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PRODUCT FIDELITY

This founder noticed his apps still take 2-3 months to build, same as before AI tools - the initial build is faster, but the "missing details" eat up all the saved time.

KEEP YOUR IT TALENT HAPPY BY SIMPLIFYING WHAT SURROUNDS THEM.

Learn how to kill the chaos and grunt work by moving to a converged, cloud-native SASE platform. Free your teams to build and grow instead

of babysitting point products. HERE'S THE PLAN.

ORANGE BELGIUM DISCLOSES DATA BREACH IMPACTING 850,000 CUSTOMERS

Attackers breached Orange Belgium's IT systems in July, stealing personal data of 850,000 customers, including names, phone numbers, SIM card numbers, PUK codes, and tariff plans. The company detected the breach at the end of July and confirmed that passwords, emails, and financial information were not compromised. Orange Belgium identified the threat group responsible, but hasn't disclosed its identity. The company confirmed this was unrelated to China's Salt Typhoon attacks targeting telecoms worldwide.

APPLE PATCHES CVE-2025-43300 ZERO-DAY IN IOS, IPADOS, AND MACOS EXPLOITED IN TARGETED ATTACKS

Apple has patched CVE-2025-43300, a zero-day exploit in the ImageIO framework that causes memory corruption via malicious images. It affected iOS 18.6.2, iPadOS 18.6.2/17.7.10, and macOS Ventura 13.7.8, Sonoma 14.7.8, and Sequoia 15.6.1. This is Apple's seventh zero-day patch in 2025.

TPG TELECOM ESTIMATES 280K AFFECTED BY SUBSIDIARY BREACH

TPG Telecom's subsidiary iiNet suffered a data breach due to a stolen employee login, exposing the data of around 280,000 customers. The exposed information includes emails, phone numbers, addresses, and some setup passwords. The breach was contained, and affected customers are being notified.

RUSSIA-LINKED EUROPEAN ATTACKS RENEW CONCERNS OVER WATER CYBERSECURITY

Russian hackers probably sabotaged a Norwegian dam in April by remotely opening valves for four hours. Poland also reported a thwarted cyberattack that could have cut water to a major city. These attacks, linked to groups like Z-Pentest Alliance, show water facilities as vulnerable targets that could lead to bigger threats. Water utilities should boost cybersecurity with more funding, consulting, or free resources like the DEF CON Franklin project.

SPYVPN: THE GOOGLE-FEATURED VPN THAT SECRETLY CAPTURES YOUR SCREEN

FreeVPN.One, a popular VPN Chrome extension, secretly takes screenshots of users' browsing—including sensitive info—and uploads them to the developer's servers without consent. Despite claiming to protect privacy, it abuses permissions, uses encryption to evade detection, and provides misleading explanations, exposing security flaws in Chrome extensions.

“SCAMLEXITY” WE PUT AGENTIC AI BROWSERS TO THE TEST - THEY CLICKED, THEY PAID, THEY FAILED

As AI browsers like Comet take over online tasks, they're dangerously vulnerable to scams and prompt injections, sometimes making purchases or clicking harmful links without user awareness. Traditional fraud techniques and new AI-targeted tricks can easily fool agentic AI, making users pay the price. Security must be built into AI browsers from the ground up, not treated as an afterthought, to protect users in this new era of automated scamming.

CHALK

Chalk captures metadata at build time and can add a small 'chalk mark' (metadata) to any artifacts so that they can be identified in production. It can also extract chalk marks and collect additional metadata about the operating environment during this process.

BAMBOOZIEDR

BamboozIEDR is a comprehensive ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) event generation tool for testing and research purposes.

RINGREAPER

RingReaper is a post-exploitation agent for Linux that utilizes io_uring to minimize chances of being detected by EDR solutions.

COPILOT BROKE YOUR AUDIT LOG, BUT MICROSOFT WON'T TELL YOU

Microsoft's Copilot AI allowed users to access files in M365 without leaving audit log records, creating potential security and compliance risks. This was reported to Microsoft, which quietly fixed the issue but chose not to notify customers or issue a formal security alert. Any organization using Copilot before August 18 may have incomplete audit logs and might be unaware of what happened.

