AI agents can enhance UX research by automating time-consuming tasks like participant recruitment, data transcription, and analysis while preserving human insights and quality. These tools support the entire research process, from planning and data collection to generating insights and creating reports, enabling teams to work more efficiently without compromising research integrity. Success requires maintaining human oversight, prioritizing data ethics, and using AI as a collaborative partner rather than a replacement for human researchers.
AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini will fundamentally reshape design for future generations who grow up with these tools as standard. Current AI image generators already compete with human artists, while raising concerns about whether new designers will learn fundamental principles of color, typography, and accessibility. The technology may increase productivity, but could reduce creative control, transforming designers into prompt engineers rather than creative professionals who perfect details and guide project direction.
Icons serve as powerful design tools that can transform basic poster concepts into expressive, dynamic compositions through intentional use and creative layering.
2025.07.18·blog.streamlinehq.com·3 min read·TLDR Design A new rumor suggests the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max will feature an exclusive anti-reflective, scratch-resistant display, following successful production yields - this upgrade won't extend to the standard iPhone 17 or 17 Air.
Royal Mail is celebrating Peanuts' 75th anniversary with a nostalgic stamp collection featuring Schulz's beloved characters in British settings, honoring the comic's enduring charm and emotional resonance.
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Business productivity shouldn't mean going all-in on Google or Microsoft. Proton Mail is email + calendar that's built for teams that care about privacy and security [4]. It's trusted by over 50k businesses and 100 million people around the world.
Google paid $2.4B to Windsurf just to get its AI talent fast. Meta is poaching AI researchers for NBA superstar money. The race shows how much A-players matter at every level. Netflix treats companies like sports teams, not families, ruthlessly keeping the best talent. Real performers are the "drivers," while everyone else is just a passenger along for the ride. One hiring rule stands out: pick the motivated hard worker over the brilliant slacker every time.
Founders are starting to treat LLMs like new distribution rails, not just search engines. Instead of competing for top spots on Google, they're optimizing to appear directly in answers from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. These models reward schema, clarity, citations, and presence across trusted sources, not just backlinks and keywords. When done right, it's like owning a seat in the AI's memory. LLM SEO isn't just a trend, it's an overlooked edge with compounding returns.
Mercury CEO Immad Akhund focused on scaling while maintaining high product quality by enhancing risk and compliance teams and launching new financial tools like invoicing and spend management. They created small, independent product teams to innovate while keeping core products strong, exemplified by the successful launch of Mercury Personal for consumer accounts. Akhund emphasized hiring passionate talent, managing "product debt" effectively, and leveraging existing customer behavior to expand services.
Keyword research is like writing bad survey questions - it assumes what people want before asking. A pizza shop targeting "Domino's" keywords gets clicks from people who specifically want Domino's, not any pizza. This seems obvious once pointed out, but most SEO starts with chasing high-volume keywords anyway. The author's client proved this wrong. Instead of writing another generic "best parenting tips" article (huge search volume), they wrote about the psychological cost of giving screens to toddlers. Zero people searched for that exact phrase, but parents loved it so much that it created its own search demand.
Effortless voice dictation in every application.
Simulated users for customer interviews.
Motherboard is a tool that lets founders track key business metrics from any website in one private, local dashboard.
Delphi Digital has launched Delphi Intelligence, a dedicated research platform focused on AI, robotics, and emerging tech. Backed by its experience in crypto, it has already invested in 20+ AI x crypto startups, incubated projects through AI-focused accelerators, and built a growing research team. The platform offers in-depth, public reports on key AI developments, with the aim of becoming a leading hub for high-signal analysis in the space.
Sub-$1M ARR startups went from 13 people in 2022 to just 7 today, while companies over $50M ARR saw efficiency drop 34%. Public SaaS now takes 57 months to recover sales costs - nearly five years. Early-stage teams figured out what big companies missed by hiring former founders who do everything. One person runs content and paid ads, GTM hires code like engineers, and each employee manages AI agents instead of people. Big companies keep adding specialists and management layers while startups just give everyone AI and let them run wild.
