TikTok signs deal 📱, GPT-5.2-Codex 🤖, 2025 tech salaries 💰

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 ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2025-12-19 If you're selling online, LLM visibility is no longer optional (Sponsor) Like it or not, ChatGPT and Perplexity are part of your customers' buying journey. Does SEO still matter? Sure. Is it the entire picture? No. Semrush One tracks brand mentions across AI search platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode) alongside traditional SEO. You get one dashboard for everywhere customers can (or can't) find you, tracking 213M+ prompt and 27.6B+ keywords. Special offer for TLDR >> 30% off through Dec 31 (Discount is for all Semrush One plans. Must be a new customer.) 📱 Big Tech & Startups TikTok signs agreement to create new US joint venture, memo says (3 minute read) 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) 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) 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) 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 (Sponsor) 95% of AI pilots fail, yet executives are under pressure to move quickly. This exclusive course from You.com, featuring Field CTO Adam Oliner, provides a roadmap to transform your organization 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. Introducing GPT-5.2-Codex (9 minute read) 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) 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) 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) 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) Only around 9% of readers end up finishing long posts. Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work (5 minute read) 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) 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) Refusing to change your prior after you see the data often leads to tragedy. The missing OS (7 minute read) 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) Anthropic designed an AI-powered vending machine to see what happens when an AI agent is given autonomy, money, and human colleagues. 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. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. 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