Design recruiting has shifted dramatically, with portfolios now completely overtaking resumes as recruiters skip straight to evaluating craft quality and business impact metrics. Companies prioritize collaboration skills and strong design opinions that AI cannot replicate, making designer conviction a make-or-break factor in startup hiring. Most design hires still happen through word-of-mouth referrals rather than cold applications, with active community participation becoming crucial for early-career designers.
2025.07.16·designbuddies.substack.com·3 min read·TLDR Design Neurodesign combines neuroscience, psychology, and design to create digital experiences that align with the brain's natural processing of information. The approach applies principles like Hick's Law, Miller's Law, and Fitts's Law to reduce cognitive load and make interfaces more intuitive by respecting visual scanning patterns and memory limitations. Designers now use eye-tracking technology, heat maps, and AI-powered attention prediction tools to measure and optimize brain-friendly user experiences.
2025.07.16·links.tldrnewsletter.com·5 min read·TLDR Design Designer Olivia King created “Penguin Inclusive Sans,” a custom, accessible typeface for Penguin Books, rooted in the publisher's rich typographic history and designed to balance historical authenticity with contemporary readability. Inspired by archives and humanist design principles, the open-source font features friendly, inclusive details and supports over 600 languages, advancing Penguin's mission of making books accessible to all.
Freepik has launched unlimited AI video generation for Premium+ and Pro subscribers, eliminating the credit-based anxiety that typically restricts the use of AI creative tools.
Samsung's Galaxy AI Forum revealed how smartphones are transitioning from "smart" to "ambient" devices, where AI anticipates user needs invisibly rather than requiring active engagement.
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Modern bots behave like real users [5]. They execute JavaScript, rotate IPs, and solve CAPTCHAs with AI. Traditional detection tools can't keep up.
With no revenue or products, the former OpenAI CTO's startup landed one of the largest seed rounds ever from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and others. Two-thirds of the team are former OpenAI employees.
Cognition scooped up Windsurf's remaining 250-person team and $82 million ARR business after Google's $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire cherry-picked only the leadership, leaving employees behind without payouts. The acquisition gives Cognition both AI coding agents and IDE capabilities to compete with Cursor's $500 million ARR, and restores Windsurf's access to Claude models that Anthropic had cut off amid rumors of an OpenAI acquisition.
Mistral's Voxtral is the company's first open-source audio model suite. It features a 24B parameter model for large-scale use and a 3B variant for edge deployment.
People in the 1200s would think email is magic - instant messages to anyone, anywhere. What do we use it for? Work messages, ads, and password resets. We should send more thoughtful emails to strangers. Bad emails ask for general life advice or "30 minutes to Zoom." Good ones are specific - share an interesting essay, ask one focused question, or just say hello. Email B beats Email A because it's honest, specific, and includes something useful. Most people send zero cold emails to interesting strangers. Maybe you should send more.
Vertical AI founders gathered to share what works. Getting design partners? Just ask for advice - executives love giving it. The sweet spot is 5-10 partners, mixing cold and warm contacts. Pick big names in your field (Turner in construction turns heads). Be picky with early partners because they become your first referrals.
Shopify's CEO told everyone to use AI. What happened next surprised them. Support staff, not engineers, became the biggest power users. The company gives everyone unlimited access to expensive models - no budgets, no limits. One person spent $10K in a month, and nobody blinked. It is hiring more interns because students already work with AI naturally. The wildest part? A sales rep built a tool in Cursor that changed how they sell. AI revealed that their whole process was backwards.
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Get your B2B SaaS portcos instant access to millions of tech professionals across our 12 interest-based newsletters. Additional perks (i.e., discounts) are included when you sign up as a VC partner [14].
10x your coding agent context.
Explorium MCP is a data integration tool that connects live B2B company and contact data to AI agents, apps, and workflows.
Ciro is an AI-powered prospecting tool that builds, enriches, and scores contact lists, syncing them to CRMs or CSVs.
