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YOSHIKO HADA'S DRAWINGS CONTINUE THE LINES OF HER CHILDHOOD DOODLES

Yoshiko Hada, a Tokyo-based artist, creates naive pastel drawings of curious creatures inspired by the city's neon landscapes and playful, unconscious scribbles.

SIX DESIGNERS REIMAGINE RENAISSANCE ARTEFACTS FOR FUTURE RELICS EXHIBITION

Showcased at Florence's Palazzo Corsini, Galerie Philia's Future Relics reinterprets Medici-era art with modern designs by six global artists.

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TEMU AND SHEIN'S BLACK FRIDAY MARKETING HEFT PRESSURES OTHER RETAILERS

Paid search ads drive up to 30% of online sales but can account for half of marketing costs, making keyword bidding fiercely competitive. Temu and Shein's aggressive bids on rival keywords like "Walmart Black Friday deals" have inflated costs, with terms like "Walmart clothes" increasing 16-fold in two years. Retailers face tighter margins as ad returns shrink and consumer interest in deal events wanes - 25% of shoppers are less likely to participate this year.

SOCIAL PLATFORMS ARE RUNNING DISRUPTIVE PROMOTIONS FOR THEIR OWN PRODUCTS

Social platforms have been promoting their own products and subscriptions. X has ramped up efforts with full-screen pop-ups and gifting options. Meta is pushing its VR offerings through top-of-feed ads on Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat is targeting users with direct inbox promotions for Snapchat+. This shift reflects a growing trend of social apps becoming commercial entities, using their vast reach to drive subscription and product sales.

4 MISTAKES & FIXES ON AD OVERSPEND

This post shares insights from a $290K ad campaign that only generated $100K in revenue. Key mistakes included over-scaling high-performing channels, wasting money on low-quality leads, lacking a structured testing framework, and using short-lived ad copy. To address these, the team gradually scaled ad spend, focused on lead quality, implemented clear testing frameworks, and used long-lasting ad copy.

TWO COMMON SEO MISTAKES

Creating multiple posts for similar keywords like "content marketing" leads to cannibalization. Content should be consolidated into one post. Content that fails to match search intent will result in poor rankings.

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SNEAK PEEK

A look inside Figma files from brands like Slack, Plaid, and Perplexity. An email is required for access.

ZEBRACAT

Zebracat takes user input written content and automatically creates videos by matching visuals, voiceovers, and music to the script. This is useful for users without extensive video production skills to create and streamline video content.

DIARY OF A BRAND: THE DALLAS COWBOYS

The Dallas Cowboys are the most valuable sports franchise globally, valued higher than Real Madrid and the New York Yankees. Despite lacking recent Super Bowl success, the team generates $550M in profit annually, double that of its closest competitor. Early innovations, such as cheerleaders, national TV exposure, and luxury suites, helped establish the brand. Jerry Jones further expanded profitability by securing independent sponsorships and developing revenue-driving assets like AT&T Stadium and The Star. The Cowboys' robust media investments and diversified revenue streams, including merchandise and non-NFL events, solidify their dominance.

UNSEEN IMPACT: HOW WEBSITE DESIGN SHAPES BRAND PERCEPTION

Website design acts as your brand's digital body language. It subtly influences how audiences view and trust you. Elements like color schemes, typography, and layout can evoke emotional responses. A poor user experience signals inefficiency. Aligning design with audience expectations ensures trust and reinforces brand identity.

PODCAST DISCOVERY STATS: HOW FOLKS FIND PODS & WHY THEY LISTEN

67% of respondents in a survey found discovering new podcasts easy, often using Spotify or Apple Podcasts, while 27% faced challenges. Listeners valued engaging descriptions, catchy episode titles, and consistent publishing schedules, with most preferring episodes lasting 15-60 minutes. 63% prioritized compelling content over high audio quality, tolerating average sound quality if the material was engaging.

HOW BURGER KING GOT PEOPLE TO ADVERTISE FOR THEM WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME

Burger King revived its 2010 Funnel Cake Fries by liking old tweets from influencers, triggering massive free publicity.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE JGL GROUP MIGRATED ALL 7 OF ITS BRANDS UNDER ONE WEBSITE

JGL Group has seen growth in total SEO traffic and rankings since it made the uncommon move of consolidating its 7 brands into one domain.

AI EATS THE WORLD

A 90-slide deck by Benedict Evans exploring macro and strategic trends in AI.

