The Daily Index — Monday, May 5, 2025 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

WELCOME TO STARBASE: TEXAS HAS A NEW CITY HOME TO ELON MUSK'S SPACEX

A vote to decide whether to turn part of south Texas into a new city centered around Elon Musk's SpaceX passed with broad support, paving the way for a newly incorporated city made up almost exclusively of SpaceX employees and people connected to the company. The brand-new city, Starbase, covers about one and a half square miles at the southern tip of Texas in a coastal spot nestled against the Mexico border. It is home to SpaceX headquarters and where the company builds its boosters and engines and launches its Starship rocket on test flights. Having greater municipal control of the area could ease some of the bureaucracy and restrictions around SpaceX's tests and rocket launches.

nbcnews.com · 4 min

TLDR AI

OPENAI ADDRESSES CHATGPT SYCOPHANCY

After reports of overly agreeable behavior in GPT-4o, OpenAI has detailed plans for more transparent updates, a new opt-in alpha phase, and stricter behavior safety reviews.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 6 min

TLDR Web Dev

SEEKING AN ANSWER: WHY CAN'T HTML ALONE DO INCLUDES?

HTML doesn't have a native include feature similar to CSS' `@import` or JavaScript's `import`. There are numerous existing solutions for including HTML snippets, such as JavaScript, server-side directives, and static site generators, but none are pure HTML. This article explores the potential reasons for this, which include performance, security, and complexity concerns like circular dependencies.

frontendmasters.com · 22 min

TLDR InfoSec

WGET TO WIPEOUT: MALICIOUS GO MODULES FETCH DESTRUCTIVE PAYLOAD

Socket found three malicious Go modules with hidden code that can download payloads to wipe a Linux system's primary disk (/dev/sda), making it unbootable. Attackers exploited the decentralized nature of the Go ecosystem and confusion around namespace validity to disguise malicious modules as legitimate. The payloads executed commands that wiped disks, causing irreversible data loss and severe disruptions for affected organizations.

socket.dev · 5 min

TLDR Crypto

BITCOINERS BLAST ARIZONA GOVERNOR'S ‘IGNORANCE' AFTER BITCOIN BILL VETO

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act (SB 1025), rejecting a proposal to invest seized state funds in Bitcoin, citing concerns over "untested" assets. The move sparked backlash from Bitcoin advocates, including Senator Wendy Rogers and Anthony Pompliano, while crypto critic Peter Schiff expressed support.

cointelegraph.com · 2 min

TLDR

ERIC SCHMIDT APPARENTLY BOUGHT RELATIVITY SPACE TO PUT DATA CENTERS IN ORBIT

Eric Schmidt acquired Relativity Space to have the capability to launch a significant amount of computing infrastructure into space. Schmidt appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during a hearing in April and spoke about the need for more electricity to power data centers to facilitate the computing needs for AI development and applications. Space-based data centers would be powered by solar panels and be able to radiate heat into the vacuum of space. Relativity's Terran R will be capable of launching 33.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode and 23.5 tons with a reusable first stage.

arstechnica.com · 3 min

TLDR

WORLD FIRST: JAPAN CLAIMS NEW DRONE CAN INDUCE LIGHTNING STRIKES

Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group claims to have created a drone that can induce and guide lightning strikes. The technology could theoretically be used to protect cities and infrastructure from lightning damage. A wire is attached to the drone - when a switch is flicked, a surge of electrical energy runs through the wire, grounding the drone electrically. This allegedly increases the strength of the drone's surrounding electric field, triggering and attracting a lightning strike. A video that explains how the technology works is available in the article.

sciencealert.com · 4 min

TLDR

AFTER 856 'SNAKE BITES', MAN'S BLOOD COULD UNLOCK UNIVERSAL ANTIVENOM

Venom expert Tim Friede has voluntarily injected himself with snake venom 856 times across 18 years. This has led to the creation of the most widely effective snake antivenom on record. The antivenom protected mice from the venom of 19 different snake species in lab experiments. Rigorous clinical testing is required before the antivenom will be made available to humans. The researchers plan to conduct field trials of the antivenom to treat snake-bitten dogs in Australia.

sciencealert.com · 4 min

TLDR

APPLE AND ANTHROPIC REPORTEDLY PARTNER TO BUILD AN AI CODING PLATFORM

Apple and Anthropic have partnered to build a new version of Xcode that will use Anthropic's Claude Sonnet model to write, edit, and test code. Apple plans to roll out the software internally and hasn't decided if it will launch it publicly. The latest Claude models have been particularly popular for coding tasks.

techcrunch.com · 1 min