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F-SHAPE PATTERN AND HOW USERS READ

F-shape scanning is a typical pattern in which users read horizontally, then less and less until they scan vertically.

DAVINCI RESOLVE'S LATEST MICRO CONTROL PANEL TURNS YOUR APPLE IPAD PRO INTO A FULL-FLEDGED STUDIO

Unveiled at NAB 2024 this year, the Micro Control Panel is a tiny, keyboard-size portable control panel that revolutionizes iPad color grading.

BIDEN SIGNS TIKTOK ‘BAN' BILL INTO LAW, STARTING THE CLOCK FOR BYTEDANCE TO DIVEST IT

President Biden has signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that will ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year. The company plans to contest the law in court, arguing the law is an infringement on the constitutional rights of U.S. users. Uncertainties linger over China's reaction and whether it will even allow a potential sale.

HEAD OF GOOGLE SEARCH DEMANDS URGENCY AS GROWTH SLOWS

A leaked recording of a Google all-hands meeting revealed concerns about slowing growth in the search ads business. Google's Head of Search, Prabhakar Raghavan, urged more urgency from his organization, citing the increased competition, rising costs, and regulatory challenges as key factors creating the new reality.

PRODUCT-SPECIFIC RETENTION STRATEGIES FOR BIG WINS

Lisa Kennelly, Global Product Marketing Strategist at Klarna, breaks down the importance of personalized retention strategies tailored to individual user needs rather than generic approaches. She advocates for A/B testing to refine tactics, collecting insights through surveys and AI tools. She also stresses the significance of distinguishing between retention and activation issues. Actively gathering feedback during cancellation processes is highly effective for extracting insights for retention tactics.

HOW SELF-DEPRECATION IS FUELING CAVA'S GROWTH

Cava's unconventional approach to social marketing, which uses self-deprecating humor and memes, is driving engagement and growth as it expands geographically. The strategy has proved effective in cultivating a strong and loyal following, particularly among younger demographics. In addition to inside jokes and funny posts, Cava is also collaborating with comedic creators to build a fun brand persona.

6 SEO COURSES TO BECOME A CERTIFIED SEO

6 SEO courses that each include a certification. 4 of the courses are free, while 2 are paid.

REDDIT ADDS DYNAMIC PRODUCT ADS TO HELP BRANDS REACH SHOPPERS IN THE DISCOVERY PHASE

Reddit has become a more common destination for product search. People now add “reddit” to their Google Search queries to get more honest takes, as opposed to trusting testimonials on product sites. Reddit's Dynamic Product Ads allow advertisers to showcase their items within related subreddits. These ads auto-populate in real time, using images and pricing info from advertisers' catalogs. This feature is currently available in public beta.

4 PILLARS OF PRODUCT MARKETING METRICS

This post categorizes actionable product marketing metrics into 4 pillars: revenue generation, GTM strategy, retention/product adoption, and enablement. It's important to prioritize 2-3 metrics per quarter. They should be measured as changes between benchmarked time periods and the results after implementing a new initiative.

HOW SQUATTY POTTY USES BUYER PSYCHOLOGY

Squatty Potty developed a solution to a very common problem, but the issue was no one wanted to talk about going #2. With its early marketing, the brand was able to turn a taboo topic into a product people can't stop talking about. Squatty Potty's unconventional “Dookie the Unicorn” ad used humor to educate the audience, which resulted in over 400 million views and a 600% increase in online sales. The brand illustrates the potential health issues linked with traditional toilet posture, which effectively frames the product as a necessary solution. Squatty Potty also legitimizes its offering with authority by promoting its support from doctors and medical studies.

8 REASONS WHY POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS DON'T BUY

This post explains 8 common reasons why leads don't convert to buyers, as well as solutions for each. If potential customers aren't feeling enough ‘pain' with their current solution, highlight the negatives of the status quo. If they think they don't have the resources to cover the purchase, highlight the ROI of your solution and show how it pays for itself. If they think their current approach is working and are afraid of failure by changing it, quantify the status quo to show them how it's not working.

INSIDE CLAY'S PATH TO MANAGING 100,000,000+ RELATIONSHIPS

Clay is a tool that helps users be more thoughtful with their relationships. It attracted over 100M customers, including users from half of the Fortune 500 companies. In this piece, the co-founder shares details about the growth journey and key learnings. Tactics used include gathering extensive feedback before starting to develop the product, focusing on organic growth by leveraging platforms like Product Hunt for targeted launches, and pivoting to serve teams as well as individual users.

THE MAN WHO KILLED GOOGLE SEARCH

The story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it.

CLICKS & CLOUT: HOW WE SEEK STATUS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The meaning of status and the pursuit of status have both changed in a technology-first world.

