TikTok's US operations will soon be housed in a new joint venture
named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The company has signed agreements
with
Oracle


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TLDR 2025-12-19

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(ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode) alongside traditional SEO. You
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BIG TECH & STARTUPS

TIKTOK SIGNS AGREEMENT TO CREATE NEW US JOINT VENTURE, MEMO SAYS (3
MINUTE READ) [5]

TikTok's US operations will soon be housed in a new joint venture
named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The company has signed agreements
with Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. The deal's closing
date is on January 22. Oracle will serve as the 'trusted security
partner' in charge of auditing and validating that TikTok complies
with agreed-upon national security terms.

WARNER DEMANDS LARRY ELLISON'S PERSONAL GUARANTEE IN PARAMOUNT BID (6
MINUTE READ) [6]

Warner has urged shareholders to reject Paramount's hostile takeover
bid due to concerns about the financing. Paramount is using an Ellison
family trust to backstop the deal - Warner wants Larry Ellison to give
a stronger personal guarantee that he is fully committed to the bid.
Paramount isn't likely to raise its bid. Instead, it is engaging with shareholders and gathering feedback on its tender about what it needs
to do.

¨

SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

THE INSIDE STORY OF SPACEX'S HISTORIC ROCKET LANDING THAT CHANGED
LAUNCH FOREVER (60 MINUTE READ) [7]

SpaceX launched the Orbcomm-2 mission on an upgraded version of its
Falcon 9 rocket on December 21, 2015. That night, the company landed
the first stage for the first time. This article tells the inside
story of the landing, starting with the disintegration of a Falcon 9
rocket in June 2015, the first time a Falcon 9 had been lost in
flight.

TRUMP COMMITS TO MOON LANDING BY 2028, FOLLOWED BY A LUNAR OUTPOST
TWO YEARS LATER (5 MINUTE READ) [8]

President Donald Trump signed an executive order outlining NASA's
policy objectives for the next three years a couple of hours after a
judge formally swore Jared Isaacman as the agency's administrator. The executive order states that the country must pursue a space policy
that will extend the reach of human discovery, secure the nation's
vital economic and security interests, unleash commercial development,
and lay the foundation for a new space age. There are no concrete
plans to send humans to Mars in the document. There's also a lack of
reference to space science. An overview of the contents of the
executive order is available in the article.

¨

PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

GO FROM HYPE TO VALUE. UNLOCK GENAI ROI WITH THIS EXCLUSIVE COURSE
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95% of AI pilots fail, yet executives are under pressure to move
quickly. This exclusive course [9] from You.com [9], featuring Field
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into a super-intelligent workforce. You'll learn how to identify where
AI can cut costs and drive value, and uncover strategies to scale
adoption beyond pilots.

Get access to the course here. [9]

INTRODUCING GPT-5.2-CODEX (9 MINUTE READ) [10]

GPT-5.2-Codex is a version of GPT-5.2 optimized for agentic
coding. It features improvements in long-horizon work through context compaction, stronger performance on large code changes, improved
performance in Windows environments, and significantly stronger
cybersecurity capabilities. The model is now available in all Codex
surfaces for paid ChatGPT users. OpenAI is working towards safely
enabling the model for API users in the coming weeks.

CLOUDFLARE'S LATEST OUTAGE PROVES DANGERS OF GLOBAL CONFIGURATION
CHANGES (8 MINUTE READ) [11]

Cloudflare's most recent outage was caused by a seemingly innocent
but global configuration change. The incident shows why the largest
systems in the world will have to implement safer ways to roll out
configs. Implementing gradual rollouts for all configuration files is
a lot of work, so it doesn't make sense unless the stability of
systems is more important than fast iteration. Smaller companies and
products probably won't need to implement staged configuration
rollouts because the infrastructure work slows down product
development.

¨

MISCELLANEOUS

LET A THOUSAND SOCIETIES BLOOM (50 MINUTE READ) [12]

One of the recurring ideological themes of the last few decades has
been the idea of creating entirely new communities, cultures, cities,
and even countries. In this world of a thousand nations, people would
be able to choose the communities that best fit their values. These
ideas inspired Vitalik Buterin to create Zuzalu, an experimental
pop-up city in Montenegro, in 2023. This post provides an updated
picture of the space, detailing what Buterin has learned since 2023,
and sketches out a world that the movement could be driving towards.

LEVELS.FYI WRAPPED (15 MINUTE READ) [13]

Levels.fyi started in 2017 to make compensation information clear and
easy to compare. Millions of professionals today rely on its shared
salary data to better understand pay across roles, companies, and
levels. This report details how compensation has evolved, the highest
paying companies, high-level compensation trends, the top paying
locations, and more.

¨

QUICK LINKS

DO LONG TECHNICAL POSTS WORK? (5 MINUTE READ) [14]

Only around 9% of readers end up finishing long posts.

YOUR JOB IS TO DELIVER CODE YOU HAVE PROVEN TO WORK (5 MINUTE READ)
[15]

Good taste in testing code is one of the skills that differentiates a
senior engineer.

MY LLM CODING WORKFLOW GOING INTO 2026 (28 MINUTE READ) [16]

This post provides tips and best practices for planning, coding, and collaborating with AI.

GOOD IF MAKE PRIOR AFTER DATA INSTEAD OF BEFORE (16 MINUTE READ) [17]


Refusing to change your prior after you see the data often leads to
tragedy.

THE MISSING OS (7 MINUTE READ) [18]

A Datacenter OS could transform an assembly of computers into one
computer.

WE LET AI RUN OUR OFFICE VENDING MACHINE. IT LOST HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS
(11 MINUTE READ) [19]

Anthropic designed an AI-powered vending machine to see what happens
when an AI agent is given autonomy, money, and human colleagues.

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If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email!

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Dan Ni [26] & Stephen Flanders [27]

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[4] https://www.semrush.com/lp/semrush-one/
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/18/tik-tok-us-sale-china.html?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[6] https://links.tldrnewsletter.com/E1P1x7
[7] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/ten-years-ago-spacex-turned-tragedy-into-triumph-with-a-historic-rocket-landing/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[8] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/trump-commits-to-moon-landing-by-2028-followed-by-a-lunar-outpost-two-years-later/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[9] https://about.you.com/from-hype-to-value-unlocking-roi-from-genai?utm_campaign=29503087-TLDR%20tech%20Q4&utm_source=external-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tldrtech_secondary_1219&utm_content=tldrtech_secondary_1219
[10] https://links.tldrnewsletter.com/AzoRbc
[11] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-pulse-cloudflares-latest-outage/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[12] https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/12/17/societies.html?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[13] https://www.levels.fyi/2025/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[14] https://lucalp.dev/do-long-technical-posts-work/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter [15] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/#atom-everything?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[16] https://addyo.substack.com/p/my-llm-coding-workflow-going-into?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[17] https://dynomight.net/prior/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[18] https://addxorrol.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-missing-os.html?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[19] https://links.tldrnewsletter.com/JJd0BW
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[27] https://twitter.com/SteveFlanders22
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