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TRAILDISCOVER

TrailDiscover is an evolving repository of CloudTrail events with detailed descriptions, MITRE ATT&CK insights, real world incidents, references, and security implications.

GOOGLE AGREES TO DESTROY BROWSING DATA COLLECTED IN INCOGNITO MODE

Google agreed to a proposed $5 billion class-action settlement requiring it to destroy or de-identify billions of web browsing data records collected from users in "Incognito mode," mandate better disclosures about data collection in Incognito, and impose limits on future data gathering. If approved, the settlement could apply to 136 million Google users who accused the company of illegally tracking their private browsing behavior.

OWASP DATA BREACH CAUSED BY SERVER MISCONFIGURATION

The OWASP Foundation announced a data breach exposing personal information provided by aspiring members in resumes submitted between 2006 and 2014 as part of the old membership process. The breach, caused by a misconfiguration on OWASP's old wiki server, compromised names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and other identifiable information of tens of thousands of members from the non-profit software security community organization.

THE EFFICIENT SECURITY PRINCIPLE

The Efficient Security Principle is essentially that security is only as good as it needs to be to keep people using the service. This post provides guidance to security practitioners and leaders on how to utilize this principle.

DEOBFUSCATING/UNMINIFYING OBFUSCATED WEB APP CODE (GITHUB GIST)

A GitHub gist that provides some notes and tools for reverse engineers to deobfuscate/unminify obfuscated code.

BINARLY RELEASED THE FREE ONLINE SCANNER TO DETECT THE CVE-2024-3094 BACKDOOR

Researchers from the firmware security firm Binarly released a free online scanner to detect the CVE-2024-3094 backdoor.

CHROME TO FIGHT COOKIE THEFT WITH DEVICE BOUND SESSION CREDENTIALS

Chrome is adding Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) to enhance user protection against cookie theft, a mechanism that uses a private key tied to the device.

THE ‘90S—AND THE ICONS THAT DEFINED THE DECADE—ARE SO BACK

Brands such as Reformation, Skims, and Osea Malibu have been capitalizing on iconic figures and aesthetics from the ‘90s. Campaigns featuring celebrities like Monica Lewinsky and Pamela Anderson reflect a genuine consumer enthusiasm for ‘90s culture. A throwback campaign can serve as an opportunity for a brand to not only embrace nostalgic aesthetics but also reshape cultural narratives that align with current events.

CRACKING THE CODE: HOW MULTICULTURAL & GEN Z RESHAPE MAINSTREAM MARKETING

This report surveyed over 2,300 US consumers to look at the impact of Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin, AAPI, and LGBTQIA+ consumers’ brand perceptions and purchase behaviors, with a focus on Gen Z. 81% of Gen Z said that diverse voices have either some or a large amount of influence on them when making decisions. 57% of all consumers say that multicultural people have a big influence on their brand preferences and choices. Brands should prioritize outreach to multicultural and diverse consumers as opposed to adopting a siloed approach.

THE 3 MOST COMMON CTA MISTAKES COSTING YOU SALES

The goal of a website CTA is to lead audiences to take desirable actions. Not attaching outcomes or pain points to CTAs will result in poor performance. Using CTAs to lead users away from the website or to unimportant pages will result in unwanted conversions. Showing more than 2 CTAs can overwhelm users and distract them from the desired action.

CANCELLATION FLOW BEST PRACTICES

Optimizing your cancellation flow can reduce user churn. Brands should first collect the various reasons why users cancel, either through user interviews or by using an open-ended question in the cancellation flow. Next, insert a multiple-choice survey into the cancellation flow based on the initial research. Finally, set up the flow to provide a win-back offer back on the multiple-choice selection.

CRAFTING A WINNING GO-TO-MARKET (GTM) STRATEGY: FRAMEWORK AND FOCUS

A successful GTM strategy requires thorough market research, cross-functional alignment, and agility to adapt based on market feedback and performance metrics. This piece covers a structured framework for GTM planning that covers key sections and questions to guide the process.

HOW TO A/B TEST AD COPY WITH RESPONSIVE SEARCH ADS

Google’s Responsive Search Ads make it difficult to A/B test ad copy, but there is a hidden Ad Variations feature that makes testing possible. It enables marketers to test variations of specific elements, including headlines, descriptions, and even landing pages. This article describes how to set up these tests and where to track experiment performance within Google Ads.

A MILLION DOLLAR STRIPE PAGE

Stripe's resource page is driving about $1 million in organic traffic annually, proving the immense value of well-optimized content. By strategically targeting high-intent keywords related to online payment processing, it captures a significant share of the market and establishes itself as an authority in the industry. Marketers can make a single page generate substantial revenue and contribute to long-term business growth by leveraging simplicity, SEO optimization, and global accessibility.

