OpenAI talks $500B valuation 💰, Silicon Valley's grind era 💼, against lockfiles 👨‍💻

OpenAI is in early talks about a potential sale of stock for current and former employees at a valuation of about $500 billion ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2025-08-07 After 21 years, Basecamp remains the most refreshingly straightforward way to manage projects (Sponsor) There's big investor money in project management. That's a big incentive to make bloated, barely-useable products — designed to tick boxes in a procurement manager's checklist. Basecamp has been bucking this trend for more than two decades. It's famously no-nonsense, effective, and reliable. It's designed for smaller, hungrier businesses who just need to get things done. And it's still going strong — without spending hundreds of millions of VC dollars on marketing. No superbowl ads. No tacked-on AI. Just the features you need to manage projects — from chat (bye bye Slack) to Kanban to docs. Get started for free 📱 Big Tech & Startups OpenAI in Talks for Share Sale at $500 Billion Valuation (5 minute read) OpenAI is in early talks about a potential sale of stock for current and former employees at a value of about $500 billion. Investors have approached OpenAI about buying some of the employee shares. If the deal goes ahead, OpenAI's on-paper price would rise by roughly two-thirds. The company expects to reach 700 million active weekly users this week, up from 500 million at the end of March. Instagram takes on Snapchat with new 'Instagram Map' (4 minute read) Instagram's new map feature lets users share their most recent active location with others and discover location-based content. The feature also allows users to leave short messages on the map for others to see. Location sharing is off by default in Instagram Map, and users' locations only show up when they open the app, so it doesn't provide real-time location updates. The new feature has launched in the US and will be available globally soon. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes (10 minute read) One of the most iconic problems in computer science is finding the shortest path from a specific starting point in a network to every other point. A team of researchers has devised a new algorithm that solves the problem without sorting, and it runs faster than any algorithm that does, including Dijkstra's algorithm. The new algorithm's runtime breaks the previous sorting barrier, and it can likely be streamlined to run even faster. This article tells the story of how the algorithm was developed. Inside CHSN01: China's high-strength steel powering next-gen fusion reactors (6 minute read) Fusion projects such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) rely on 316LN or JK2LB cryogenic stainless steels, which hold up well at liquid-helium temperatures, but their yield strength limits the magnetic field of ITER at 11.8 tesla and forces a large, expensive machine design. Chinese developers created CHSN01 (China High-Strength, Low-Temperature Steel No. 1) to withstand 20 Tesla fields and 1.3 GPa combined electromagnetic stress while still stretching about 30% before breaking. It keeps those properties after 60,000 on/off cycles, the lifetime workload of China's Burning-Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak (BEST). CHSN01 can be used in MRI scanners, particle accelerators, maglev trains, and even quantum-computing dilution refrigerators - swapping in a stronger and tougher steel could shrink magnet footprints and extend service intervals across the board. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science Code, Certify, Connect (Sponsor) Join thousands of fellow developers, engineers, and technologists for hands-on labs, open source tooling, and real-world certifications at IBM TechXchange 2025. 🔥 Only 1,000 Full Conference Passes available for purchase at 20% off with exclusive perks—offer ends August 15 or when sold out. → Register today We shouldn't have needed lockfiles (5 minute read) The concept of lockfiles is unnecessary, and it complicates things for no reason. Maven, a 20-year-old Java library ecosystem, has never once needed a lock file. Dependency managers can and are working without lockfiles just the same. comptime.ts (GitHub Repo) comptime.ts is a simple TypeScript compiler that enables compile-time evaluation of expressions marked with 'comptime'. It can help optimize code by moving computations from run time to compile time. comptime should not be used for complex runtime logic, side effects, or non-deterministic operations. It is useful for computing constant values, generating static content, and optimizing performance-critical code. 🎁 Miscellaneous So Long to Tech's Dream Job (11 minute read) The world of tech is changing: long-term employees are reporting a completely different work environment from what they experienced years ago. Pay and bonuses are declining, as well as other perks, like a relaxed atmosphere and occasional fun office activities like Nerf gun fights. Tech behemoths have aged into large bureaucracies. While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction about cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance, or clamping down on employee debate. Paradigm Shifts and the Winner's Curse (28 minute read) The two most important companies of the last two decades of tech were Apple and Amazon, specifically AWS. Apple created the smartphone paradigm with the iPhone, and AWS' cloud platform enabled a universe of applications that ran everywhere. Microsoft and Nokia failed in the smartphone era because they both deluded themselves into thinking that their previous domination was an advantage. AI is a paradigm shift, just like mobile was. While the winners of the previous paradigm are not automatically fundamentally handicapped because of their previous successes, they need to be careful about making the wrong choices for years before it's too late. ⚡ Quick Links The Science Of Why 18M People Are Ditching Traditional Diets (Sponsor) Upgrade your health with Simple—an AI-powered weight loss app trusted by 18M+. No diets, no fluff. Just smart, science-backed coaching built for busy people. TLDR readers get 50% off → Take the quiz Musk says Tesla is training an upgraded Full Self-Driving model which could be released next month (2 minute read) The new Full Self-Driving model has around 10 times the parameters as the previous version, with a big improvement to video compression loss. We'd be Better Off with 9-bit Bytes (4 minute read) This post looks at what would be different if the world had gone with 9-bit bytes instead of 8-bit bytes. LLM Inflation (3 minute read) Large language models can be used to turn short, simple content into something long and seemingly profound - this should make us consider why we find ourselves inflating content. New Apple TV Still Launching This Year (1 minute read) Apple is highly likely to introduce a new Apple TV, with a newer chip, support for Wi-Fi 7, and an Apple-designed Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chip, later this year. Multi-Door Products (6 minute read) Multi-door products offer multiple, distinct entry points to the same core value, allowing products to serve more users without adding new features. We replaced passwords with something worse (1 minute read) Many services use a login method that involves sending a 6 digit code to users for login, which causes many accounts to be stolen. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/7c97ce4b/ Track your referrals here. 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