CHATGPT PROMPT TO WRITE 20 FULL-FUNNEL LINKEDIN ADS

A templated prompt to generate 20 LinkedIn ad variations using advertising formulas like PAS and FAB.

MAKE INVALID STATES UNREPRESENTABLE

Invalid states can lead to runtime errors and less reliable code. However, by shrinking the gap between representable, valid states, errors can be moved from runtime to compile time, which allows them to get caught much earlier. Type systems can and should be used to model business logic that makes invalid states impossible and unrepresentable. This article goes through a few examples, such as a “Color” type that prevents invalid colors.

WHY DON'T WE TALK ABOUT MINIFYING CSS ANYMORE?

Minifying CSS files directly is less important today compared to before because popular front-end frameworks automatically handle minification and code-splitting for developers. Modern compression algorithms can reduce file sizes a lot and HTTP/2 can efficiently deliver multiple smaller CSS files. As a result, developers no longer have to manually minify their CSS.

WHY WE SUCK AT ESTIMATING SOFTWARE PROJECTS

Software is hard to estimate correctly because requirements change often, complexities always come up, and external factors can cause delays. There's no perfect solution to this problem because software development is inherently a creative process.

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF A UNIT, INTEGRATION, AND E2E TEST?

Various software engineers were polled on the difference between different types of tests. The general consensus was that unit tests test the smallest units of code, like methods. Integration tests verify interactions between different parts of a system. End-to-end tests focus on the overall user journey and are more heavyweight.

LANGCSS

LangCSS is an AI assistant specifically trained on Tailwind CSS to help you generate forms, buttons, and other web elements easily. You can chat with it to describe your ideas and the AI assistant will generate code in real time.

REACT NATIVE 0.74 - YOGA 3.0, BRIDGELESS NEW ARCHITECTURE, AND MORE

React Native 0.74 adds Yoga 3.0 (a layout engine), Bridgeless mode as the default, and Yarn 3 as the default package manager. There are other updates such as the removal of deprecated APIs.

PRAGMATIC DRAG AND DROP

This is Atlassian's open-sourced drag-and-drop toolchain. It can be used with any view layer, such as React, Svelte, and Angular, and currently powers products like Trello, Jira, and Confluence.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE LAN PARTY

LAN parties were gatherings where gamers would connect their computers to a local network to play games with minimal network lag. LAN parties declined over time because the internet got faster and consoles became more popular.

WHY AREN'T WE TALKING ABOUT CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT?

Continuous improvement is a key principle of Agile and Lean, but it's not as popular anymore in tech companies. Layoffs and transformations often happen without employee involvement, and there's a general lack of engagement in improving processes.

WEB GAME ENGINES & LIBRARIES

A list of various JavaScript engines and libraries for real-time 2D and 3D graphics in web browsers.

ERIC SCHMIDT-BACKED AUGMENT, A GITHUB COPILOT RIVAL, LAUNCHES OUT OF STEALTH WITH $252M

Augment, a startup backed by Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google), has launched to rival GitHub Copilot with a new AI-powered coding platform.

THE MODERN REACT TUTORIAL (RSCS, NEXT.JS, SHADUI, DRIZZLE, TS, AND MORE) (3 HOUR VIDEO)

An in-depth YouTube tutorial on modern React.

IBM TO BUY HASHICORP IN $6.4 BILLION DEAL TO EXPAND IN CLOUD

IBM will acquire cloud infrastructure automation company HashiCorp in a $6.4 billion deal to grow its own cloud business.

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TESLA TEASES ITS UPCOMING UBER-LIKE SELF-DRIVING RIDE-HAILING APP

Tesla teased screenshots of its ride-hailing feature along with the release of its Q1 2024 financial results. The feature allows people to summon self-driving Teslas for rides. Riders can adjust the temperature and music inside the vehicle from their phones. The feature will be integrated into the existing Tesla app. Tesla has yet to achieve unsupervised self-driving, so it is unknown when the ride-hailing feature will be available. The screenshots are available in the article.

APPLE REPORTEDLY DEVELOPING ITS OWN CUSTOM SILICON FOR AI SERVERS

Apple reportedly has ambitious plans to design its own artificial intelligence server processor using TSMC's 3nm node. TSMC's 3nm technology is one of the most advanced semiconductor processes available. A specialist AI server processor would allow Apple to tailor hardware specifically to its software needs, potentially leading to more powerful and efficient technologies. While Apple is rumored to be prioritizing on-device processing for many of its upcoming AI tools, some operations will inevitably have to occur in the cloud.

