TikTok will argue its case before the Supreme Court today in a case
that will decide whether the government can ban the
platform
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TLDR
TOGETHER WITH [Modern Treasury] [4]
TLDR 2025-01-10
FREE WEBINAR: PAYMENTS AT SCALE 2025 - UNPACKING THE STATE OF
PAYMENT OPERATIONS REPORT (SPONSOR) [4]
$37tn in B2B payments is about to move from legacy rails to instant
payments. This means a big infrastructure shift is coming, and
companies would be wise to prepare.
Join Rachel Pike (COO, Modern Treasury) and Erin McCune (Senior
Partner, Bain & Company) for a live webinar, where they'll reveal key
data points [4] from Modern Treasury's latest State of Payment
Operations report.
On the agenda:
¨ Strategies used by money-moving companies to modernize payments infrastructure
¨ How leading companies leverage faster payment rails
¨ AI/automation applications in payments
Save your virtual seat [4]
¨
BIG TECH & STARTUPS
THE TIKTOK BAN HEADS TO THE SUPREME COURT TOMORROW. HERE'S WHAT TO
KNOW (4 MINUTE READ) [5]
TikTok will argue its case before the Supreme Court today in a case
that will decide whether the government can ban the platform if it
doesn't sever ties with China. The US government wants to ban TikTok
due to concerns about China's control over the app. TikTok says the
ban violates its First Amendment right to free speech and that the US government's security concerns are too vague and hypothetical to
justify an infringement of its rights. If TikTok is banned on January
19, people who don't already have the app on their devices will no
longer be able to download it from Google or Apple app stores. The law
also bars US internet hosting services and data-storage providers from supporting the app. There are workarounds, but they are limited.
X LAUNCHES GROK'S IPHONE APP IN THE US (1 MINUTE READ) [6]
xAI has released an iOS app for its Grok chatbot in the US. It can
perform the same functions as the chatbot built into the X app. The
company has been testing the app in a handful of countries since
December. There is no word on when it might come to Android. xAI is
also working on a dedicated website for Grok.
¨
SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY
A TALLER, HEAVIER, SMARTER VERSION OF SPACEX'S STARSHIP IS ALMOST
READY TO FLY (12 MINUTE READ) [7]
SpaceX plans to test Starship's payload deployment mechanism on its
seventh test flight, which could be launching as soon as January 13.
The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with
significant upgrades. In addition to testing the payload deployment
mechanism, SpaceX plans to fly multiple reentry experiments geared
towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy
booster. Details about the upgrades on the new generation ship are
available in the article.
BLUE ORIGIN'S FIRST ORBITAL LAUNCH NOW TARGETING SUNDAY (2 MINUTE
READ) [8]
Blue Origin is aiming to launch its first orbital rocket on Sunday.
The launch was delayed due to rough seas in the Atlantic, where the
company hopes to land its first stage booster on a ship. The rocket,
New Glenn, will carry a prototype of Blue Ring, a US Defense
Department funded spacecraft. The launch will mark Blue Origin's
long-awaited entry into the orbital launch market and escalate the
rivalry between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
¨
PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE
WHY AREN'T WE ALL SERVERLESS YET? (12 MINUTE READ) [9]
The industry pivot to serverless compute hasn't really happened
despite an appealing value proposition. Friction against serverless is
caused in part by fatigue from the last paradigm shift to
microservices. Caution in the industry is reasonable as a shift to
serverless will amplify the same type of challenges that were caused
by microservices, many of which still aren't fully resolved. The main
incentive for broad serverless is financial, not technical, it is
unlikely for someone from the engineering department to sponsor the
idea.
MY ROLE AS A FOUNDER CTO: YEAR SEVEN (11 MINUTE READ) [10]
Miguel Carranza, founder of RevenueCat, writes a post every year
looking back over the last twelve months. 2024 was a good year for
RevenueCat, possibly its best since 2020. While the journey was a lot
rockier than Carranza had imagined, it was clear the company succeeded
in its goals. The post discusses the company's performance last year,
the lessons it learned (on culture, hiring, company building, and
scaling as a founder), and its plans for the future.
¨
MISCELLANEOUS
THE NEW $30,000 SIDE HUSTLE: MAKING JOB REFERRALS FOR STRANGERS (14
MINUTE READ) [11]
There's a growing underground market connecting job seekers to
anonymous company insiders willing to help them get a foot in the
door. While a referral is not a guarantee of a job offer, it can
substantially improve the odds. There are several sites available that
let people get in touch with verified employees of their target
employer to discuss job referral opportunities. Many companies say
that this is completely fair practice, but others, like Google and
Goldman Sachs, disagree.
LINUX FOUNDATION BANDS TOGETHER CHROMIUM BROWSER MAKERS IN A
"NEUTRAL SPACE" (4 MINUTE READ) [12]
'Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers' is an initiative started by
the Linux Foundation that will provide funding and development support
for industry leaders, academia, developers, and the broader open
source community working on open Chromium projects. It will have an
open governance model based on transparency, inclusivity, and
community-driven development. Google has slowly loosened its control
over the Chromium project over the years, allowing outside developers
into its leadership, softening its stance on non-Google-derived
features, and opening up its 'Goma' development scheme for Chromium.
¨
QUICK LINKS
HOOGLEE AFTER GOOGLE: ERIC SCHMIDT LAUNCHES A NEW STARTUP TO COMPETE
WITH TIKTOK IN THE FIELD OF AI VIDEO (3 MINUTE READ) [13]
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt created an artificial intelligence
startup called Hooglee to change the AI video generation and social
media market.
BILLIONAIRE FRANK MCCOURT'S PROJECT LIBERTY BIDS FOR TIKTOK AHEAD OF
SUPREME COURT ARGUMENTS (2 MINUTE READ) [14]
Project Liberty is its partners plan to restructure TikTok to exist
on an American-owned platform that prioritizes users' digital safety.
SALESFORCE WILL HIRE NO MORE SOFTWARE ENGINEERS IN 2025, SAYS MARC
BENIOFF (3 MINUTE READ) [15]
Salesforce's Agentforce and other AI technology have increased the productivity of its engineering teams by more than 30%.
WHAT SPOTIFY'S 55 MILLION US SUBSCRIBERS MEANS FOR PODCASTERS,
AUTHORS, AND MUSICIANS (8 MINUTE READ) [16]
Spotify has recently tweaked its platform to maximize subscription
sales and to shift the incoming money to different sets of creators on
the platform.
WHY AI PROGRESS IS INCREASINGLY INVISIBLE (7 MINUTE READ) [17]
The gap between the chatbots consumers use and the systems that
researchers are documenting is widening, making it harder for the
public and policymakers to gauge AI's real progress.
ANTIREZ (SALVATORE SANFILIPPO) ON TECHNICAL BLOGGING (4 MINUTE READ)
[18]
antirez, the author of Redis, who has been blogging extensively for
over 20 years, discusses why he blogs, what lessons he's learned from
blogging, the role of AI in blogging, and more.
Congrats to Mt Front [19] and Doug Dockery [20] for referring 5
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