A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING BROWSER SUPPORT

This blog post presents a framework for deciding whether to use new CSS features based on browser support. The framework considers three factors: the fallback experience if the feature isn't supported, the actual browser usage statistics for the specific audience (which may differ from global averages), and the potential harm caused by a broken experience for unsupported browsers. Devs can simulate unsupported browsers by temporarily removing the CSS declaration to assess the fallback and use `@supports` for custom fallbacks when necessary.

THE ANATOMY OF A REACT ISLAND

React Islands are used to incrementally modernize web applications by integrating React components into existing, statically rendered projects. This approach avoids the pitfalls of complete rewrites by allowing for a piecemeal transition. React Islands involve creating self-contained React components, declaring them in a separate build target, and then calling them from the main HTML, passing data via props and using a shared context for performance.

I LEARNED REACT NATIVE AS A WEB DEVELOPER, AND I GOT EVERYTHING WRONG

A web developer transitioning to React Native initially prioritized custom UI components, which resulted in apps that lacked the familiar and polished feel of native apps. They eventually switched to using native iOS and Android UI elements, pre-built components that offer a polished, platform-consistent experience.

PYTHON DEPENDENCY MANAGEMENT IS A DUMPSTER FIRE

Python dependency management is difficult because there are too many tools and no standardized approach. The core problem stems from the need to manage both Python-specific packages and system-level dependencies, often requiring multiple tools and increasing the chance of conflicts. Good dependency management relies on version control, environment isolation (like virtual environments), and the use of definition and lock files for reproducibility.

SAFE VS. ALL-IN: THE TWO FACES OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

The “Safe Engineering Manager” focuses on stability, harmony, and meeting expectations, while the “All-In Engineering Manager” pushes boundaries, challenges norms, and deeply invests in outcomes and people. These approaches often clash, as one values calm consistency and the other thrives on relentless passion and change.

CALI

Cali is an open-source AI agent that uses a large language model to simplify React Native app development. It provides tools for build automation, device management, dependency management, and more.

ESLINT PLUGIN PERFECTIONIST

The ESLint plugin Perfectionist automatically sorts various code elements (imports, objects, types, etc.) alphabetically, naturally, or by line length.

INTRODUCING REACT NATIVE SCREENS 4.0.0

React Native Screens 4.0.0 introduces improved sheet API support on Android and iOS, preload support for native-stack screens, better iOS animations, support for React Navigation v7, and support for the new React Native versions.

DENO V. ORACLE: CANCELING THE JAVASCRIPT TRADEMARK

Deno has filed a petition with the USPTO to cancel Oracle's trademark on “JavaScript,” arguing that the term has become generic, Oracle misrepresented evidence during trademark renewal, and the trademark has been abandoned. If successful, this would remove legal barriers, allowing the community to freely use the term “JavaScript” without restrictions.

WHY AM I WRITING A JAVASCRIPT TOOLCHAIN IN ZIG?

BEHIND THE PLATFORM: THE JOURNEY TO CREATE THE LINKEDIN GENAI APPLICATION TECH STACK

LinkedIn's journey of building a GenAI application tech stack began in early 2023. It initially used a Java-based midtier but transitioned to a Python-based framework using LangChain for both offline development and online serving. Prompt management evolved from simple string interpolation to a standardized system using Jinja templates and a prompt source of truth.

HACKERRANK WAS BROKEN - BUT NOW IT'S ACTUALLY HARMFUL

HackerRank and similar platforms are now inadvertently rewarding proficiency in using AI to solve problems rather than genuine software engineering ability, leading to flawed hiring processes.

NOTHING IS SOMETHING

Unlike search engines which return nothing when lacking sufficient information, LLMs produce inaccurate but seemingly plausible responses, making "nothing" more helpful than the misleading "something" they provide.

PYTHON TYPE HINTS MAY NOT BE FOR ME IN PRACTICE

Python's optional type hints are often impractical for this developer's typical small projects because the effort of defining and updating types outweighs the benefits.

AVOIDING FALSE POSITIVES IN NODE.JS TESTS

Common causes of false positives in Node.js tests include using loose equality comparisons, overly general assertions, shallow equality for deep comparisons, misunderstanding assertion behavior, forgetting to call matchers, misusing mocks, and incorrect regex matching.

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ARTISTS LEAK OPENAI'S SORA VIDEO GENERATOR

A group of artists recently made a post claiming that OpenAI was using them as unpaid beta testers for Sora, OpenAI's video generator, and that the company was pressuring them to spin a positive narrative around the tool. OpenAI required every video clip to be approved before sharing, suggesting that the early access program was less about creative expression and critique and more about PR and advertisement. The artists leaked a version of Sora on Hugging Face that could create 10-second clips but OpenAI shut down early access for all artists three hours after it was posted. The artists said in their post that they hope OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly, and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.

