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HOW HAVE UX JOB TITLES CHANGED IN THE LAST 15 YEARS

HOW DUOLINGO USES AI TO ENHANCE ITS USER EXPERIENCE

ARE COLLABORATION TOOLS OVERWHELMING YOUR TEAM?

Collaboration technology overload can drown employees in choices, leaving them feeling helpless. The irony is that by constraining those choices, adding frustrating obstacles to adopting yet another collaboration technology, and taking control away from individuals, employees can feel more in control of their work.

VISA AND MASTERCARD AND REPORTEDLY INCREASING CARD FEES

These changes would increase the interchange fees merchants need to pay when a consumer or business uses a card to make a purchase. For low margin businesses, this is a big deal.

SAAS IPO WINDOW INFLECTION

In honor of Klaviyo’s recent IPO filing, the first SaaS IPO in almost two years, here’s an interesting breakdown on the shared characteristics of companies that previously opened dormant SaaS IPO windows.

MEASURING DEVELOPER PRODUCTIVITY? A RESPONSE TO MCKINSEY

This is the first of a two part series from Gergely that explores a response to McKinsey’s recent “solution” to measuring developer productivity at your organization. We’ll link part two in our next addition.

THE THREE PHASES OF THE CEO

As a CEO, you quickly evolve from building a product and managing a company to managing people. This shift from building a product to focusing on sales and then hiring and scaling your team requires you to evolve how you govern your time and inputs.

REMINDER, YOU DON’T WORK FOR YOUR CALENDAR

Your calendar shouldn’t be a diary of someone else’s agenda. Audit your calendar on a regular basis and map out what gives you energy and what takes it away. Constantly prune meetings that do the latter.

NARANJO

This discussion dives into the importance of working at a company where everyone is equally passionate about doing great work and where the value of the People function is recognized. Culture is less about pizza parties and more about being bought into collective success.

THE INTERNET DEMANDS GREATNESS

The internet is loud and chaotic. An individual’s attention is being pulled in more directions than any generation before us. To stand out and win that attention, you increasingly need to be exceptional.

MCKINSEY DIGITAL’S GUIDE TO DIGITAL EXCELLENCE

What separates top-performing teams from those that are just starting out? Well, McKinsey breaks it down into a four-step process that sees a would-be rockstar set the foundations of their culture, organize teams around user needs, invest in appropriate technology to support their operations, and empower teams to be autonomous.

BELIEF EXISTS IN THE ABSENCE OF PROOF

As founders, belief is an internal compass we use to guide us to new realities that don’t yet exist.

WE ANALYZED MILLIONS OF CHATGPT USER SESSIONS

This article discusses data around OpenAI and ChatGPT traffic. OpenAI traffic has declined around 29% since May. Around 29% of ChatGPT prompts are related to programming, while education accounted for around 10% of all use cases. Other use cases include writing assistance, content creation, and creative ideation. Charts showing data on how people use ChatGPT are available.

JAPAN’S CYBERSECURITY AGENCY ADMITS IT WAS HACKED FOR MONTHS

Japan's National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) has confirmed that it was hacked for as long as nine months. The Chinese military is suspected to be behind the breach, which was discovered in June 2023. Email conversations were exposed to unauthorized parties, and there were also "suspicious phone calls and emails" from people posing as employees of Japan's NISC.

HACKERS FORCE SHUTDOWN OF TWO KEY ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORIES

The International Gemini Observatory, a key player in global astronomical research, has temporarily halted astronomical operations following a cyberattack. The culprits and their motives remain unknown.

500K IMPACTED BY DATA BREACH AT FASHION RETAILER FOREVER 21

Fashion retailer Forever 21 has started informing more than 500,000 individuals that their personal information was compromised in a data breach earlier this year. There are suggestions that Forever 21 engaged in communication with the attackers and that a ransom might have been paid.

AND DATA THEFT

An open-source .NET-based information stealer malware dubbed SapphireStealer is being used by multiple entities to enhance their capabilities and spawn their own bespoke variants. This blog post dives into how this malware operates, which organizations seem to be using it to steal data, and the different variants that have been brought to light.

ISOLATION FRAMEWORK

The blog post covers the basics of Windows containers, breaks down its file system isolation framework, reverse-engineers its main mini-filter driver, and details how it can be utilized and manipulated by a bad actor to bypass EDR products in multiple domains.

USING LLMS TO REVERSE JAVASCRIPT VARIABLE MINIFICATION

A blog post introducing a technique to reverse minified JS using LLMs while keeping the semantics intact. The technique involves utilizing webcrack, plugins that reverse lossless minification, and then having an LLM generate a name for the variable based on its function in the code.

AUTOMATE GOVERNANCE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Fianu Labs raises $2 million in seed funding to bring governance to every software release. It does this by maintaining a continuous audit trail of every code change from creation to release.

X64DBG

An open-source user mode debugger for Windows. Optimized for reverse engineering and malware analysis.

TFSEC

tfsec is a static analysis tool for Terraform code. tfsec identifies and provides possible fixes for misconfigurations in Terraform code. It is highly configurable and can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines.

