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MICROSOFT SAYS MORE CUSTOMER EMAILS ACCESSED BY RUSSIAN HACKERS

Microsoft disclosed that Russian hackers accessed more customer emails than previously known, including those of senior leadership and government agencies.

FIGMA'S NEW SLIDES APP FOCUSES ON DESIGN, FUN, AND AI

Figma Slides aims to offer a creative and collaborative alternative to established presentation tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides. It includes features like presenter notes, grid view, high-quality templates, and AI-powered text adjustments. Now officially a part of Figma's suite, Slides is free while in beta but will later become a paid feature.

WHY MARKETERS AREN'T COOKIE-FREE YET

49% of companies globally still depend heavily on third-party cookies. The travel, technology, public sector, and financial services industries are the most dependent. Many marketers feel unprepared for a cookie-free future, lacking a strong data foundation beyond third-party cookies. Spending on cookie-based targeting has decreased, and only 26% of companies have integrated data across their organizations.

ZERO TO $142 MILLION: INSIDE GUMROAD'S GROWTH STORY

Gumroad is a platform that allows creators to easily sell digital products online. It grew from a weekend project to a $142 million GMV success by focusing on simplicity and creator-centric strategies. For example, Gumroad implemented manual outreach by sending thousands of personalized emails to potential creators. It built educational resources, including tutorials and success guides, to position itself as an authority in the creator economy. The platform's flexible monetization options, like custom pricing and pay-what-you-want models, empowered over 46,000 creators in 2020, with eight making over $1 million.

HOW IMPROVING FIRST IMPRESSIONS INCREASED CONVERSIONS BY 19%

Mobbin, a mobile and web design reference library, had a homepage that showcased the most recent additions to the library. Its team found from user testing that recognizable, big-brand assets were effective at capturing the attention of new visitors, but the logic of the homepage meant that less attractive assets were often shown. They tested a version of the page with a “sort by” function, with the default set to “by most popular.” This resulted in a 19% increase in transactions and a 48% lift in user engagement with the listings themselves.

9 SURPRISING TAKEAWAYS FROM ANALYZING HUBSPOT'S SEO STRATEGY

This case study discusses the strategy that allowed HubSpot to become the largest corporate blog. The company's SEO strategy included running a massive corporate blog with 8.2 million monthly visits, targeting high-traffic keywords like “shrug emoji.” HubSpot effectively ranks twice on the first page for "product marketing" by creating targeted, educational content that matches search intent. Its annual "State of Marketing" report attracts numerous backlinks, significantly improving its SEO outcomes and organic visibility.

GOOGLE ANNOUNCES NEW GA4 FEATURES

Google has announced several upcoming enhancements to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) designed to help companies improve measurement and ultimately make better business decisions. AI-generated insights will provide clear, concise summaries that explain fluctuations in GA4 data in plain language. Users will be able to import advertising data from Pinterest, Reddit, and Snap directly into the tool. Cross-channel budgeting will allow marketers to track media pacing and projected performance against a target objective, like revenue, across channels. Google will also begin rolling out support for some of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox APIs to help brands reach audiences and measure effectively without third-party cookies.

INTRODUCING X ADS ACADEMY

This e-learning platform aims to help brands create effective ad campaigns on X. It offers step-by-step tutorials for beginners and focused learning paths for professional marketers to earn certifications and showcase their expertise. With 31 courses and 4 certifications available, X Ads Academy covers everything from mastering Ads Manager to implementing conversion tracking.

HOW TO LEVERAGE IRRATIONALITY FOR EXPERIMENTATION

Understanding human irrationality can help brands run better experiments and ultimately achieve better results from their users. To start, map every decision your prospective customer goes through and the action they must take to get there. Find barriers and psychological friction points they may face along the way that cause them to postpone taking action. Invest in understanding their mindset, expectations, and needs. With this information, you can start running experiments informed by human biases and heuristics and designed to boost users' motivation to take action.

HOW A PRINTED BOOK HELPED UNIT21 GENERATE MILLIONS IN PIPELINE

Unit21, a no-code platform for fraud detection, created the Fraud Fighters Manual by gathering insights from industry experts to combat fraud collectively. This printed and eBook manual generated millions in pipeline within six months by addressing taboo topics and leveraging expert credibility. The manual also enhanced sales conversations and positioned Unit21 as a thought leader in fraud prevention.

6 DEADLY MISTAKES GROWTH TEAMS MAKE

Growth teams frequently use improper research methods. They rely on misleading statistics and focus on the wrong metrics, such as new signups instead of retention. Growth teams favor short-term growth hacks over sustainable growth loops, resulting in higher churn. Misunderstanding user journeys leads to forcing users onto paths they don't want to take. Inefficiencies also arise from attempting to save money by building in-house solutions, which often wastes time and resources.

MAKING GRAPHS ON CLAUDE

This post outlines how to use Claude to turn screenshots of data tables into graphs.

SHE'S BIRDIE: ABANDONED CART FLOW CASE STUDY

This brand's abandoned cart email flow reinforces how easy it is to use its product, compares its product to popular and worse alternatives, and presents a solid customer review that hits all emotional notes.