Every startup job boils down to three things: building the product, selling to customers, or understanding what to do next. Engineers build, salespeople sell, analysts understand. Some roles blend them (growth does building plus selling). Here's what most people miss: everyone eventually becomes a seller. Managing, recruiting, and working cross-functionally all require convincing people.
Unify just raised a $40M Series B from Battery, OpenAI, Thrive, Emergence, and others. The company is building an AI-powered system of action for go-to-market teams. It helps teams reach the right customers at the right time, with AI agents that research prospects, write personalized outbound, and act on intent data. It has grown 8x in the last year. Its customers include Airwallex, Perplexity, and Cursor.
Neurotech in 2025 mirrors AI's 2017 moment: high potential, low mainstream awareness, and a tight insider community. This post highlights a new market map detailing competing approaches, top projects, and tradeoffs to demystify the space.
Two 23-year-olds thought they had Sequoia in the bag after pitching Roelof Botha at a Starbucks.
Good software used to need daily use - the toothbrush test.
Private equity firms can't sell their companies and return cash to investors - the worst drought since 2009.
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Remote hiring, deepfakes, and interview-cheating tools create a dangerous opportunity for bad actors. Rigid identity verification at every step solves it, but makes life hell for your honest employees.
Murphy Law Firm is investigating a class action lawsuit against Century Support Services following a November 2024 data breach that compromised the personal information of 160,759 individuals. Exposed data includes Social Security numbers, financial account information, medical records, and driver's licenses. The firm is seeking damages for affected individuals whose sensitive information may now be available to cybercriminals.
The ransomware group DragonForce attacked US department store chain Belk in May, compromising the names and Social Security numbers of customers. The attack disrupted online and physical operations for days, with Belk's website still offline. DragonForce claims to have exfiltrated 156GB of data and made it publicly available, suggesting no ransom was paid.
The CISA is warning users of a new critical (CVSS 10/10) vulnerability in the Wing FTP software that is under active exploitation. The vulnerability stems from Wing FTP software not sanitizing usernames that contain a NULL byte and then constructing a Lua session file from the username, which can potentially include Lua code after the NULL byte. Huntress and Arctic Wolf have both recorded that they have seen attackers exploiting exposed servers to download and execute malicious files, perform reconnaissance, and install remote monitoring and management software.
This article introduces a four-part cybersecurity playbook on analyzing and exploiting Windows kernel drivers. It highlights the rising threat of BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) attacks, where attackers exploit legitimate but flawed signed drivers to bypass kernel protections.
The first part of Zach Allen's Detection Engineering Field Manual introduces the concept of detection engineering, which primarily focuses on detecting when a threat actor circumvents controls. Allen models SOC operations in three loops: Loop 1 identifies assets and utilizes controls to protect them, Loop 2 employs rules to detect threats and responds with containment, and finally, Loop 3 focuses on recovering and learning from incidents. A detection engineer can focus on one loop or all of them and should, at a minimum, possess some coding expertise and a customer-centric mindset.
Typage 0.2.3 introduces passkey-based file encryption using the WebAuthn PRF extension, allowing users to encrypt files that can only be decrypted with biometric authentication or hardware security keys. The implementation creates a new age recipient format (fido2prf) that binds each encrypted file to specific hardware credentials, requiring both the encrypted file and physical access to the authenticator for decryption. Files encrypted on one device can be decrypted on another through synced passkeys. A companion CLI plugin also enables this functionality with FIDO2 hardware tokens outside the browser.
Zip Security helps organizations implement security best practices and achieve compliance, while also managing their IT infrastructure to reduce service overhead and costs.
Falco is a cloud native runtime security tool for Linux operating systems. It is designed to detect and alert on abnormal behavior and potential security threats in real-time.
Patchman is a Django-based patch status monitoring system for Linux servers.
