectors that will allow ChatGPT Team subscribers to link workspace Google Drive and Slack accounts to ChatGPT so the chatbot can answer questions informed by content across those accounts. None of the data synced from the apps will be used for training. The company plans to expand the feature to other platforms like Microsoft SharePoint and Box in the future.

techcrunch.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

MISTRAL SMALL 3.1

Building on Mistral Small 3, this new model comes with improved text performance, multimodal understanding, and an expanded context window of up to 128k tokens. The model outperforms comparable models like Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini while delivering inference speeds of 150 tokens per second.

mistral.ai · 11 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW 40 LINES OF CODE SPED UP IOS END-TO-END TESTS BY OVER 50%

Wealthfront improved its iOS end-to-end test suite performance by over 50% with a 40-line code change. It identified that the default XCTWaiter polling mechanism caused bottlenecks due to its fixed 1-second interval between checks. Initially, its team sped things up by implementing a custom waiter with a shorter polling interval of 0.1 seconds, but this overwhelmed its CI machines. They fixed this by implementing exponential backoff for the polling interval to adapt to CPU load.

eng.wealthfront.com · 8 min

TLDR InfoSec

100 CAR DEALERSHIPS HIT BY SUPPLY CHAIN ATTACK

100 dealerships have been compromised through ClickFix code displaying fake reCAPTCHA prompts. When clicked, these prompts copied commands to users' clipboards and instructed them to execute these in Windows Run, ultimately installing SectopRAT malware.

securityweek.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

SEC COMMISSIONER HESTER PEIRCE ON THE NEW CRYPTO TASK FORCE

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, head of the new crypto task force launched under Chairman Mark Uyeda, plans to reshape the SEC's approach to digital assets by providing regulatory clarity and paths forward for the industry. The task force seeks to delineate SEC jurisdiction, offer short-term guidance, engage the public to address issues like tokenized securities, and ease industry frustrations with past enforcement-driven policies. Peirce emphasized Congress' role in clarifying stablecoin legislation and market structure, which could define regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC amid growing crypto adoption.

coindesk.com · 20 min

TLDR

IPHONE SALES AT RISK, BUT APPLE'S FIRST FOLDABLE IN 2026 WILL CHANGE THAT

Apple plans to launch its first foldable in 2026. Market expectations for iPhone sales are lower due to the delay of the new Siri experience, but the launch of a foldable may help the company recover from weak demand for iPhones. At least one new foldable is targeted to enter mass production in the second half of 2026. The first foldable iPhone may cost more than $2,000 and look like an iPad mini when unfolded. Apple is also working on a foldable device with an 18-inch screen that could end up becoming a new Mac or iPad.

9to5mac.com · 2 min

TLDR

BYD CONFIRMS NEW 1,000V ‘SUPER E-PLATFORM' CAPABLE OF FAST CHARGING 400KM IN 5 MINUTES

BYD has a new EV architecture that will enable charging parity with gas station visits. The Super E-Platform promises 1,000 kW charge speeds - double the current industry leaders. Most fast chargers on the market can only reach about 350 kW and many of them are usually more in the 200s. BYD has launched new Han L and Tang L models that use the new fast-charging platform. The company plans to implement over 4,000 ultra-fast charging stations around China.

electrek.co · 3 min

TLDR

RESEARCHERS ENGINEER BACTERIA TO PRODUCE PLASTICS

A team of Korean researchers has engineered a bacterial strain that can make useful polymers starting with nothing but glucose for fuel. The system can be tweaked to incorporate a huge range of chemicals into a variety of polymers. The resulting plastic can be tuned across many properties. There are still some issues, as the process doesn't allow complete control over what gets added into the polymer - the scientists couldn't stop enzymes from mixing random chemicals from the cells' metabolism into the polymers - and the polymers still need to be purified from the rest of the cell components before being used in manufacturing.

arstechnica.com · 4 min

TLDR

DISCORD LAUNCHES SDK TO HELP DEVELOPERS ENHANCE SOCIAL EXPERIENCES IN THEIR GAMES

The new Discord Social SDK is a free toolkit that allows developers to enhance their games' social and multiplayer experiences by leveraging Discord's social infrastructure. Developers will be able to improve their in-game experiences for players regardless of whether they have a Discord account. The social integrations include a unified friends list and deep-linked game invites that enable players to invite their friends to directly join their party or lobby. The SDK is compatible with C++, Unreal Engine, and Unity and supports Windows 11+ and macOS - support for console and mobile is coming.

techcrunch.com · 2 min