Search the archive

APPLE TO LAUNCH STANDALONE PASSWORDS APP IN IOS 18 AND MACOS 15

Apple plans to increase the accessibility of its password manager by breaking it out into a standalone app.

TRAIL OF BITS: ANNOUNCING AI/ML SAFETY AND SECURITY TRAININGS

Trail of Bits has announced that it will be providing AI/ML safety and security training for organizations that covers fundamentals, vulnerabilities, risk assessment, and mitigation strategies for securing AI/ML systems.

your budget. Learn more about working with us.

NEW YORK TO BAN ‘ADDICTIVE' SUGGESTED POSTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA FEEDS FOR KIDS

The New York State Legislature passed a bill that would stop platforms from showing addictive suggested posts to people under the age of 18. Instead, children would get posts only from accounts they follow.

'ADOBE DOES NOT TRAIN FIREFLY GEN AI MODELS ON CUSTOMER CONTENT': COMPANY RESPONDS TO BACKLASH

In response to user backlash, Adobe has clarified that its Firefly AI models do not use customer content for training, ensuring that users' work remains their own. The controversy arose from a misunderstood Terms of Use update, which Adobe explained was aimed at content moderation rather than AI training. The company reaffirmed its commitment to using licensed and public-domain content for AI development.

HOW TO WRITE THE PERFECT COLD EMAIL

The more your cold email looks like it wasn't even meant for the recipient, the higher the chances they'll read it and respond. 7 psychological hacks to write casual emails that get replies: internal subject lines, all lowercase, a fake forwarded message, excluding any links or phone numbers, using “may I”, including “sent from my iPhone”, and a hyper-personalized P.S.

PAYWALL STRATEGY: DESIGNING FEATURES THAT MAKE MONEY

Revenue stagnation can be addressed by focusing on designing features for distinct user personas rather than adding features for existing users. This involves breaking down the user base into different segments based on their motivations and needs. Addressing the unique, high-value problems of each user group can lead to the creation of solutions that are indispensable to users, thereby increasing their willingness to pay and stay subscribed.

GOOGLE LAUNCHES ACCELERATE WITH GOOGLE RESOURCE HUB FOR ADVERTISERS

Google launched a new marketing resource hub called Accelerate with Google aimed at helping advertisers supercharge their campaigns with AI tools. The hub serves as a central destination rooted in Google's AI Essentials resources for ads products like Search and Performance Max. It includes customized skill assessments to identify knowledge gaps, a library of video tutorials and articles tailored to business goals, upcoming digital live streams on AI marketing topics, and more.

INSTAGRAM EXPERIMENTS WITH AUDIENCE FEEDBACK FOR UNPUBLISHED REELS CLIPS

Instagram is testing out new options to enable creators to get feedback on their draft Reels clips before they post them publicly. It's also experimenting with allowing users to share their Reels with a selection of non-followers before posting. These could be helpful ways to get additional feedback on Reels concepts before sending them out.

GOOGLE AD MANAGER LAUNCHES PROGRAMMATIC EMAIL ADS

Google Ad Manager (GAM) has quietly published documentation for a beta version of an advertising tag for email newsletters. This feature is only available in Google Ad Manager 360. The GAM tag works for sponsorships, context-based, or programmatic ads, but it delivers image ads only. Subscribers with images turned off won't see the message.

HOW THE 'BUY BUTTON' HOOKS YOU

Twitter and Facebook both failed to integrate a ‘buy button' into their platforms. Instagram took a different approach that succeeded. Rather than merely adding a button to ads, Instagram designed sponsored content to blend in with real user content. It also gave users the option to browse the advertiser's inventory, as opposed to just being able to buy the one item being promoted. Users are not visiting social media sites to shop, so the success of this feature hinged on the platform understanding its users' psychology.

10 PRODUCT-LED GROWTH PLAYS EVERY COMPANY SHOULD IMPLEMENT

Companies can benefit from PLG strategies even if they don't classify themselves as PLG companies. This article presents 10 actionable PLG plays, including implementing interactive demos, transitioning to soft gates instead of hard gates, and utilizing product data to drive customer outcomes. These strategies are designed to improve customer engagement, streamline operational processes, and enhance revenue generation by aligning product features with user needs and behaviors.