HERE'S WHY RISC-V IS SO IMPORTANT

RISC-V is an instruction set architecture freely available for commercial purposes. The open source chip design is helping to drive innovation in custom hardware. RISC-V competitors may eventually emerge to challenge AMD and Intel. The combined resources working to develop faster and more efficient RISC-V chips may one day outpace that of major players in the CPU space.

IS UMAINE'S EXPERIMENTAL 3D-PRINTED DWELLING THE FUTURE OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING?

UMaine's experimental 3D-printed dwelling, BioHome3D, is the result of a two-and-a-half-year effort to create a technology for building homes faster, more efficiently, and less expensively than conventional construction. BioHome3D is made from logging and sawmill wood waste. It has an open-concept living/kitchen/dining room, one bedroom, and one bath. The dwelling has two mini-split heat pumps and roughly 30 sensors that measure temperature, humidity, wind, and other weather factors. Pictures of the dwelling are available in the article.

Learn more about their 90-day pilot

months. And they guarantee zero flakes.

They build and maintain your automated test suite, plus provide unlimited parallel test runs. (24-hour maintenance included).

LINUX CAN FINALLY RUN YOUR CAR'S SAFETY SYSTEMS AND DRIVER-ASSISTANCE FEATURES

Elektrobit's EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications is a new Linux distro designed to comply with the automotive industry's functional safety requirements. It was developed with Canonical, who will help with keeping the system compliant with safety requirements over time. The operating system uses an external safety monitor to intercept and validate kernel actions. This allows its developers to keep up to speed with the developer community.

HASHQUERY

Hashquery is a framework for defining and querying BI models in data warehouses. Its expressions are defined in Python, compiled into SQL, and run directly against a data warehouse. It is capable of expressing complex, multi-layered data queries. Hashquery natively integrates with upstream semantic layers and can be used together with Hashboard as a headless BI interface.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME WE BUILT A NEW CITY?

California Forever announced plans in August 2023 to build a new city of up to 400,000 people in Solano County, forty miles northeast of San Francisco. The company purchased 50,000 acres of land for an estimated $900 million in 2017. Most of the land is zoned for agricultural use and is subject to slow-growth laws. This may change after a vote in November. The project may be the most ambitious new development built in California in over 50 years. This article features an interview with Jan Sramek, the founder and CEO of California Forever, where he discusses the project.

SENATE PASSES TIKTOK BAN BILL, SENDING IT TO PRESIDENT BIDEN'S DESK

The Senate has passed a bill for a foreign aid package that includes a measure that will force China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok or have it banned from the US. The bill will now head to President Joe Biden, who has already committed to signing the legislation. Once signed into law, ByteDance will have up to a year to complete a sale of TikTok. Enforcement of the law may be delayed by legal challenges. The bill is aimed at preventing foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, and otherwise harming vulnerable Americans, rather than a punishment against ByteDance or any other individual company.

APPLE REPORTEDLY CUTS VISION PRO PRODUCTION DUE TO LOW DEMAND

Apple now only expects to sell around 400,000 to 450,000 Vision Pro headsets in 2024, compared to a previous market consensus of 700,000 to 800,000.

U.S. BANS NONCOMPETE AGREEMENTS FOR NEARLY ALL JOBS

The Federal Trade Commission has voted to ban nearly all noncompete agreements - existing noncompetes for senior executives have been excluded from the ban as these agreements are more likely to have been negotiated.

MICROSOFT'S PHI-3 SHOWS THE SURPRISING POWER OF SMALL, LOCALLY RUN AI LANGUAGE MODELS

Microsoft's Phi-3-mini, which contains only 3.8 billion parameters, may rival GPT-3.5.

THE MAN WHO KILLED GOOGLE SEARCH

This article tells the story of how Google Search died and the people responsible for killing it.

TSMC'S DEBACLE IN THE AMERICAN DESERT

TSMC's Arizona facility was originally set to begin operating in 2024 - it is woefully behind schedule, with production now set to start in 2025.

META AND OPEN

Apple's closed model may have been successful in the mobile market, but closed models don't always win - Meta is betting the open model will win with virtual and mixed reality headsets.

THE RAY-BAN META SMART GLASSES HAVE MULTIMODAL AI NOW

Meta has rolled out multimodal AI to its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, allowing users to process photos, audio, and text through voice commands for tasks like identification and translation, although the AI's capabilities are limited and sometimes inaccurate.

OPENAI ANNOUNCES NEW ENTERPRISE AI FEATURES

OpenAI has announced new enterprise-grade features for its API customers, including enhanced security measures, an upgraded Assistants API, a new Projects feature for granular access control, and cost management tools. These updates demonstrate OpenAI's focus on offering a more "plug and play" experience for enterprises, countering the rise of competitors like Meta's Llama 3 and open models from Mistral.