The Daily Index — Monday, April 28, 2025 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

WAYMO MIGHT BE WILLING TO SELL YOU A SELF-DRIVING CAR, SAYS SUNDAR PICHAI

Waymo's long-term business plans include the possibility of personal ownership. The company recently expanded testing to Japan and plans to introduce robotaxis in Austin this summer. Waymo previously floated the idea of selling self-driving cars when it made a deal with Chrysler in 2018 to build self-driving Pacifica minivans. Tesla also aims to release a personal self-driving car - it announced at an event last year that the Cybercab will be available by 2026 for $30,000.

theverge.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

DEEPSEEK-R2

DeepSeek has launched DeepSeek-R2, a multilingual and resource-efficient model positioned to challenge global AI leaders.

deepseek.ai · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

SMARTER SEARCH AT AIRBNB: HOW EMBEDDING-BASED RETRIEVAL WORKS

Airbnb improved its search system using Embedding-Based Retrieval, which represents both listings and search queries as vectors in a shared space to find relevant matches. The system used a two-tower model architecture, where one tower processes listing information and the other processes search query information to create embeddings that were compared to quickly narrow down results. Airbnb trained this model using contrastive learning, pushing similar queries and listings closer together while distancing dissimilar ones.

stacksweep.substack.com · 11 min

TLDR InfoSec

PLANET TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIAL SWITCH FLAWS RISK FULL TAKEOVER – PATCH NOW

Multiple Critical Vulnerabilities have been identified in Planet Technology's industrial switches. CVE-2025-46275 and CVE-2025-46271 allow complete control of the router, while CVE-2025-46273 reveals hard-coded communication credentials between the NMS and managed devices, enabling remote interception and configuration changes. There are also vulnerabilities affecting specific switches. Researchers also found lax security practices, including the use of default or weak credentials for MQTT and MongoDB.

hackread.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

SOLANA DEFI PROTOCOL LOOPSCALE HIT WITH $5.8 MILLION EXPLOIT TWO WEEKS AFTER LAUNCH

Solana-based DeFi protocol Loopscale suffered a $5.8 million exploit just two weeks after launch due to a flaw in the pricing mechanism of its RateX-based collateral. The team is collaborating with law enforcement to investigate the incident and recover funds while progressively restoring platform functionality following a temporary suspension of services.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 2 min

TLDR

AS COMPANIES BEGIN CIRCLING CHROME, GOOGLE CLAIMS NONE OF THEM CAN HANDLE ITS BROWSER LIKE IT DOES

Google claims that it is the only company capable of running Chrome effectively due to complex service integrations. Separating the browser from the company's servers could make some features unusable. Despite Google's claims, experts believe that a Chrome divestiture is technically feasible. There are many parties interested in buying Chrome, including OpenAI and Yahoo.

xda-developers.com · 1 min

TLDR

ROBOT DEXTERITY STILL SEEMS HARD

Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly capable as more and more companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the technology. Some are now being tested in the field to see if they can do useful work. Humanoid robots can now dance, run, and do flips, but while manipulation capabilities are improving, they still have a long way to go. While it's possible to automate any specific task, building a robot that can flexibly perform a variety of actions in a novel or highly variable environment is much harder.

construction-physics.com · 20 min

TLDR

CHONGQING, THE WORLD'S LARGEST CITY – IN PICTURES

Chongqing, China, is as big as Austria. With 34 million inhabitants, the city is the emblem of the fastest urban revolution on the planet. It has become a symbol of the Chinese ability to reshape the world. This article contains a gallery of images from all over the city showing sights like the Yangtze River, street food stalls, various shopping centers, and more.

theguardian.com · 4 min

TLDR

CHINA'S HUAWEI DEVELOPS NEW AI CHIP, SEEKING TO MATCH NVIDIA

Huawei's new Ascend 910D AI chip could be more powerful than Nvidia's H100, a popular chip used for AI training. It is still in early development and still needs to be tested to assess performance. The company will receive its first batch of samples of the processor as soon as late May. Huawei faces challenges in producing its chips - it has been cut off from TSMC and China's closest alternative is blocked from purchasing the most advanced chip-making equipment.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min