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CARGO VET

Cargo added a new subcommand called vet which matches all dependencies against a set of audits performed by the project authors or trusted entities.

RANSOMWARE GANG DID STEAL RESIDENTS' CONFIDENTIAL DATA, UK CITY COUNCIL ADMITS

Leicester City Council has acknowledged that the recent "cyber incident" it experienced on March 7 was a ransomware attack and data was stolen. The cybercriminal gang INC Ransom leaked 3TB of stolen data, including residents' personal information like passports, bank statements, and official council forms.

BRUCE SCHNIER REMEMBERS ROSS ANDERSON

Ross Anderson was a respected cryptographer and security engineer. He passed away this week. Anderson was known for his brilliant insights and contributions to cybersecurity and academic freedom. His work, including the book Security Engineering, has been influential in the field.

POLAND LAUNCHES INQUIRY INTO PREVIOUS GOVERNMENT’S SPYWARE USE

Poland is investigating its previous government's use of spyware called Pegasus.

US STATE DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATES ALLEGED THEFT OF GOVERNMENT DATA

The US State Department is investigating a cyber incident involving leaked government data that includes personal details of government, military, and Pentagon employees.

HIGHLY SENSITIVE FILES MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED FROM EUROPOL HEADQUARTERS

On September 2023, Europol was notified that highly sensitive files of top Europol officials were missing due to a serious security breach at its headquarters in The Hague.

LINKEDIN IS ALL BUSINESS WITH CTV

LinkedIn has expanded its advertising offerings for B2B marketers by introducing connected TV ad placements. This will enable marketers to target audiences off-platform while they're streaming shows and movies. The move aims to reach users more intentionally during their workday or leisure time.

JPMORGAN CHASE TO LET BRANDS TARGET CUSTOMERS BASED ON SPENDING DATA

JPMorgan Chase has launched a business that will help marketers target customers based on their spending habits. With Chase Media Solutions, brands share what their motivations are — acquiring new customers or building basket size, for instance — and then the bank targets customers with specialized deals through its app’s Chase Offers section. These offers were previously less targeted ads, but moving forward it will be populated by offers developed within the bank’s new marketing arm.

3 WAYS TO ADD HUMOR INTO YOUR MARKETING COPY

Most marketing today works by grabbing attention, making you emotional, and turning emotion into action. For this to work, your audience has to trust, like, and relate to you – which is where humor comes into play. One tactic is to make fun of yourself, as IKEA did with a playfully misassembled ad. You can also make extreme and humorous analogies to show how your customer’s life would look without your product. Alternatively, brands can take a bold stance against something in their industry they don’t agree with, as Verizon did with its “one size does not fit all” messaging.

AN A/B TEST FOR CHECKOUT ABANDONMENT

This post breaks down an example of a checkout abandonment A/B test that tested a delay of 1 hour vs. 2-3 hours when sending the first follow-up email. Brands will often focus on one metric, which is the number of placed orders for the first email. The 1 hour test version will always win — but the truth is this doesn’t paint the full picture of what’s happening. A proper test would split the following into 2 cohorts, tag 50% of the profiles as 'control' and the other half as 'test', and capture the flow start date. Segments to pull include the number of people in each cohort in the last month, discounts used by cohort, placed orders by cohort, and unsubscribed by cohort.

NEGATIVE KEYWORDS IN PAID SEARCH: 6 STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION

This article dives into the world of negative keywords and how to use them to refine Google Ads strategies. It shares six different implementation strategies including setting keyword thresholds, employing search term reports, and blocking undesirable phrases from the start. Marketers can optimize budget allocation, improve campaign performance, and ensure alignment with their advertising goals by properly using negative keywords.

ELEVATE YOUR MARKETING DASHBOARD: HOW TO IMPRESS THE CEO, CRO, AND CFO

This article walks through a weekly marketing dashboard template used by the head of marketing at Segment used this template for a weekly report to the C-suite and sales team and explains how marketing leaders can share the right level of detail with executives. The format puts numbers into context while also using language and metrics that other teams care about. A link to download the template is included in the article.

HOW TO DISCOVER SHOPPERS’ QUESTIONS: 5 TOOLS

Researching shoppers’ questions can help brands better understand consumer demand and pain points, as well as the generative AI and conversational searches online. This post walks through 5 tools that can be used to research keyword-focused questions: Moz, Semrush, AlsoAsked, BuzzSumo, and Answer The Public. All five are paid tools but offer a free trial.

20 PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION EXAMPLES FROM ECOMMERCE

40% of people are more likely to spend more than planned if they find their shopping experience to be personalized. This guide shares 20 product recommendation examples to help shoppers make the right buying decisions faster. Examples include recently viewed items, expert recommendations, recommendations based on quiz answers, and personalized bundle recommendations.

THE NEW RULES OF MARKETING

Kieran Flanagan, CMO of Zapier, shares the 10 current rules of marketing. He emphasizes the importance of picking the right channels for your products, as channels will never bend to fit with products. Today’s marketing channels favor individuals vs. brands. Creators likely will take 15-20% of what Series D and public companies spend on paid advertising today.

