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BEER CHART IS A REFRESHING TRIBUTE THAT RAISES A GLASS TO FOOTBALL AND UEFA EURO 2024

Studio Blackburn and Nirvana CPH have created a wall chart for UEFA Euro 2024 called Beer Chart that combines their love of football and beer.

THE FIGMA APPLE UI DEBACLE SHOWS THE RISKS OF RUSHING TO LAUNCH AI TOOLS

Generative AI tools like Figma's Make Design can quickly replicate existing UIs, raising legal issues and illustrating the problems of rushing AI tools to market.

USE “VISUAL” FILTERS FOR VISUALLY DISTINCT PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES

Adding images to filters can improve the user experience by making identifying visually distinct product attributes easier.

DEINFLUENCING: WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO IT?

Despite its decline, the deinfluencing trend still occasionally resurfaces, challenging brands and influencers alike. Brands like Stanley and Skims have shown resilience by leveraging strategic influencer collaborations and timely marketing to bounce back from controversies. The lesson for marketers is clear: authenticity and a solid crisis management strategy can mitigate the temporary disruptions caused by deinfluencing.

WHY MARKETERS KEEP REFRESHING BRANDS INSTEAD OF BETTING ON SPLASHY ADS

Many marketers prefer rebrands over big ad campaigns because rebrands allow them to stay relevant and agile in a rapidly changing market. By investing in brand building, companies like Kraft Heinz and Wayfair can better understand consumer behavior and create a holistic strategy across multiple channels. This approach helps to maintain a strong identity and connect more deeply with their audience, rather than relying solely on short-term performance marketing.

THE RESULTS OF CANVA'S 4-WAY PRICING TEST

Earlier this year, Canva ran an experiment on its “Teams” plan pricing that evaluated two attributes: price per person and minimum commitment. The brand tested 4 variants, ranging from $60-$159.90 per seat and up to 5 minimum seats. The winning plan was $100 per seat with a 3-seat minimum. The results suggest that showing the cost per seat, rather than a total for all seats, is a better strategy. Additionally, round numbers (e.g. $100) can actually perform better than lesser non-round numbers (e.g. $99.90).

THE NEW COUCH PROBLEM

Identifying invisible obstacles in users' lives is essential for reducing friction and improving conversion rates. For example, customers might delay purchasing a new couch because they are unsure how to dispose of their old one. Adding a service to manage old furniture can address this issue. Tools like Hotjar can be used to observe user behavior and identify points of hesitation. Understanding that fear of disrupting existing workflows can also be a barrier. Companies should provide solutions that minimize risk and boost user confidence.

LINKEDIN ROLLS OUT SPONSORED NEWSLETTERS

LinkedIn is expanding its sponsored articles ad option to include sponsored newsletters, allowing brands to generate leads from their LinkedIn content. With newsletters seeing significant growth, this new feature can help brands reach more people within their sector. Sponsored newsletters function similarly to sponsored articles, allowing companies to boost their content and attract more sign-ups. This extension also includes the potential to sponsor existing newsletters by partnering with popular creators on LinkedIn.

INSTAGRAM CONFIRMED THEY'RE NOT INTERESTED IN THE LONG-FORM CONTENT GAME

Instagram has confirmed it is not prioritizing long-form content. The platform's focus will be on connecting users with friends and helping them explore interests. Short-form video aligns better with these objectives, as long-form content reduces interaction with friends. Instagram will leave long-form video experiments to TikTok. There are no plans to revive IGTV.

SPOTIFY ADDS COMMENTS TO PODCASTS

Spotify is allowing listeners to leave comments on episode pages. Creators can like and respond to comments and control which comments appear on their pages. Comments are optional for podcast hosts and will be rolled out this week. This move brings Spotify into closer competition with YouTube and builds on its expansion into video podcasts.

GROWTH FLYWHEELS: WHY THE MOST SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES IN THE WORLD USE THEM TO GROW SMARTER, NOT HARDER

There are three criteria a growth flywheel must meet to be effective: the activities flow smoothly from one point to the next, each rotation is easier than the last rotation, and each rotation produces more than the last rotation. One of Jay Clouse's newsletter flywheels is his automated new subscriber welcome email, which asks users what issues they're facing that they want to see him write about. This makes it easier to generate content ideas while also helping him grow an engaged audience by creating relevant content. Brands can create growth flywheels by focusing on the messenger as much as the product, creating an identity its audience wants to show off, and leveraging happy customers to gain new referrals.

DETAILED Q4: ANALYZING THE SEO PLAYBOOK OF DIGITAL GOLIATHS IN-DEPTH

An in-depth analysis of the SEO tactics used by leading digital brands amidst the evolving landscape of AI and algorithm updates. NextDoor's AI-generated content tripled its search traffic. MondayMysteryMovie.com captured a meaningful amount of search traffic and newsletter subscribers while focusing on a niche topic. Chegg used automated AI responses to boost its content volume and search visibility. Marketers can learn from these 45 examples to refine their SEO strategies.