HACKERS WHO EXPOSED NORTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT HACKER EXPLAIN WHY THEY DID IT

Two ethical hackers accessed a North Korean state hacker's computer for months and uncovered evidence of cyberespionage and theft. They leaked their findings to support cyber defense and expose government-backed hacking activities, hoping their action would inspire more transparency and accountability in global cybersecurity.

YOU DON'T NEED A VENDOR TO AUTOMATE SECURITY QUESTIONNAIRES

Security questionnaires are a standard part of the security review process that can often be tedious, time-consuming, and mechanical for vendors' teams. Instead of buying a tool to handle this process, vendors can either build their own RAG or use Claude/ChatGPT. To use Claude/ChatGPT, prepare a folder with the relevant documents that would be included in a Trust Center, as well as some previously manually completed questionnaires.

PHARMACEUTICAL FIRM INOTIV DISCLOSES RANSOMWARE ATTACK. QILIN GROUP CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE HACK

Inotiv, a pharmaceutical research company, was hit by a ransomware attack attributed to the Qilin group that disrupted operations and potentially exposed data.

MICROSOFT REMINDS THAT WINDOWS 10 SUPPORT WILL END IN TWO MONTHS

Windows 10 support will end in October, after which the operating system will no longer receive security updates unless users purchase Extended Security Updates or upgrade to Windows 11.

EUROPOL SAYS QILIN RANSOMWARE REWARD FAKE

Europol has denied offering a $50,000 reward for help capturing Qilin ransomware members, calling the announcement in a Telegram group a scam.

👉 STEAL THE $15K/MONTH PLAYBOOK FOR FREE

CHATGPT IS SENDING LESS TRAFFIC TO WEBSITES, DOWN 52% IN A MONTH

Referral traffic from ChatGPT to websites has dropped steeply, with much of the citation share shifting towards Wikipedia and Reddit. Data from Profound shows that these answer-first platforms are now dominating ChatGPT citations, while branded websites that focus on conversions are losing visibility. The shift appears to be the result of OpenAI manually reweighting its retrieval system to prioritize direct, user-focused answers.

FROM ‘HI [NAME]' TO AI: HAS TARGETING CROSSED THE LINE?

Data remains the most valuable resource for platforms and advertisers, and AI is accelerating its application in more sophisticated ways. What began with basic personalization has now expanded into intelligence-grade analytics, where the line between consumer marketing and surveillance becomes increasingly blurred. Companies exploring these strategies must weigh competitive advantage against ethical responsibilities and consumer trust, as the long-term viability of data-driven marketing depends on finding the balance.

WIN REPORT: HOW TRUST SIGNALS TURNED SUSPICION INTO 16% MORE SIGNUPS

Party Hard Travel increased signups by 16% after addressing customer fears about scams and payment timing. Research showed that 11% of non-converting visitors cited scams as their top concern, while another 11% cited cost, which was more about coordinating group payments than affordability. To reduce these objections, the company added a benefits bar to its homepage that highlighted 40,000 annual bookings, a £30 deposit option, and a 4.8-star Trustpilot rating. The change reassured customers about legitimacy and flexibility, which led to more conversions.

5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BUILDING A REDDIT STRATEGY

Create or co-manage a brand subreddit to control your presence, and identify 3-5 relevant subreddits by researching priority keywords. Engage authentically for the first few weeks, following the 80/20 rule for brand mentions. Build relationships with active members and participate daily, aiming to comment early in new threads. This will help increase trust and visibility in search and AI results.

HOW OPENAI'S HEAD OF B2B MARKETING RESPONDS TO EMAILS

Dane Vahey uses ChatGPT with the Gmail Connector to streamline email responses. He prompts it to summarize the last 20 unopened emails and draft short, personalized replies. ChatGPT outputs a copy-paste-ready list labeled by subject line. The full prompt is included in the post.

LISTEN

Listen Labs is a customer research platform that automates the process of conducting and analyzing qualitative interviews. The platform recruits participants, conducts voice, video, or text-based interviews, and generates actionable insights within hours. It offers features such as automated report generation, persona creation, and theme identification.

CEO GPT

A CEO GPT can capture a CEO's voice, style, and key phrases to simplify communications. Teams can feed it transcripts from podcasts, YouTube videos, and social posts, along with internal briefing materials. It can quickly generate authentic quotes, press briefings, and other content without hours of manual work. The tool can be updated over time to reflect evolving messaging.

