The Daily Index — Tuesday, February 24, 2026 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

ANTHROPIC ACCUSES 3 CHINESE COMPANIES OF HARVESTING ITS DATA

Anthropic claims that DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax used approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts to train their own chatbots. The process of distillation, where data from one AI system is used to train another, is common in the AI industry. However, Anthropic's terms forbid the practice and also do not allow its technologies to be used in China. Anthropic has called on government officials and other AI companies to help prevent Chinese companies from distilling American models.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min

TLDR AI

ANTHROPIC REPORTED LARGE-SCALE DISTILLATION ATTEMPTS

Anthropic accused DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax of creating over 24,000 fake accounts to generate roughly 16 million Claude interactions aimed at replicating its agentic reasoning, tool use, and coding capabilities.

anthropic.com · 4 min

TLDR Dev

SPRITES ON THE WEB

In 2015, Twitter used image sprites to create its animated "Like" button, a technique borrowed from video games to run complex animations on low-end devices. Sprites work by combining all frames of an animation into a single image, called a spritesheet, then using CSS properties like `object-fit: cover` and `object-position` within an img tag to display each frame sequentially. The `steps()` timing function in CSS is necessary for advancing through these frames discretely, avoiding smooth transitions and creating a stop-motion effect.

joshwcomeau.com · 13 min

TLDR InfoSec

DISCOVERY & ANALYSIS OF CVE-2025-29969

CVE-2025-29969 is a remote code execution vulnerability in the MS-EVEN RPC protocol — enabled by default on Windows 11 and Windows Server 2025 — that allows low-privileged users to write arbitrary files remotely by exploiting a TOCTOU flaw in the EventLog backup function, effectively bypassing default C$ share limitations. The attack chain combines a hidden CreateFile primitive for remote file/directory existence checks with an arbitrary write primitive achieved by swapping an attacker-controlled EVTX file on a remote SMB share between header validation and backup, enabling code execution via Startup folder batch scripts or DLL hijacking. Microsoft patched the TOCTOU write primitive in May 2025, though the recon capabilities enabling remote file enumeration across domain-joined machines remain unpatched.

safebreach.com · 13 min

TLDR Crypto

STABLECOINS COULD CREATE $1T IN NEW T-BILL DEMAND BY 2028

Standard Chartered projects stablecoin market cap could reach $2 trillion by 2028, generating $0.8 to $1 trillion in incremental demand for short-term US Treasury bills as regulated issuers accumulate high-quality liquid assets under frameworks like the GENIUS Act. If realized, that demand could allow the US Treasury to shift issuance toward bills and potentially suspend 30-year bond auctions for up to three years.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min

TLDR

SPACEX, OPENAI, AND ANTHROPIC IPOS: A $3 TRILLION STRESS TEST

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are set to IPO at an unprecedented scale. Typical IPOs offer 15% to 25% of their shares to public markets, which creates enough liquidity for price discovery while allowing founders and early investors to maintain control. At standard float percentages, these three companies need to raise $432 billion to $576 billion from public markets in a single quarter. The entire US IPO market raised $469 billion between 2016 and 2025. It is likely these companies will debut with smaller floats.

tomtunguz.com · 2 min

TLDR

2026 GEOTHERMAL UPDATE

The biggest projects in geothermal started construction around 18 months ago. The industry executed well enough to get a shot at true commercial-scale deployments. The next few years will determine if the wave of projects can lead to the success metric of '10% of electricity generation'. While the first version of the technology seems possible, subsequent versions and improvements that lead to scalability will be much more challenging. The leading companies are still going strong, which is promising.

austinvernon.site · 6 min

TLDR

SCENT, IN SILICO

Attention has started turning to using AI to probe the possibility of digitizing smell. Researchers hope that the ability to program smell will illuminate the many mysteries of olfaction. Digital scent could have many practical and quite profitable applications. This article looks at the state of the technology and introduces the various possible avenues for research.

asimov.press · 35 min

TLDR

THE ENGINEERINGIFICATION OF EVERYTHING

The line between technical and non-technical work is being redrawn. The winners will be the ones who think like builders. Non-technical people should try to take on more 'engineering' tasks as AI makes tools more powerful and accessible. Engineers should use the same tools to turn themselves into full-stack shipping machines. Companies are investing billions to make engineers more powerful, so take advantage of that investment.

newsletter.posthog.com · 7 min