SOLVING REAL USER PROBLEMS WITH GENERATIVE AI

This interview with Jackie Rocca, the VP of Product at Slack, delves into the role of generative AI in shaping modern collaboration platforms. She explains how Slack has evolved from a messaging tool to a comprehensive workspace, integrating AI to address user challenges such as information overload and knowledge retrieval. Slack offers AI-powered features like channel recaps, thread summaries, and search answers to increase productivity through relevant insights. The interview highlights the iterative nature of AI development and the importance of keeping the user needs in focus to drive innovation that really impacts their experience.

CUSTOMER PAIN POINTS: HOW TO IDENTIFY AND SOLVE THEM

This article describes common customer pain points, strategies for identifying them from your own customers, and how to address them with prospective customers.

INSTAGRAM STORIES TIPS AND TRICKS

7 tips to enhance your IG Stories include making emojis glow, creating collages by using Layout, using “Add Yours” stickers and templates, and more.

5 BOFU CONTENT MISTAKES

To ensure readers understand what your product does, reduce the number of features you spotlight in one piece to 3, weave social proof throughout your content, and use a variety of formats to showcase your product to meet users’ different learning preferences (ie. GIFs, explainer videos, and screenshots).

JAVASCRIPT VISUALIZED - PROMISE EXECUTION

This blog post shows how to use promises in JavaScript to enable non-blocking async tasks. It breaks down the process from start to finish. Promises can trigger an asynchronous action if a handler is attached by either then or catch. Since the handlers are pushed to the Microtask Queue, you can handle the eventual result in a non-blocking way. This makes it easier to handle errors, chain multiple operations together, and keep your code more readable.

WHY CHOOSE ASYNC/AWAIT OVER THREADS?

The debate between using threads and async/await in Rust revolves around simplicity, performance, and composability. While threads may offer familiarity and straightforwardness, async/await is better in I/O-bound scenarios due to its composable code.

FEAR MAKES YOU A WORSE PROGRAMMER

Fear leads to overly cautious behavior and can hinder important code or system changes. Tools and team processes like version control, testing, and blameless postmortems can help mitigate fear. Programmers should feel comfortable making changes without the fear of breaking things or facing punishment. While some fears may be irrational, overcoming them through positive experiences can build confidence and improve software development.

SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING IS A WASTE OF AN INFORMATION CHANNEL

Syntax highlighting today uses color to distinguish code elements, but this doesn’t fully utilize the power of color to convey information. We could use dynamic color highlighting overlays to communicate things like scope, imports, argument flow, types, or even metadata about test failures.

A16Z BLOGS ARE JUST GLORIFIED MARKETING

a16z blog posts are subtle marketing for its portfolio companies rather than offering impartial overviews of technology landscapes. This author notes how an a16z post on LLM architectures omitted competing open-source vector database solutions in favor of one it funded. This pattern extends to other a16z publications and even its voting practices with crypto companies.

BUN 1.1

Bun 1.1 is a major update that brings Windows Support, better Node.js compatibility, more APIs, faster performance, and more.

CREO

Creo helps developers to rapidly build internal tools by providing an AI-powered solution. Developers describe what they want and it handles the UI, authorization, approvals, auditing, and deployment, generating React code that is customizable.

SWE AGENT

Princeton has released a SWE agent that uses LLMs to fix bugs and issues in real GitHub repositories.

AI HALLUCINATES SOFTWARE PACKAGES AND DEVS DOWNLOAD THEM – EVEN IF POTENTIALLY POISONED WITH MALWARE

Researchers found that AI bots often invent fake software packages when asked for coding help. This is a security risk as a bad actor could create malware with the same invented package name, then trick developers relying on the AI's generated code into downloading and installing it.

MENTAL HEALTH IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

This article shares a tech co-founder's struggle with anxiety and burnout, which stemmed from the intense work environment in the startup world. Neglecting mental health can take a heavy toll. To manage his anxiety better, the author set boundaries and prioritized self-care.

THE SECRET TO DUOLINGO’S EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

Duolingo's VP of Engineering Sean Colombo shares five crucial growth lessons learned over five years that resulted in 6x growth in DAU. Colombo provides a handful of insights into Duolingo's sustained growth in product development and user engagement by highlighting the importance of urgency, strategic advantage identification, and prudent notification management. Duolingo continues to thrive in the competitive market by experimenting smartly and focusing on users.

FEATURES I WISH POSTGRESQL HAD AS A DEVELOPER

PostgreSQL would be easier to develop with if it had versioned schema, better online schema migrations, and declarative state-based migrations.