AI'S FUTURE AND NVIDIA'S FORTUNES RIDE ON THE RACE TO PACK MORE CHIPS INTO ONE PLACE

The most ambitious players in the AI race are now building super clusters of computer servers that cost billions of dollars and contain unprecedented numbers of Nvidia's most advanced chips. The push towards superclusters could help Nvidia sustain its growth trajectory. The trend is fostering demand for Nvidia's networking equipment, which is fast becoming a significant business. Nvidia's Blackwell chips, which are several times as powerful as its current chips, are set to start shipping in the next couple of months.

NASA'S SEARCH FOR LIFE: SPACEX TO LAUNCH DRAGONFLY MISSION TO SATURN'S MOON

NASA has announced a $256.6 million contract with SpaceX to support the launch of the Dragonfly mission. Dragonfly is a nuclear-powered spacecraft about the size of a Mars Rover that is capable of flight like a drone. It will be sent to Saturn's moon Titan to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry on the moon, and search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life ever existed on the Titan. The mission is expected to launch in July 2028 on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

CHINA PLANS TO BUILD EGG IGLOOS ON LUNAR SURFACE

China has unveiled a mock-up of a moon colony that shows a handful of egg-shaped gray igloos and space rovers with Lego-like spacemen grounding between them. The model is a result of careful examination of the conditions on the moon, where there is a lack of raw materials, extreme temperature fluctuations, and cosmic radiation. China is planning to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2035 and is developing detailed plans accordingly. Pictures of the model are available in the article.

ANT DESIGN X

Ant Design X is a tool for crafting AI-driven interfaces effortlessly. It features flexible and diverse atomic components, out-of-the-box model integration, efficient management of conversation data flows, rich template support, complete TypeScript support, and advanced theme customization. Ant Design X is widely used in AI-driven user interfaces within Ant Group.

WHICH IDES DO SOFTWARE ENGINEERS LOVE, AND WHY?

GOOGLE AND THE DOJ MAKE THEIR FINAL ARGUMENTS IN THE AD TECH MONOPOLY CASE

Google and the Department of Justice have made their closing arguments in the antitrust case against Google. The DOJ argued that Google used a suite of ad tech products to strong-arm site owners and advertisers. Google countered that it faces competition from other sources and shouldn't have to cut deals with competitors. US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema is expected to rule on the case by the end of 2024.

BUILDING LLMS IS PROBABLY NOT GOING BE A BRILLIANT BUSINESS

Large language models are cool, but that doesn't mean that building them is going to be a profitable business. What makes a good business is industry structure. Airlines have unfavorable industry structure, with only two makers of airplanes, fickle and unloyal customers, and high amounts of competition. The fizzy-drinks business has a very favorable industry structure - fizzy drinks are easy to make, customers aren't very picky, and it isn't easy for new competitors to enter the market. The industry structure for large language model makers isn't very good - there is only one true supplier (Nvidia), there doesn't seem to be any brand loyalty being built up, and there is a lot of competition in the market.

SHIPPING IS CAPTURING VALUE

Programmers need to think about the impact of their work when they start writing code.

A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING BROWSER SUPPORT

The article discusses a framework for evaluating browser support that looks at what happens when a feature fails, how many people would be affected by the lack of support, and the potential harm failure could cause.

SERVICETITAN COULD BE THE FIRST OF MANY ‘DIRTY' TERM-SHEET IPOS, VCS BELIEVE

ServiceTitan may be the first of a series of late-stage companies being forced to IPO or reveal other ugly terms they agreed to after the VC fundraising market tanked in 2022 and valuations plummeted.

UBER'S GIG WORKERS NOW INCLUDE CODERS FOR HIRE ON AI PROJECTS

Uber is recruiting contractors in India, the US, Canada, Poland, and Nicaragua to handle large-scale annotation tasks.

DENO V. ORACLE: CANCELING THE JAVASCRIPT TRADEMARK

Deno formally filed a petition with the USPTO to cancel Oracle's trademark for 'JavaScript' on November 22 to free the term from legal entanglements and recognize it as a shared public good.

SPACEX GETS FCC GREEN LIGHT FOR STARLINK DIRECT-TO-PHONE DEAL WITH T-MOBILE

There are a few limitations for how SpaceX can operate its 'supplemental coverage from space' service: it has to operate as an extension of an existing terrestrial provider (T-Mobile) and the service must not interfere with other services on the ground.