Meta fixed a security bug that allowed users to access other users' private AI prompts and responses by manipulating unique prompt numbers. Security researcher Sandeep Hodkasia discovered the vulnerability in December and received a $10,000 bug bounty. Meta deployed the fix in January after finding no evidence of malicious exploitation of the flaw.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that in 2022, a British official accidentally leaked data of Afghans who had applied to move to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Program (ARAP). ARAP was set up for Afghans who feared reprisal from the Taliban. The impacted individuals are now being notified after a “super injunction” that prohibited discussion of the leak was lifted on Tuesday.
The UK's NCSC announced the launch of a new Vulnerability Research Initiative (VRI) to partner with external cybersecurity researchers. Researchers who partner with the program will be given objectives to identify flaws in specific projects of interest, assess proposed mitigations, and then disclose the flaws through the “Equities Process” procedure.
DOGE employee Marko Elez accidentally committed an xAI API key that had access to at least 52 different LLMs, an oversight that raises concerns, as Elez has access to various government databases, including SSNs.
Abacus Market, the largest Western darknet marketplace that facilitated an estimated $300 million in illegal drug transactions, has suddenly gone offline in what appears to be an exit scam where operators vanished with users' escrowed funds.
Scammers are tricking UK pet owners with fake emails asking for microchip renewal fees using real pet details stolen from insecure databases.
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Hidden buyers are internal stakeholders who are not end users but still influence purchase decisions. They play a crucial and often overlooked role in B2B deals. These buyers are just as engaged as target buyers, with 64% spending over an hour a week on thought leadership and 55% using it to vet vendors. Yet 71% have little or no direct interaction with sales. High-quality, insight-driven content helps build trust and can turn skeptics into advocates. It also encourages hidden buyers to support lesser-known brands during final decisions.
New research finds that 37% of North American shoppers and 42% of European shoppers have avoided purchases due to plastic packaging. While some of this behavior ties to sustainability, many consumers are motivated by personal health concerns such as the threat of microplastics. Only 57% of North American respondents who think brands overuse packaging link it to climate change, suggesting plastic concerns may be shifting away from climate conversations.
SiriusXM is launching a cheaper, ad-supported subscription plan called SiriusXM Play, priced under $7 per month, to attract cost-conscious users and convert more free trial drivers into paying customers. The plan includes limited ads and access to over 130 channels, but premium content like Howard Stern and live sports remains exclusive to ad-free subscribers. SiriusXM ended Q1 with 33 million subscribers, a loss of 303,000, and reported a 4% year-over-year drop in revenue to $2.07 billion. The company is shifting focus to in-car services and ad revenue, which totaled $1.8 billion in 2024 despite a soft ad market.
To help legacy media companies grow paid digital subscribers, focus on turning their large, passive audiences into engaged email subscribers. Start by retargeting warm website and social traffic with Meta ads that promote locally relevant newsletter content, aiming for sub-$1 acquisition costs. Use tools like SparkLoop or Upscribe to earn back part of that cost through paid newsletter recommendations. Once someone signs up, offer a low-cost, time-limited subscription trial (e.g. $1/month for 3 months) to convert readers into paying customers.
A one-pager of top AI tools categorized by competitive intelligence, messaging and positioning, GTM planning, and sales enablement automation.
AI coding tools are shifting from code editors to the terminal, as agentic AI grows more capable and developers seek deeper system-level interactions. Tools like Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and CLI Codex reflect this change. Leading companies are quietly prioritizing command-line interfaces. Unlike traditional code assistants focused on fixing code, terminal-based tools address broader tasks like system setup and debugging. With rising skepticism around code editors' actual productivity gains, terminal-first environments like Warp are emerging as a more versatile alternative.
Kellogg's $3 billion sale to Ferrero marks the decline of a brand that once led the cereal aisle but failed to adapt to changing consumer habits. While General Mills leaned into whole grains and wellness trends, Kellogg's remained focused on sugary cereals tied to outdated consumption patterns. The company found growth in snacks and spun those assets into Kellanova, which Mars acquired for $30 billion. Still, Kellogg's missed adjacent opportunities in health and breakfast by failing to revisit its core value proposition.