MAKE YOUR CONTENT HIGH-VALUE WITH THESE 4 SOURCES OF UNIQUE INSIGHT

Content needs to be unexpectedly interesting and filled with personality to win audiences, earn organic backlinks, and build trust.

CHATGPT PROMPT FOR EMAIL COPYWRITING

This post provides a templated prompt for ChatGPT that generates email copy in the exact structure you want the output to be in.

WILL ALPHABET ACQUIRE HUBSPOT?

Alphabet's rumored interest in acquiring HubSpot would be a game-changer in the CRM and marketing landscape.

BUBBLE TROUBLE

The AI industry faces a looming crisis as the demand for high-quality data outstrips its availability, prompting concerns about the sustainability of current AI models and the potential for a market collapse driven by inflated expectations and unsustainable investments in infrastructure and technology.

STOP CHASING UNICORNS

Leaders often overlook the significance of understanding and improving their company's ways of working compared to competitors. They should identify specific areas for incremental enhancement rather than relying on vague concepts like "Agile" or "Modern Product."

FIVE NON OBVIOUS SKILLS FOR PRODUCT & GROWTH MANAGERS IN 2024

A product leader should excel in five areas: summarization, upward management, understanding of marketing and sales, being aware of their skillset and what it is lacking, and guiding the team towards outcomes over rigid adherence to agile methodologies.

WHEN TO DISAGREE AND COMMIT

Here are five pivotal questions to consider when determining whether to persist in advocating for one's viewpoint or wholeheartedly support an alternative that highlight the importance of intellectual honesty and commitment.

WHAT’S YOUR MONETIZATION COLOR?

SaaS products often prompt users with calls to action, either for core functions or to encourage upgrades. Utilizing distinct monetization colors to highlight paid options simplifies this process. This visual strategy helps users easily distinguish between what's available in their current plan and what benefits an upgrade offers directly through the interface.

NAVIGATING THE LEGAL MAZE: A FOUNDER’S GUIDE TO HIRING LAWYERS AT EVERY STAGE OF YOUR STARTUP

In the early stages of a startup, founders will benefit from outsourcing legal tasks to specialized firms while focusing on finding a suitable legal partner. As the company grows, transitioning to in-house legal counsel will streamline operations and facilitate strategic partnerships, provided there's transparency and communication between the CEO and legal team.

MVC VS MVP ARCHITECTURE: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

IS MICROMANAGEMENT ALWAYS BAD? (4 MINUTE VIDEO)

Micromanagement isn't inherently negative and can be beneficial for product leaders in specific scenarios. It's advisable for leaders to generally avoid micromanagement but remain open to employing it when necessary. Clear communication with team members about the reasons for increased oversight can help maintain trust and understanding.

THE 3 MAIN RULES OF PIVOT

Pivoting in business doesn't entail abandoning all previous efforts. It's a common and constructive strategy for growth. The success of a pivot often hinges on its timing.

NON-NEGOTIABLES

To prevent conflicts between ambitious product leaders and founders over vision and strategy, it's vital to inquire about non-negotiable aspects during the hiring process and be informed ahead of time.

HOW WE’VE SAVED 98% IN CLOUD COSTS BY WRITING OUR OWN DATABASE

HiveKit, a company focused on tracking vehicles and people, faced a scaling problem where storing billions of location updates per month became prohibitively expensive with conventional databases. To overcome this, the company built a custom database specialized for its write-heavy load. It also optimized storage by storing delta updates instead of full state for each update. These changes, combined with moving from AWS Aurora to EBS, reduced the company's cloud storage costs by 98%.

HOW GITHUB COPILOT WORKS

GitHub Copilot analyzes code in your editor to understand what you’re working on and then sends gathered context to a backend service that sanitizes the input by removing harmful content and irrelevant prompts. The cleaned prompt is run through OpenAI’s ChatGPT API and then a final suggestion is presented in your editor.

REVERSE SEARCHING NETFLIX’S FEDERATED GRAPH

Netflix's Graph Search has improved to include reverse search functionality, enabling precise notifications and dynamic updates for users. By using Elasticsearch and CockroachDB, Netflix efficiently handles SavedSearches, improving performance. The system's flexibility also allows for expanding reverse search to other teams and exploring responsive UIs through subscriptions.

ADVICE TO YOUNG PEOPLE, THE LIES I TELL MYSELF

This essay from a software engineer gives a wide range of advice on life topics, covering personal growth, choosing the right things, and happiness. Generally, the author believes that effort matters more than inherent talent and confidence stems from action. Engineers should try to “be the plumber” by being someone who is trusted to solve tough, crappy problems.

MY WAY BACK FROM MANAGEMENT TO CODING

After transitioning from an Individual Contributor to an Engineering Manager role at LeanIX, this author found that management didn't align with their passion for coding. Despite their tough journey, they want to encourage everyone who is willing to try out management to do the step and not feel bad if they figure out it is not how they intend to work.