WHY QUINN POSTS PHOTOS AS REELS

By converting still images into Reels, Quinn, an audio erotica app, leverages Instagram's algorithm to achieve significantly higher engagement and reach.

MAKING AN IMPACT THROUGH AUTHENTICITY AND CURIOSITY (83 MINUTE PODCAST)

Ami Vora, Faire's CPO and former VP of Product at Meta, discusses insights on the importance of execution over strategy, using metaphors for team alignment, productive handling of disagreements, and navigating leadership feedback, especially for women.

EFFECTIVE WAYS TO BUILD YOUR PRODUCT SENSE

Find actionable strategies for building product sense and learn how product sparring sessions can enhance product teams' skills through feedback and collaboration.

15 LIFE AND WORK PRINCIPLES FROM JENSEN HUANG

Jensen Huang's unconventional take includes discarding 1:1s in favor of transparency, valuing learning from others' mistakes, and prioritizing continuous planning over periodic strategies. Huang believes in challenging employees to greatness instead of firing them and emphasizes the significance of embracing struggle for success.

OKR PLANNING: BREAK THE CHAINS AND GO BEYOND LIMITING BELIEFS

To effectively utilize OKRs, avoid limiting beliefs that can restrict strategic potential. OKRs should push beyond immediate measurability, not necessarily fit within a single quarter, rethink feasibility, and consider company-wide goals beyond the product itself.

MASTERING THE 'PRODUCT METRICS THAT MATTER'

The PICE framework — Product, Industry, Company, End Users — can be used to identify and narrow down essential product metrics. Focus on metrics that reflect user value and align with strategic priorities.

WHAT IS A GOOD METRIC?

Implementing effective metrics is crucial for measuring progress and creating accountability, but choosing the right ones can be challenging. This article covers nine foundational principles for distinguishing between good and bad metrics. Avoid common pitfalls, such as overcomplicating things and manipulating numbers, to ensure meaningful and actionable measurement across your teams.

CLAY'S PATH TO PMF — A 7-YEAR 'OVERNIGHT SUCCESS'

Kareem Amin outlines his journey building Clay. Topics include developing a business idea, choosing between horizontal and vertical markets, iterative development, adhering to unconventional product principles, gaining traction, and future growth.

THE OARB FRAMEWORK: WHY YOU SHOULD APPEAL TO SELF-INTEREST WHEN GIVING FEEDBACK

Master effective feedback delivery using the OARB framework (Observation, Assertion, Repercussion, Benefit) to influence behavior and appeal to one's self-interest. This post details how tailoring feedback based on psychological principles can drive change and benefit both the giver and receiver.

CREATING A GREAT ENVIRONMENT FOR PMS AS A LEADER

PEAKS, PARKING LOTS, SNACKS, AND TOPOGRAPHICAL CHOICES

When choosing a hiking route, you have three main options — out-and-back, loop, and point-to-point — each offering unique experiential lessons applicable to designing various types of journeys for users.

GOING DEEP

Industry leaders are facing criticism for unfairly pressuring managers to micromanage without considering the systemic issues that prevent effective engagement with their teams.

PRODUCT STRATEGY FOR A PRE-PMF COMPANY LOOKS DIFFERENT FROM THAT OF A MORE MATURE COMPANY

To achieve PMF, a pre-product-market fit company's product strategy should focus solely on discovery and delivery activities, with clear, short-term goals and an honest assessment of progress, while skipping typical strategic components like long-term roadmapping and high-level objective debates.

WHY GOOGLE SHEETS PORTED ITS CALCULATION WORKER FROM JAVASCRIPT TO WASMGC

Google Sheets initially used a Java-based calculation engine, but later switched to JavaScript for browser-based calculations. Due to performance limitations of JavaScript compared to Java, Google used WasmGC, an extension to WebAssembly that allows for efficient compilation of garbage-collected languages like Java. The initial prototype was slower than JavaScript, but optimizations like replicating JVM/V8 optimizations, using browser APIs, and making code more platform-agnostic resulted in huge performance improvements.

USING SHORT LIVED POSTGRES SERVERS FOR TESTING

Postgres installations consist of binaries and a data directory, allowing for easy setup of multiple instances on a server. A new instance can be created by setting up a new data directory and using the "pg_ctl" command. Existing data can be quickly populated into a new instance by cloning from a stable instance using the "pg_basebackup" command.

GRPC: THE BAD PARTS

gRPC is a high-performance RPC framework that has been successful but also has its downsides. It has a steep learning curve due to non-standard terms and complex implementations, compatibility issues with the web, lack of standardized JSON mapping initially, and finite message sizes requiring custom chunking for large files.

A RANT ABOUT FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT

Front-end development has become unnecessarily complex due to poor choices, such as over-reliance on JavaScript frameworks and ignoring fundamental principles like content importance and CSS capabilities. This complexity leads to frustration and inefficiency. Developers should prioritize simplicity.