THE UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVENESS OF INLINING CSS

This case study explains the impact of inlining CSS on a website's loading times and traffic.

TIMELINE OF THE XZ OPEN SOURCE ATTACK

A detailed timeline of the xz open source attack from October 2021 to March 2024.

FLORO

Floro is a visual version control system for managing static assets and i18n strings.

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT SSDS

A comprehensive guide to SSDs, inside and out.

Read the full guide on the WorkOS blog

‘AIRPODS LITE’ TO DEBUT LATER THIS YEAR, NEW REPORT SAYS

Apple is expected to release multiple new models of its AirPods this year. A report says that a new lower-cost AirPods Lite, priced at $99, will be released sometime during the second half of 2024. There is little information about what to expect from the lower-cost earbuds. New AirPods Max are also coming later this year. The AirPods 4 will feature a new design and a USB-C charging case. The higher-end variant will feature noise cancellation.

GOOGLE AGREES TO DESTROY BROWSING DATA COLLECTED IN INCOGNITO MODE

Google has agreed to destroy or de-identify billions of web browsing data records collected from Incognito mode users as part of a proposed class action settlement. The settlement also mandates greater disclosure from the company about how it collects information in Incognito mode and puts limits on future data collection. The proposed settlement has been valued at around $5 billion, with plaintiffs receiving zero in damages unless they individually file claims.

TERRAFORM INDUSTRIES CONVERTS ELECTRICITY AND AIR INTO SYNTHETIC NATURAL GAS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Terraform Industries' Terraformer is a machine that uses electricity and air to create hydrocarbons. It consists of an electrolyzer, a direct air capture system, and a chemical reactor. Roughly the size of two shipping containers, the machine produces pipeline-grade synthetic natural gas using energy from a one-megawatt solar array. The system converts clean energy into hydrogen at less than $2.50 a kilogram of H2 and the direct air capture system filters CO2 for less than $250 per ton, a world record.

ROLLABLE OLED’S MOMENT IS NEAR

Flexible OLED technology isn't new: the first foldable OLED display was released in 2018. Rollable displays are similar to foldable displays, but they have proven difficult to produce. Tecno Mobile and Motorola both recently presented rollable OLED concepts at the Mobile World Congress technology convention in Barcelona. Samsung also recently filed a patent for a future smartphone or tablet that rolls up like a newspaper.

Discover the QA Wolf magic ✨

SMALL DATA, BIG COMPUTE

The typical business analyst query significantly underutilizes compute. Large language models use a lot more compute and may bring on another expansionary era of bloat. Most companies will not have the budget to operate large language models on big data - most business use cases will inevitably operate on less than a million rows of data. The shift to small data will mean that data egress will no longer be a moat and open up an opportunity for new GPU cloud competitors to emerge.

XZBOT

xzbot is a toolkit for exploring the xz backdoor. It includes a fake vulnerable server to detect exploit attempts, a patch, a format of the backdoor payload, and a tool to trigger the exploit. A list of references for more information on the exploit is available.

THE REMOTENESS OF REMOTE WORK

Effective long-term remote work requires specific skill sets and DNA to pull off. Many organizations suddenly transitioned to remote work during the pandemic. While it worked out great in the first year, it eventually became detrimental to creativity and collaboration, so some companies switched back to hybrid in-office work where employees come into the office several days a week. This article discusses how one company handled the transition to remote work and then to hybrid work and explains the lessons it learned from the experience.

THE INTERNET IS TOO SMALL FOR DATA-GUZZLING AI COMPANIES

AI systems are requiring larger and larger pools of data to learn from. The available pool of data is now getting too small, and at the same time, some data owners are blocking access to their information. The industry's need for high-quality text data could outstrip supply within two years. The data shortage is a frontier research problem, so many efforts to solve it are currently being done in secret as the solution could be a competitive advantage.

OPENAI STARTUP FUND: GP HALLUCINATION

Vespers Inc., a company that temporarily managed the OpenAI Startup Fund, may be a front company created with AI assistance that uses pseudonymous and/or fictitious individuals to serve as placeholder directors and executives.

10 > 64, IN QR CODES

This explains how using decimal encoding slightly reduces the density of QR codes containing URLs, why it works, and how the technique allows shoveling maximum data into a URL in a QR code.

THE WI-FI ONLY WORKS WHEN IT'S RAINING

A tree that was barely tall enough to interfere with a Wi-Fi bridge signal was weighed down just enough when it rained that the interference stopped.

APPLE AI RESEARCHERS BOAST USEFUL ON-DEVICE MODEL THAT ‘SUBSTANTIALLY OUTPERFORMS’ GPT-4

Apple's on-device model takes into account both what's on users' screens and what tasks are active.