Everyone thought AI would simplify software - turns out we were wrong. Google's 2015 paper showed machine learning was just a tiny black box surrounded by massive infrastructure. AI was supposed to fix this - drop in an LLM and watch it work. Makes you wonder - are we making progress or just shifting complexity around?
VCs act like SAFEs and convertible notes are the same thing - they're not.
2025.07.18·thefounderplaybook.hustlefund.vc·3 min read·TLDR Founders Sometimes the problem isn't the employee - it's you.
2025.07.18·leadershipgrowth.substack.com·3 min read·TLDR Founders Boris Cherny and Cat Wu are reportedly back at Anthropic after departing for Anysphere, the developer of Cursor.
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Fake CFOs authorizing wire transfers.
Cisco patched a critical 10/10 severity bug (CVE-2025-20337) in its Identity Services Engine. The bug allowed unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. Due to insufficient input validation, the vulnerability affects ISE releases 3.3 and 3.4. No workarounds exist. Immediate patching is essential, as exploits are expected soon.
Clive Palmer's United Australia Party (UAP) posted a notice on its website that it suffered a data breach due to a ransomware attack. The party has stated that any individual who has interacted with the party may have had their data exposed, but it cannot conclusively determine which individuals were affected or what data was stolen. The stolen data may include email addresses, phone numbers, identity records, banking records, employment history, and any emails or attachments sent to or received from the party.
TeleMessage SGNL, a Signal clone used by US government agencies, has an exposed /heapdump endpoint (CVE-2025-48927) that dumps 150MB memory snapshots containing usernames, passwords, and session data with no authentication required. Attackers are actively exploiting this flaw - CISA added it to the KEV catalog on July 14 and mandated federal agencies patch or stop using the software by July 22. Over 11 IPs have directly targeted this vulnerability, while 2,000+ IPs have scanned Spring Boot Actuator endpoints in the past 90 days, indicating widespread reconnaissance activity.
This post dives into Linuxsys, a cryptominer exploiting CVE-2021-41773 in a long-running campaign since 2021. Attackers use compromised legitimate websites for stealthy malware distribution and evasion, and the vulnerability remains actively exploited with dozens of daily attempts.
Security teams should shift from endless vulnerability scanning and detection to preventative tools that stop issues at the source, like using supply chain security tools instead of just identifying vulnerabilities after deployment. Most security vendors focus on data collection and pattern detection rather than systemic prevention, leaving organizations to fix the identified problems manually. The strategy requires getting engineering teams to adopt preventative controls early in development workflows, rather than overwhelming them with vulnerability reports and SLAs that force reactive responses.
This post demonstrates how to automate function identification in stripped Windows binaries using Ghidra's Function ID databases, which work similarly to IDA Pro's FLIRT signatures to match known library functions against decompiled code. The approach involves extracting object files from static libraries (.lib files), importing them into Ghidra projects, and generating function signature databases that automatically rename generic function labels with actual library function names like OpenSSL functions. This technique significantly accelerates reverse engineering by eliminating manual function analysis, allowing security researchers to focus on vulnerability discovery rather than spending time identifying what each function does.
Powered up dotenv that reduces the blast radius of secrets by splitting secrets management into two distinct components: an encrypted secrets file and a separate decryption key.
The iCOUNTER platform can act as an early warning system that identifies threats specific to the customer and its ecosystem, while also providing intelligence that enables rapid containment and recovery after an attack has taken place.
linWinPwn is a bash script that wraps a collection of Active Directory tools for enumeration, vulnerability checks, object modifications, and password dumping.
Hackers (UNC6148) are compromising end-of-life SonicWall Secure Mobile Access appliances using leaked administrator credentials. The attackers install "Overstep" backdoor malware that deletes log entries, hindering forensic investigation, which means the attack method and vulnerabilities exploited remain unknown.
As part of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, $1B has been allocated for offensive hacking operations. These funds can be used for carrying out attacks using 0-days and installing spyware, but also for everyday expenses such as infrastructure and intelligence gathering. Critics note that the bill slashes funding from defensive operations such as the CISA, potentially leaving the U.S. unable to defend itself.