CREATING A DATA ADVANTAGE IN MARKETING—WITH OR WITHOUT COOKIES

Brands that have adapted to the cookie-less future have seen their digital marketing performance improve by 10%. Sites should be optimized for first-party data acquisition, with enabled sign-in capabilities, quality consent capture, and opportunities for data enrichment to develop robust customer profiles. Create value exchanges by offering customer discounts, free samples, event invitations, or other incentives in return for sharing personally identifiable information.

THE STRATEGY BEHIND CO-BRANDED PRODUCTS

Brand collabs boost visibility with new audiences, generate curiosity and buzz, and build brand equity.

3 STARTUP POSITIONING ARCHETYPES

Positioning processes differ based on the mindset of the founding team. 3 main archetypes include customer, technology, and competition-focused.

HOW TO SPOT GOOD CASE STUDIES – AND WHY YOU SHOULD IGNORE 90% OF THEM

Case studies can easily be misapplied if you miss key differences between the case study and your own problem.

Postman Collections

AI IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AT GOOGLE: PROGRESS AND THE PATH AHEAD

Google has integrated AI into its internal software development tools, with developers now using AI-based code completion for 50% of code characters. It has improved both model accuracy and user experience, and the company plans to further leverage AI in areas like testing, code understanding, and code maintenance. The industry as a whole is moving towards adding natural language as a common interface for software engineering tasks, like fixing bugs and writing new code.

PRERENDER PAGES IN CHROME FOR INSTANT PAGE NAVIGATIONS

Chrome has reintroduced full prerendering of pages to improve navigation speed by using the address bar, bookmarks, search suggestions, and the Speculation Rules API. This feature enables near-instant page loads by opening pages in a hidden background tab and activating them when needed.

I TRIED REACT COMPILER TODAY, AND GUESS WHAT…

HANLON'S RAZOR - MENTAL MODEL

Hanlon's razor is a mental model that states one should not attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. This engineering manager found this model helpful in promoting understanding and empathy at work by avoiding assumptions of bad intentions. They instead recommend focusing on improving a lack of skills or experience instead of blaming others for mistakes or miscommunication.

MY MONTH WITHOUT A SMARTPHONE

This author replaced his smartphone with a flip phone for a month. This experiment led to huge improvements in his focus, awareness, and engagement with others, but also presented challenges like difficulty managing his schedule and navigating traffic.

applications at 60% lower cost. Watch now→

TEO

Teo is a schema-driven web server framework. The server-side API is native to Rust, Node.js, and Python. It supports automatic database migration, generated ORM types and interfaces, generated frontend query clients, custom route handlers, and more.

INSPECTUS

Inspectus is a visualization tool for large language models. It runs in Jupyter Notebooks via an easy-to-use Python API. Inspectus provides multiple views to show insights into language model behaviors.

PIKU

Piku allows you to do git push deployments to your own servers.

HOW A SINGLE CHATGPT MISTAKE COST US $10,000+

A startup lost $10,000 due to a single mistake in its code that was generated by ChatGPT. This bug caused a unique ID collision in its subscription process, preventing new users from signing up. Its backend setup had multiple instances, which masked the problem during the day due to frequent deployments but caused it to surface at night when deployments stopped.

THE BACKROOMS OF THE INTERNET ARCHIVE

The Backrooms is an internet legend based on an image of an empty series of rooms, which gained popularity in 2019 when it was connected to a “creepypasta” story about an endless, maze-like dimension. This led to the creation of numerous games and videos based on the Backrooms concept, which often went viral. However, the mystery of the original photograph was recently solved - it was found to have been taken in 2003 during the renovation of a furniture store in Wisconsin and preserved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

THE WEIRD NERD COMES WITH TRADE-OFFS

Katalin Karikó, a Nobel Prize winner, faced criticism for expressing her dislike for the political aspect of academia, highlighting the challenges faced by "Weird Nerds" in such environments. “Weird Nerds” have an unyielding devotion to Truth, often placing it above social graces or conventional norms. These individuals usually have unique talents and intellectual courage, but struggle with the social and political aspects of academic life. A lack of "Weird Nerd-friendly" environments can hinder their contributions and potentially lead to a loss of valuable talent.

I REBUILT THE VISIONOS FROM SCRATCH (14 MINUTE VIDEO)

The creator of this video built a clone of visionOS to better learn how it works under the hood.

