The Daily Index — Friday, September 26, 2025 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

TRUMP APPROVES TIKTOK DEAL THROUGH EXECUTIVE ORDER, VANCE SAYS BUSINESS VALUED AT $14 BILLION

President Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday approving a proposal that could keep TikTok alive in the US. The deal would involve creating a new joint-venture company that will oversee TikTok's US business. China has yet to approve the terms. No representatives from ByteDance were present at the signing, and the company has not acknowledged that a transaction is taking place. There is no indication that the Chinese government has made changes to laws that would be necessary for a deal to take place.

cnbc.com · 4 min

TLDR AI

CHATGPT PULSE PREVIEW

ChatGPT Pulse is a new feature for Pro users on mobile that proactively delivers personalized research and updates via visual cards based on user chats, preferences, and connected apps.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 6 min

TLDR Web Dev

THE WEB'S MOST TOLERATED FEATURE

The CSS `zoom` property was a non-standard feature initially introduced by Internet Explorer. Despite its initial lack of standardization and quirks, `zoom` surprisingly ranked high in usage metrics due to a "hack" used to fix IE behavior. Eventually, developers and the CSS Working Group recognized the need for a standardized, layout-affecting zoom, leading to its formal specification and widespread support decades later.

bocoup.com · 7 min

TLDR Crypto

US SENATE TO HOLD HEARING ON CRYPTO TAXATION

The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing on October 1 to review how cryptocurrency should be taxed, reflecting the growing urgency around modernizing the US tax code for digital assets. The session comes as lawmakers debate exemptions for small, routine crypto purchases and broader reforms. Current IRS rules treat all crypto transactions as taxable events, even when no gains or losses occur.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 2 min

TLDR Product

THE END OF THE USER INTERFACE?

AI agents - and eventually quantum computing - are reshaping interfaces from visual control panels into conversational, trust-based, anticipatory experiences. To stay relevant, product developers must shift toward systems design, ethics, and intelligent interaction strategy.

uxplanet.org · 10 min

TLDR

SPACEX WANTS TO FLY ITS GIGANTIC STARSHIP DIRECTLY OVER FLORIDA

SpaceX has proposed a flight path for its Starship rocket that would see it fly across Florida skies. The route would seriously disrupt air traffic and raise the risk of debris falling onto populated areas. Starship's test flights have so far only taken the megarocket on suborbital trajectories. SpaceX is preparing the rocket to reach low Earth orbit and complete a full trip around the planet before returning for a landing attempt.

gizmodo.com · 4 min

TLDR

WORLD'S FIRST ‘BEHAVIOR TRANSPLANT' BETWEEN SPECIES ACHIEVED

Researchers from Nagoya University transferred the courtship behavior from one species of fruit fly to another by manipulating a single gene to create new neural connections. While both species of fly belong to the same family, they have distinct neural circuits that drive very different mating behaviors. The achievement was the culmination of nearly a decade's work by several members of the Japanese team. It is the first-ever example of humans manipulating a single gene to transfer foreign behavior to another species.

newatlas.com · 5 min

TLDR

THE REASON GENE EDITING HASN'T TRANSFORMED HUMAN HEALTH IS THAT CURRENT GENE EDITING TECHNOLOGIES LIKE CRISPR ARE VERY LIMITED

Scientists at the Arc Institute have developed a new DNA editing technology that can seamlessly write massive changes into the right place in the human genome. Bridge RNAs in bacterial 'jumping genes' allowed the scientists to make safe and arbitrary changes to every nucleotide within (up to) a 1 million base pair sequence in human DNA. They can be used to correct disease-causing DNA repeats in Friedreich's ataxia, Huntington's, and other repeat expansion disorders.

threadreaderapp.com · 2 min

TLDR

POSTGRESQL 18 RELEASED!

PostgreSQL has a new I/O subsystem that improves performance for workloads of all sizes. Other features include virtual generated columns, a database-friendly uuidv7() function, and easier integration with single-sign-on systems. The release makes major-version upgrades less disruptive. Details about the new features are available in the article.

postgresql.org · 5 min