HOW THE FBI NUKED QAKBOT MALWARE FROM INFECTED WINDOWS PCS

This article goes in-depth about how the FBI nuked Qakbot malware from infected Windows PCs. The FBI dismantled the Qakbot botnet by seizing the attacker's server infrastructure and creating a special removal tool that uninstalled the Qakbot malware from infected devices. Qakbot was distributed through phishing campaigns that utilize a variety of lures, including reply-chain email attacks.

MALWAREBYTES LAYS OFF 100 EMPLOYEES AHEAD OF BUSINESS SPLIT

Cybersecurity giant Malwarebytes this week laid off 100 employees as it prepares for a major restructuring that will see the business split into two.

BARRACUDA THOUGHT IT DROVE 0-DAY HACKERS OUT. IT WAS WRONG

Although Barracuda believed they drove out the Chinese state hackers who accessed their Email Security Gateway, it now appears they were able to evade the expellers.

PROGRAM

Apple is inviting researchers to join the iPhone Security Research Device Program, which allows them to work with Apple directly in discovering vulnerabilities while still receiving bounty payments.

UTILITIES

The DoE has launched a competition for rural utility providers to receive $8.9 million in aid for improving cyber defenses. The program is split into three phases where utilities will describe the resources they need, plan how to acquire and implement those resources, and then implement them. The deadline for the first phase is November 29.

ALMOST HALF OF GEN Z CAN RECALL YOUTUBE ADS

YouTube is the dominant platform for Gen Z advertising, with 60% saying they watch ads rather than skip them. 45% of teens can recall an ad they’ve seen on YouTube, which is twice as likely than on TikTok.

GOOGLE INTRODUCES NEW LIMITED ADS SERVING POLICY

In order to combat scams and misleading ads, Google Ads will limit the reach of campaigns targeting specific brands from advertisers that do not have a track record of good behavior. Google will also gauge trustworthiness based on user feedback, advertising history, and completion of identity verification.

HOW MERRIAM-WEBSTER PERSONIFIES A DICTIONARY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Merriam-Webster’s X account is more entertaining than you would expect from a dictionary. In this interview, John Sabine, Social Director for Merriam-Webster, discusses why brand accounts should feel alive, make content they’d enjoy, and include humor that aligns with the brand itself.

BUSINESSES

Doordash’s new technology takes delivery orders over the phone using AI, which may seem like a step back from online ordering. A company’s goal is to meet the customer where they are and make their transaction as convenient as possible. All brands should consider if their purchase flows address the preferences of all potential customers.

SUBSTACK RELEASES AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION TOOL

Substack now has an AI tool to create a clean transcript of your podcast episode or narration without having to do anything more than click a button, which can then be posted on social media.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEAD

This think-piece sheds light on user fatigue with social platforms and how people are reverting back to an old-school way of interacting - via smaller and hyper-specific communities. This presents a problem for influencers and brands since smaller and direct spaces are harder to penetrate.

THE WORLD

Amazon's ad business revenue has grown 22% year over year. The wealth of data and the strong reinforcing synergy with its marketplace and physical stores have marketers calling Amazon a “marketing machine” and not a retailer anymore.

THIS WORDPRESS CONTACT FORM BUILDER IS VULNERABLE TO HACKING

The Metform Elementor Contact Form Builder for WordPress has a security vulnerability. Authenticated attackers can obtain sensitive information about website form submissions, including first names. Websites using this feature should update the plugin to the latest version to prevent a security breach.

15 MOST COMMON TECHNICAL SEO ISSUES

The top technical SEO issues are 3XX redirects, HTTP to HTTPS redirects, and missing alt attributes - and all 3 are straightforward to fix.

REDDIT LAUNCHES AI-POWERED KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOL

Reddit is rolling out Keyword Suggestions – a new feature to boost its ad targeting capabilities. It uses machine learning to generate relevant keywords and then ranks each suggestion by monthly Reddit views while filtering out unsuitable content.

A GUIDE TO MIGRATING FROM WEBPACK TO VITE

HOW GITHUB REDUCES COSTS WITH UPGRADED CODESPACES

BUILDING PERFORMANT RAG APPLICATIONS FOR PRODUCTION

MEASURING DEVELOPER PRODUCTIVITY? A RESPONSE TO MCKINSEY, PART 2

UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPER BURNOUT: CAUSES, IMPACT, AND SOLUTIONS

IF YOU WANT TO ADDRESS TECH DEBT, QUANTIFY IT FIRST

PARTYKIT

PartyKit is an open source deployment platform for Al agents, multiplayer, and local-first apps, games, and websites.

DNUM

Dnum provides a small set of utilities to manipulate large numbers represented as a pair composed of a value (stored as a BigInt) and corresponding decimals. This structure makes it possible to handle large decimal numbers in an easy manner, without any loss of precision, and using an open structure that preserves flexibility.

WHY RUST IS THE MOST ADMIRED LANGUAGE AMONG DEVELOPERS

YES, YOU CAN MEASURE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER PRODUCTIVITY

AI OPERATED TECHNOLOGY

BRANCHES)

HOW I MOVED FROM REACT TO SVELTE