IS LINK BUILDING DEAD? (15 DATA STUDIES BEHIND THE CLICKBAIT)

Backlinks and referring domains still correlate strongly with higher Google rankings, with the top-ranking page having 3.8 times more backlinks than results in positions 2 to 10. Traditional link-building methods, such as guest posting and link insertions, have declined in value, as only 4.6% of sites offering such services were found to be high quality. Digital PR has become the most effective strategy, earning authoritative links and unlinked mentions that strengthen brand authority and visibility. AI Overviews cite top-ranking pages in over 90% of cases, but unlinked mentions are often more impactful than backlink volume for AI visibility. Link building is not dead, but it has shifted toward authority-focused digital PR and brand strategies rather than raw link quantity.

TOP QUESTION TO ASK IN A STARTUP MARKETING INTERVIEW

Ask a startup, “What must be true before spending on paid media?” to see if marketing fundamentals are truly in place.

THE 13 VIRAL MARKETING LAWS

These laws include the purple cow law, the 90-9-1 rules, and the golden hour law.

TIKTOK'S NEW AI MANDATE IS GETTING BACKLASH FROM BIG ADVERTISERS

While smaller sellers praise GMV Max for efficiency and ROI protections, larger brands are concerned about its black-box nature and limited reporting, which complicates broader marketing strategies.

pricing in 2025. Grab your free copy

BUILD VS BUY IN THE AGE OF AI

AI tools are empowering non-technical users to build solutions, but complex business rules keep SaaS essential. The future blends buying core systems with AI-driven, user-built customizations.

WHY YOUR AI PRODUCT NEEDS A DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE

AI products differ from traditional software because they're non-deterministic and must balance agency with control. This post introduces a framework that helps teams ship responsibly by starting small, iterating with evals, and gradually granting AI more autonomy to build trust and stability.

WHY MOST STARTUP ADVICE SOUNDS THE SAME

Startup advice is most useful when it's specific, contextual, and constraint-aware, showing the messy decision-making process, trade-offs, and lessons learned rather than abstract best practices or universal principles.

RESPECTFUL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Performance management is difficult but normal. Managers can handle it respectfully by focusing on role fit, giving clear feedback, offering chances to improve, and acting decisively when needed.

T-Mobile. Learn more.

CHATBOT CHEATSHEET: A GUIDE TO THE AI ASSISTANTS

WHAT TO DO MORE (AND LESS) OF

Product-centric teams exhibit specific behaviors like context-sharing, delayed convergence, and direct customer engagement that foster better decisions, sharper focus, and meaningful progress. Cultivating these habits requires space, reflection, and intentional tradeoffs.

ONE PROMPT, ZERO ENGINEERS: YOUR NEW INTERNAL DEV

Generative AI lets non-engineers build internal tools with natural language, speeding up iteration and ownership. As capabilities mature, prototypes are evolving into secure, production-ready systems across organizations.

STOP TRYING TO CHANGE YOUR MANAGER

You can't change your manager, since structural dynamics give them the final say. The best path is to adapt, focus on where you have leverage, and learn from their perspective.

AI HACK OF THE WEEK: CEO GPT

A CEO-specific GPT lets comms teams instantly generate authentic quotes, briefings, and messaging in the leader's voice.

NON-METRIC GOALS ARE COMPLETELY FINE

Early-stage products thrive on concrete goals.

AN INTERACTIVE GUIDE TO SVG PATHS

This is an interactive guide to SVG paths, focusing on the path element and its various commands for drawing shapes. It covers basic commands like Move and Line, then goes into Bézier curves (quadratic and cubic) and the complex Arc command, explaining each parameter with interactive examples. The guide also covers extra details like closing paths, relative commands, and chained curves.

CREATIVE WAYS TO FUND OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS

Open source projects are often underfunded, leading to maintainer burnout, but innovative revenue models are starting to show up. The Wix Toolset uses an "Open Source Maintenance Fee," which charges users for issue reporting and pull requests based on company size, providing income for maintainers. Another example is Astral's uv package manager, which offers a free version and a paid, enterprise-focused registry called pyx with more features.

YOU SHOULD ADD DEBUG VIEWS TO YOUR DB

Creating debug views in your database can simplify complex queries and improve debugging efficiency. These views predefine joins and include relevant information, making it easier to find specific data based on various criteria. By making these views, it removes the need to repeatedly write lengthy queries.