Broadcom has patched VMware vulnerabilities from Pwn2Own Berlin 2025, where researchers earned $340,000+ exploiting critical bugs in ESXi and Workstation, allowing code execution.
Operation Eastwood, a coordinated international law enforcement effort led by Europol, shut down over 100 servers belonging to the Russian pro-Putin DDoS group NoName057(16), arrested two individuals, and issued seven international arrest warrants targeting the group's 4,000+ members who conducted politically motivated attacks against Ukrainian and NATO-supporting websites.
The WNBA is seeing record growth, with national viewership up 9%, attendance up 26%, and merchandise sales up 40%. Much of the momentum is tied to Caitlin Clark, whose popularity has brought new fans and sponsorships, including a $28 million Nike deal. Critics argue the league is hesitating to spotlight her fully due to internal tensions and concerns about fairness among players, which may be limiting its ability to capitalize on her impact. While the league claims its marketing is balanced and intentional, it faces a critical decision on whether to prioritize star-driven promotion or collective visibility.
Douyin generated $490 billion in GMV last year while TikTok produced $33 billion across all non-China markets. Despite a 120% sales increase in the US this year, TikTok's eCommerce rollout is faltering in key regions like Indonesia due to higher fees and content format shifts. Western consumers continue to resist integrated shopping within social apps.
When a conversion test succeeds, it's worthwhile to keep testing. Optibac increased new subscriptions by 22% after testing a simplified version of its already successful subscription page. The revised page used shorter bullets with key benefits placed at the beginning, such as “15% off and free delivery.” This followed an earlier test that had already improved subscriptions by 39%. Together, the two tests delivered a total subscription increase of about 70% from the original baseline.
With a small internal team and agency support, Amtrak experiments with meme-worthy, “brain-rotty” content that feels unexpected for a travel brand (ie. anime-inspired conductors or monster truck-style train promos). This entertaining approach is balanced with informative posts about train travel aimed at making the brand both relatable and useful. This has resulted in viral success, follower growth, and rising engagement.
TikTok has introduced Bulletin Boards, a broadcast-only messaging tool that allows creators to share text, images, and videos directly in followers' inboxes. Early access has been given to major publishers, celebrities, and select creators. Posts bypass the algorithm and create a consistent communication channel that complements the For You Page. Bulletin Boards resemble Instagram's Broadcast Channels and reflect a broader shift toward private content streams across social platforms.
ChatGPT agent combines web interaction, deep research, and conversational intelligence to complete complex tasks autonomously using its own virtual computer. It can browse websites, log in securely, run code, analyze data, and deliver editable reports or presentations based on user instructions. Users stay in control by granting permissions and can interrupt or steer tasks anytime. The agent supports integration with apps like Gmail and GitHub, making workflows more efficient.
Over 105,000 comparison-based keywords now rank Reddit in the top three search results, replacing traditional review sites like G2, Capterra, and Wirecutter. Threads in subreddits such as r/smallbusiness, r/webhosting, and r/WordPress are shaping bottom-of-funnel decisions through detailed feedback on pricing, onboarding, support quality, and feature gaps. As generative AI tools increasingly reference these posts, marketers are losing visibility into high-intent traffic that no longer touches their owned content.
Traditional keyword research can introduce bias by assuming user intent, much like how leading questions distort survey results. An example includes a pizza shop mistakenly optimizing for keywords like “Domino's” or “pizza near me” without understanding the user's actual needs or preferences. Just as the best surveys ask neutral questions to uncover real sentiment, effective SEO should focus on customer problems rather than chasing high-volume terms.
Get better ideas from Claude by forming thinking partnerships rather than asking one-off questions.
Aligned's Head of Marketing shares 13 ways marketers stood out during hiring.
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🧩 AI companies have a unique pricing puzzle to solve: users want unlimited experimentation, but every product interaction comes at a very real cost. Training models can cost millions, and expenses for API calls quickly add up.