A DEV'S THOUGHTS ON DEVELOPER PRODUCTIVITY

The software development process consists of two nested loops: an outer loop that aligns with the SDLC and an inner loop of reading, writing, and running code. The inner loop is crucial for productivity and achieving flow state, but is often disrupted by internal and external context switches. Developer productivity should be measured by the frequency of inner loop iterations rather than lines of code or commits.

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GEMMA 2 IS NOW AVAILABLE TO RESEARCHERS AND DEVELOPERS

Google DeepMind has released Gemma 2, a family of high-performing and efficient open models for various AI tasks. Gemma 2 is designed to run efficiently on a single GPU or TPU host, and it is compatible with major AI frameworks like Hugging Face Transformers, JAX, PyTorch, and TensorFlow. It is available in 9 billion and 27 billion parameter sizes.

AI CSS ANIMATIONS

This is an AI tool that creates CSS animations. You can describe the animation you want and the tool will generate the code. You can also edit the animation after it is created.

SUPERMEMORY

Supermemory is like ChatGPT for your bookmarks. You can import tweets or save websites and content using the Chrome extension and chat with your bookmarks.

RABBIT DATA BREACH: ALL R1 RESPONSES EVER GIVEN CAN BE DOWNLOADED

On May 16, 2024, the rabbitude team discovered several hardcoded API keys in the Rabbit r1 codebase, allowing them to access and manipulate user data. Rabbit Inc. has been aware of this security breach for a month but has not taken any action to mitigate the risk. The Rabbit r1 is a ChatGPT-based personal assistant device.

EXPLAINING GENERATIVE LANGUAGE MODELS TO (ALMOST) ANYONE

Generative language models are based on the transformer architecture, a neural network that takes embedded tokens as input and transforms them through masked self-attention and feed-forward operations. These models are pretrained using self-supervised learning with the goal of predicting the next token in a sequence. After pretraining, the alignment process teaches the model to generate text that aligns with human desires by using techniques like supervised finetuning and reinforcement learning from human feedback.

FINDING GPT-4'S MISTAKES WITH GPT-4

OpenAI developed CriticGPT, a model based on GPT-4, to identify errors in ChatGPT's code output, and found it improves human trainers' ability to spot mistakes during the reinforcement learning process. CriticGPT was trained using RLHF on ChatGPT answers containing errors. It can generate longer, more comprehensive critiques by utilizing additional test-time search against the critique reward model.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING ISSUE YOU SOLVED AS A WEB DEV? (REDDIT THREAD)

Devs discuss crazy stories - one dev negotiated a deal with the NHL to create a web app in 3 days for its playoff bracket sweepstakes game.

BALANCING OLD TRICKS WITH NEW FEATS: AI-POWERED CONVERSION FROM ENZYME TO REACT TESTING LIBRARY AT SLACK

Slack transitioned from Enzyme to React Testing Library (RTL) due to the lack of support for React 18 by Enzyme, converting over 15,000 tests using a hybrid approach that combined Abstract Syntax Tree transformations and LLMs.

WEB WORKERS, COMLINK, VITE, AND TANSTACK QUERY

This blog post demonstrates how to use Web Workers, Comlink, and TanStack Query in a Vite project to offload expensive computations to a background thread, improving UI responsiveness.

SPACEX IS BUILDING A NASA CRAFT TO INTENTIONALLY DESTROY THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION AFTER RETIRING

NASA has awarded SpaceX an $843 million contract to build a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station after its retirement in 2030. The vehicle will effectively destroy the ISS by pushing the station into reentry from orbit. It is unknown whether the vehicle's design will be based on one of SpaceX's existing spacecraft. NASA intends to replace the ISS with private space stations.

AMAZON PLANS TO LAUNCH DISCOUNT STORE IN BID TO FEND OFF TEMU AND SHEIN

Amazon is planning to launch a new section on its site dedicated to low-priced fashion and lifestyle items. The new storefront will allow Chinese sellers to ship directly to US consumers, with items arriving within nine to 11 days. It is an aggressive attempt to fend off competition from Temu and Shein, who have expanded their presence in the US in recent years. Amazon will start accepting products for the storefront this fall. The company has yet to announce when it intends to debut the storefront.

THE BRAIN MAKES A LOT OF WASTE. NOW SCIENTISTS THINK THEY KNOW WHERE IT GOES

Two teams of scientists have published three papers that offer a detailed description of the brain's waste-removal system. Their research suggests that during sleep, slow electrical waves push fluid from around cells deep in the brain to its surface, where it is absorbed into the bloodstream through a sophisticated interface. There is growing evidence that the brain's waste-removal system is impaired in Alzheimer's disease - the new findings could help researchers figure out how to restore the system.

TOYS “R” US RILES CRITICS WITH “FIRST-EVER” AI-GENERATED COMMERCIAL USING SORA

Toys “R” Us partnered with ad agency Native Foreign to create a brand film using OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora. The film uses AI-generated video clips to tell the story of the company's founder. Sora, which was introduced in February, is still not yet available to the public. The video required quite a bit of human post-production work to put together, showing that Sora is not yet a turnkey solution for instantly usable clips. The video, as well as behind-the-scenes footage showing how it was made, is available in the article.