IMPROVING CODE REVIEWS WITH STORYTELLING

Adopting a storytelling approach to code reviews has greatly improved the process for the company Doppler. By focusing on clear commit narratives (using comments, commit messages, and PR comments), it has made reviews easier to understand and better organized.

OPENUI

Describe UI components in natural language and then see them rendered live as AI codes them to your specifications.

PLANDEX

Plandex automates complex tasks by breaking them into smaller subtasks and executing them sequentially using AI. It’s useful for developers who want to get through boring coding tasks.

INTRODUCING BABYLON.JS 7.0

Babylon.js 7.0 has new features like procedural geometry and support for global illumination and Gaussian splat rendering, alongside enhanced WebXR features and Apple Vision Pro support. The new version also brings advanced animation system upgrades.

HOW STACK OVERFLOW REPLACED EXPERTS EXCHANGE

Experts Exchange came before Stack Overflow and had a paywall model. Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky created Stack Overflow as a free, open-source Q&A platform for developers that was a big improvement over Experts Exchange. Stack Overflow has its own share of challenges with the rise of ChatGPT and the battle with ever-changing technologies.

IN-APP BROWSERS ARE STILL A PRIVACY, SECURITY, AND CHOICE PROBLEM

European and UK competition authorities are investigating in-app browsers, driven by claims they bypass user-selected default browsers, compromising privacy and user choice. These internal browsers are under scrutiny for potentially collecting data without clear user consent. The issue emphasizes the challenge of balancing tech innovation with safeguarding user preferences and security.

FIZZBEE

FizzBee is a formal specification language and model checker for distributed systems.

EXPLORING LLM WEIRDNESS: A QUIZ GAME

A fun quiz designed to explore the capabilities of GPT-4 and other LLMs.

WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT HIRING FROM OUR FIRST FIVE EMPLOYEES

The best early hires are identified through their passion, existing work, and willingness to learn.

SELF-HOSTED SOFTWARE

A directory of self-hosted software.

APPLE EXPLORING 'MOBILE ROBOT' THAT 'FOLLOWS USERS AROUND THEIR HOMES'

Apple is reportedly exploring various personal robotics projects in an effort to create its next big thing. These include a mobile robot that follows people around their homes and a tabletop device that uses robotics to move a display around. The projects are said to be in the very early stages of research and it is unclear if any of them will ever be released. Apple apparently considered developing robots that can handle chores but decided against it for now due to extraordinarily difficult engineering challenges.

DALL-E NOW LETS YOU EDIT IMAGES IN CHATGPT

OpenAI's DALL-E now offers image editing tools both on the web and on mobile. There are preset style suggestions to help inspire image creation. The image generation platform has been integrated with ChatGPT - users can now edit DALL-E images in ChatGPT across web, iOS, and Android. Videos from OpenAI showing off the new features are available in the article.

EUROPE’S SPACE AGENCY PREPARES TO BLOT OUT THE SUN

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to use two separate spacecraft to create its own solar eclipse to study the Sun's corona. The spacecraft will fly 150 meters apart, aligned so that one satellite blocks out all but of corona from the other satellite. They will have to fly in precise formation down to millimeter accuracy. Studying the Sun's corona will reveal details about its role in our solar system's weather. The ESA hopes to launch the mission in September.

‘MINI LIVER’ WILL GROW IN PERSON’S OWN LYMPH NODE IN BOLD NEW TRIAL

A new experimental treatment developed by biotechnology firm LyGenesis may lead to patients growing an additional miniature liver. The approach involves injecting healthy liver cells into a lymph node in the upper abdomen of a patient with liver failure. The cells multiply and take over the lymph node to form a structure that can perform a liver's blood-filtering duties. The first person who received the treatment (on March 25) is recovering well, but they will need to be closely monitored for a while to see if the treatment is both safe and effective. The treatment has worked so far in mice, dogs, and pigs.

THE MANY, CONFUSING FILE SYSTEM APIS

Googling 'File System API' will bring up a lot of similarly named APIs. This can get confusing as there are multiple standards and names, but there are actually fewer than it seems at first and many build on each other, adding layers of functionality. This article gives a tour of the different file system APIs. Interacting with file systems is complex - the different APIs handle different actions and security concerns.

WHY IS OBSERVABILITY SO EXPENSIVE?

Observability costs are on top of mind for many organizations. This post covers a brief history of modern observability, how the industry arrived at its current observability cost crisis, and a new way of thinking about observability costs and pricing models. Over the past few decades, infrastructure-as-a-service providers and open source have made it easy to produce voluminous amounts of telemetry, while little regard has been given to the cost or storage of the telemetry output, causing a cost crisis in observability tooling. One solution may be to not send any observability data by default.

A FIRST LOOK AT EUROPE’S ALTERNATIVE IPHONE APP STORES

There is currently only one third-party iOS app store live in Europe. Other app stores have been announced and some are in the review process. One reason for the lack of alternative app stores is due to Apple's Core Technology Fee, which requires developers to pay Apple 50 euro cents for every annual app install over one million, with third-party app store developers paying the fee for every first annual install of their app marketplace. Apple has also made installing third-party marketplaces a hassle, requiring around a dozen screen interactions to install each store.