SO YOU WANT TO BUILD A BROWSER ENGINE

Building a competitive browser engine requires prioritizing security and performance, content main thread sanctity, fast JS-DOM calls, page load performance, scrolling and animations, typing latency, and quality video playback.

COMPILERS ARE (TOO) SMART

Unexpected assembly code discovered in a function using std::unordered_map::find turned out to be a complex method for counting set bits used by the Clang compiler to optimize the conversion of large hash values.

HOW TO USE COREPACK

Corepack, a tool bundled with Node.js, simplifies package manager usage by making sure the correct version is used for each project and providing error messages for mismatches.

Learn more about their 90-day pilot

their infrastructure. And they guarantee zero flakes.

✔️ No more manual e2e testing

SPACEX'S STARSHIP TOOK A BEATING, BUT HELD ON FOR FIRST RETURN FROM SPACE

SpaceX's Starship launched successfully and made a controlled splashdown for the first time on Thursday. The test fell short of total perfection, but it was still a large success. Two of the 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed and there was damage to the ship's thermal protection tiles and one of its control flaps. SpaceX has already test-fired the ship for the next test flight, and the booster could be hot-fired soon. The next test flight, which could happen within a couple of months, may involve an onshore landing.

NETFLIX'S LATEST REDESIGN AIMS TO SIMPLIFY YOUR HOMEPAGE

Netflix is testing a homepage redesign on its TV app that replaces the static tiles with boxes that extend when they're selected. It is also removing the menu that pops out from the left side of its homepage and replacing it with a more streamlined selection of options at the top of the screen. The new homepage will be tested among a small group of users to start and expanded to more members if it goes well.

MOST LIFE ON EARTH IS DORMANT, AFTER PULLING AN ‘EMERGENCY BRAKE'

Researchers have discovered a new hibernation factor called Balon. The protein is very common, being present in 20% of all cataloged bacterial genomes. Balon inserts itself into every ribosome in a cell, interrupting even active ribosomes in the middle of their work. Its mechanism is a reversible process. Unlike other hibernation factors, Balon can be inserted to stall growth and then quickly ejected.

SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ULTRA-THIN BATTERY FOR SMART CONTACT LENSES THAT COULD BE CHARGED BY TEARS

Researchers have created an ultra-thin battery about 0.2 millimeters thick. Powered by a biocompatible saline solution, the battery is thin enough to fit inside a 0.5-millimeter contact lens. The battery can use the glucose in tears to power up. Its capacity and voltage are currently very low and insufficient for powering data storage or an internet connection.

DOWN FOR LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES A MONTH: HOW AWS DEPLOYS CODE

AWS gives customers service credits if it fails to maintain 99.9% uptime. It uses automation to respond to issues - its Monthly Uptime Percentage commitment means there's no time for manual action at all. This article takes a look at how AWS achieves this feat. While some of its deployment processes can be hard to adopt without AWS' scale and maturity, most of the core principles can be applied by startups.

AI IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AT GOOGLE: PROGRESS AND THE PATH AHEAD

This blog post, written by the team responsible for the software development environments where Google engineers spend the majority of their time, covers Google's newest AI-powered improvements within its internal software development tools. It also presents a methodology on how to build AI products that deliver value for professional software development. There is widespread enthusiasm among software engineers about how AI is helping write code. The team achieved its highest impact with a UX that naturally blended into users' workflows.

U.S. CLEARS WAY FOR ANTITRUST INQUIRIES OF NVIDIA, MICROSOFT, AND OPENAI

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry. The Justice Department will take the lead in investigating Nvidia, while the FTC will examine the conduct of OpenAI and Microsoft. A similar deal in 2019 resulted in Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta being sued on claims that they violated anti-monopoly laws.

TESLA CEO ELON MUSK COULD LEAVE IF $56 BILLION PAY PACKAGE NOT APPROVED, SHAREHOLDERS WARNED

Tesla shareholders will decide whether to approve a $56 billion compensation package for Elon Musk on June 13. Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm wrote a letter to shareholders, urging them to approve the package. Not approving the package may mean Musk may leave the company. While several proxy firms have recommended against approving the pay proposal, early voting suggests that the package will be approved.

APPLE WILL REPORTEDLY BUILD A DEDICATED PASSWORDS APP FOR THE IPHONE AND MAC

Apple's Password management app will be revealed at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10.