SEO TIP: SEE HOW GOOGLE'S SWITCH FROM INFINITE SCROLL TO PAGINATION HAS IMPACTED YOUR SITE

A simple 5-step process to get data on whether Google's switch to pagination has impacted your site's impressions, clicks, or CTR.

T-SHAPED VS. V-SHAPED MARKETERS

Companies now prefer T-shaped marketers, or specialists in one area, over V-shaped marketers.

HOW DISINFORMATION FROM A RUSSIAN AI SPAM FARM ENDED UP ON TOP OF GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS

An AI-generated fake news story about the Ukrainian president's wife buying a Bugatti with US aid money quickly became a trending topic, amplified by bots and Russian media.

SNEAKY REACT MEMORY LEAKS: HOW THE REACT COMPILER WON'T SAVE YOU

The new React compiler has some limitations in addressing memory leaks caused by closures, particularly in the context of memoization hooks. While the compiler effectively caches values that don't depend on state or props, it doesn't prevent the underlying issue of shared closure contexts that can lead to prolonged memory retention. The author demonstrates this with a code example where creating a new object dependent on state within a memoized function results in a memory leak despite the compiler's memoization.

WEIRD THINGS I LEARNED WHILE WRITING AN X86 EMULATOR

This article explores unusual aspects of the x86 instruction set architecture discovered while creating an x86 emulator for time travel debugging. There are multiple encodings for the same instructions in the architecture. It uses prefixes to modify instruction behavior. The author also notes the peculiar nature of segment overrides in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes, the surprising behavior of shift instructions, and the inconsistent handling of flags by different instructions.

REAL-TIME AUDIO PROGRAMMING 101: TIME WAITS FOR NOTHING

Real-time audio programming requires avoiding any code that might cause delays or unpredictable behavior, as such glitches would disrupt the smooth flow of audio data and lead to undesirable sound artifacts. People working with real-time audio need to understand worst-case execution times and avoid common pitfalls like locking, memory allocation, and external events within the audio callback function. To achieve seamless audio processing, employ lock-free data structures and atomic operations for communication between real-time and non-real-time contexts.

YOUR PAIN IN 2024 AS A WEB DEVELOPER (REDDIT THREAD)

Web developers have a hard time keeping up with new developments that are happening all the time. They also feel like they don't have enough time and/or are getting bored of their jobs.

MARGIN OF SAFETY - MENTAL MODEL

Margin of Safety is a mental model that emphasizes the importance of accounting for potential errors and uncertainties when making estimations. It essentially acts as a buffer, preventing failure by providing extra capacity to handle unexpected events. It's a useful model to apply when estimating software projects (and most other things in life).

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POSTING V1

Posting is an HTTP client that lives in your terminal. It can be used over SSH and enables efficient keyboard-centric workflows. Your requests are stored locally in simple YAML files, so they're easy to read and version control.

VUE VINE

Vine is a new syntax for organizing Vue components within a single file. It addresses the common pain point of navigating between multiple files when developing small, reusable components. It helps handle the increasingly logic-heavy nature of frontend development better.

TAILKITS

Tailkits is a TailwindCSS template directory.

GITHUB COPILOT EXTENSIONS ARE ALL YOU NEED

GitHub Copilot Extensions are a new way to enhance VS Code by integrating AI directly into the developer workflow. These extensions utilize LLMs to provide context-specific answers, generate code, and offer insights within VSCode itself. Developers can build custom chat participants using the Chat API and access LLMs directly through the Language Model API.

ASKING AN LLM TO BUILD A SIMPLE WEB TOOL

This author used ChatGPT to build a simple web tool for configuring box shadows. They were impressed by ChatGPT's ability to create a functional tool without any external dependencies. Despite requiring some manual adjustments for aesthetics and layout, the process was efficient, with ChatGPT reliably modifying only the parts requested.

LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY: RAG APPLICATIONS

This roadmap is an overview of RAG (retrieval augmented generation). It starts with the basics of RAG, explaining how to traverse file systems, chunk and batch text, and interact with embedding APIs. It then progresses to more advanced techniques, including asynchronous programming, improved chunking strategies, and robust retry mechanisms. The roadmap also goes over observability and evaluation techniques.

DEEP-ML

A collection of free ML code challenges.

JUDGE DISMISSES LAWSUIT OVER GITHUB COPILOT AI CODING ASSISTANT

A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that GitHub Copilot violated open-source licenses by using code samples for AI training.

NO MORE BOOT LOADER: PLEASE USE THE KERNEL INSTEAD (35 MINUTE VIDEO)

Red Hat boot loader engineering is developing a new bootloader called nmbl that uses the Linux kernel as its own bootloader, aiming to replace GRUB with a fast, secure, and user-space solution.

STATE OF TEXT RENDERING 2024

A 37-page overview of text rendering in 2024.

CHINESE DEVELOPERS SCRAMBLE AS OPENAI BLOCKS ACCESS IN CHINA

Chinese attempts to lure domestic developers away from OpenAI will now be a lot easier as OpenAI has blocked users in China from accessing its tools and services. The tool was already blocked through the government's firewall, but developers were previously still able to use virtual private networks to access OpenAI's tools. OpenAI has not elaborated on the reason for its sudden decision. The decision may result in an acceleration of development by Chinese AI companies.

TESLA'S SHARE OF U.S. ELECTRIC CAR MARKET FALLS BELOW 50%

Tesla accounted for just under half of all battery-powered vehicles sold in the US in the second quarter of this year. The sales of battery-powered cars have surged to a new record, climbing 11.5 percent from a year earlier, with Tesla losing ground to General Motors, Ford Motor, Hyundai, and Kia. This is the first time Tesla's market share has fallen below 50 percent in a quarter. There are now over 100 electric vehicle models available in the US. Intense competition has led to lower prices, helping push adoption slowly higher.

DOCTORS RESTORING BLOODFLOW IN LEGALLY DEAD BODIES TO RETRIEVE DONOR ORGANS

A highly controversial procedure called normothermic regional perfusion, which involves pumping blood through a deceased person's body, can help doctors retrieve donor organs even if patients have already been declared dead. The procedure greatly increases the chances of obtaining functional donor organs and could save a lot of lives. It stops organs from being damaged by keeping up the circulation of oxygen-rich blood. There are concerns that the procedure may be able to restore limited brain activity, but there are ways to stop blood from reaching the brain.

ROBOTAXIS SHOULD BE A WAKEUP CALL FOR CITIES

The biggest hurdles currently facing the robotaxi industry are economic and regulatory, not technological. Robotaxi companies will need to be able to compete on price, convenience, and comfort before their vehicles become a more accepted travel option. If they are successful, there could be significant traffic and labor impacts. Robotaxis will likely make roads safer and create demand for new types of buildings with no parking.

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PYSKYWIFI: COMPLETELY FREE, UNBELIEVABLY STUPID WI-FI ON LONG-HAUL FLIGHTS

A developer discovered a way to access the internet for free while clicking through an airline's Wi-Fi payment menu. This article discusses how they exploited this discovery to develop a tool that allowed them to access the full internet for free, albeit at a very slow pace. The exploit involves editing data on the developer's airmiles account to send and receive HTTP requests and responses.

MAELSTROM

Maelstrom is a suite of tools that can run tests in hermetic microcontainers locally or distributed across arbitrarily large clusters. It currently has test runners for Rust and Python, with more on the way. Maelstrom is reliable, easy to use, fast, and scalable. The project is currently Linux-only and relies on namespaces to implement containers.

THE AI SUMMER

ChatGPT happened incredibly fast, reaching 100 million users in just 2 months. A lot of its growth was due to the infrastructure built over the last few decades - users could easily access the service on devices they already owned. Most of the people who tried out ChatGPT when it was first released have not returned. It's now easy for people to try out new products, which makes for some interesting charts, but keeping these users is another story. AI may be able to swallow most or all of existing software and automate new classes of tasks, but not this year.

EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IS STUMBLING. CAN “MORAL AMBITION” REPLACE IT?

Moral Ambition is a new movement that aims to create a new standard of success by shifting ambition away from money and toward finding solutions for the world's most pressing problems. It aims to restore faith in human agency and ingenuity. The blend of socially conscious activism and capitalist entrepreneurship encourages a willingness among young people to use their talent and ambition for the common good instead of personal profit and status. Unlike Effective Altruism, which is grounded in guilt, Moral Ambition is built on enthusiasm, compassion, and problem-solving.

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A16Z IS TRYING TO KEEP AI ALIVE WITH OXYGEN INITIATIVE

VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has secured thousands of AI chips to exchange for equity.

GOOGLE CHROME GIVES ALL *.GOOGLE.COM SITES FULL ACCESS TO SYSTEM/TAB CPU USAGE, GPU USAGE, AND MEMORY USAGE

While Google is likely not using the API for anything malicious, it provides them more information than their competitors, which may be a violation of the EU's Digital Markets Act.

THE DEVELOPERS SUING OVER GITHUB COPILOT GOT DEALT A MAJOR BLOW IN COURT

A judge has tossed out 20 of the 22 claims made against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI in a copyright lawsuit filed in 2022, saying that Copilot's suggested code isn't close enough to original sources.

TESLA INSIDERS SAY ELON OPTIMIZED FULL SELF-DRIVING ROUTES FOR HIMSELF AND INFLUENCERS

Reports from current and former Tesla workers say that the company has been optimizing its self-driving neural nets specifically for routes taken by CEO Elon Musk and Tesla influencers producing Full Self-Driving content.

QUORA'S POE NOW LETS USERS CREATE AND SHARE WEB APPS

Poe has launched a feature called Previews that lets people create interactive apps directly in chats with chatbots.