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The Ostrich Effect is the tendency to avoid dangerous or negative information instead of confronting it head-on. This guide explains how this plays into marketing and buyer behavior. To account for this, brands should use humor to reframe sensitive topics, sell benefits while avoiding hot-button words, and help buyers visualize a better future.
Focusing on the power of a frictionless user experience, this post highlights the effectiveness of the "Try it yourself" CTA. It allows users to access an interactive demo or playground without hurdles like sign-ups. It also enables swift engagement with the product and surpasses traditional CTAs such as "Book a Demo" or "Sign-Up" for quicker user immersion.
Postnitro is an AI-powered tool to create engaging and eye-catching carousels for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. The tool generates carousels based on inputted text, an article URL, or topic. It includes font, color, and branding customizations. Postnitro is currently in beta and is free to use.
Meta has introduced Emu Video and Emu Edit, AI-powered video editing tools functioning through text prompts for creating and altering videos to be posted on Instagram or Facebook. Emu Video generates brief videos from prompts paired with captions or images while Emu Edit facilitates user-friendly video modifications using text instructions.
Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it visually, compared to 10% when reading it in text. Visual storytelling involves creating a coherent brand story with images, videos, typography, or animation to enhance information processing and strengthen brand messaging. This guide breaks down the key components, different types of media, and tools for creating compelling visuals.
People are willing to pay 63% more for self-assembled goods compared to pre-assembled ones. This is known as “The IKEA Effect”. Ikea’s success is a masterclass in understanding human psychology. Other strategies include designing a store layout as a journey to make the customer feel like they are on a quest, positioning small items strategically to promote impulse purchases, and having mirrors everywhere to make customers feel part of the showrooms.
Two marketing moments dominated everyone’s feeds in the last two weeks. Snoop Dogg promoted a smokeless fire pit, while Stanley (the insulated cups company) had a viral moment. Since not everyone has the budget to hire Snoop for their next campaign. This post shares the importance of brand codes, endorsements, UGC, and opportunism vs. planning.
This post breaks down the structure of how to write a great story, starting with “Once upon a time”.
This author explains why she left her full-time growth role and switched to alternative income sources.
Meta is accused of knowingly targeting under-13 users on Instagram, collecting data without parental consent in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
This article explores common retry methods for network requests, which are necessary for preventing errors from reaching users. The article starts by demonstrating basic retry handling without delay, which increases server load and the risk of overload. To counter this, exponential backoff is introduced, which is a method that initially retries quickly and then gradually increases the wait time. The interactive study concludes with a Go code example implementing exponential backoff with jitter, a technique to randomize wait times between retries.
DoorDash transitioned from a Python monolith to a microservices architecture, using Kotlin and gRPC for service communication. To minimize latency, it focused on reducing network requests, primarily by implementing caching with Caffeine for local caching and Redis Lettuce for distributed caching. However, different teams independently creating caching solutions led to issues like cache staleness, lack of runtime controls, inadequate metrics, and inconsistent key schemas. To address this, DoorDash developed a shared caching library with features like layered caching (request local, local, and Redis caches), runtime feature flags for customization, and observability tools to monitor cache performance.
Ian Hickson, the creator of Flutter (cross-platform app SDK) reflects on their 18-year tenure at Google, from its early post-IPO days to recent years. Initially, Google's culture was driven by a genuine desire to do good, guided by the "don't be evil" principle. However, over time, cultural shifts occurred, with less transparency and a shift in focus from user benefit to company and individual gain. Recently, Google's morale has declined, especially due to layoffs, and Hickson perceives a lack of visionary leadership and an increase in inept middle management.
Meetings are often seen as detrimental to the productivity of software engineers. Writing is a more efficient alternative to reduce the load of meetings. There are several advantages to writing: it enables faster information consumption as reading is quicker than listening, facilitates easier referencing and searching of technical content, and typically results in higher quality outcomes due to focused preparation.
CodeSnaps is a minimalistic UI library of React and Tailwind CSS components. It doesn’t require any package installations and comes with various pre-built components, like blog sections, contact sections, footers, and more.
React-quiz-component is a React component for implementing a quiz. It takes in a JSON-based input and comes with a quiz landing page, input validator, results page, explanations, a scoring system, and more.
Staff Engineers in big-tech companies like Meta are highly experienced technical leaders who play various roles like Tech Lead, Coding Machine, or Fixer. They differ from Senior Engineers in their focus on team rather than individual impact and have a broader organizational influence. Their duties include building domain strategies, clarifying project plans, de-risking projects, and ensuring team health.
The author shares their experience of creating a font for the first time. Previously relying on digital text drawing, which sometimes led to inconsistent text size and readability, they decided to design a font based on their own handwriting. This endeavor involved learning about font anatomy, such as ascenders, baselines, and x-heights, and experimenting with two iterations of the font. The final design was derived from writing sentences naturally on paper, scanning them, and cleaning them up digitally. They used software to successfully create a TrueType font (TTF).
A collection of links and resources to help people reach senior engineer and beyond.
A free online book with interactive code examples that dives into understanding deep learning.
A guide to IP addresses, networks, and more.
SpaceX is planning to sell shares next month in a deal that prices them around the same level as summer 2023. The launch appears to confirm that Elon Musk is not considering a near-term IPO for its Starlink satellite division. It was reported earlier this month that Musk was discussing a possible IPO for as early as late 2024, but he has denied these reports. Starlink reported $1.4 billion in revenue and a loss for the year in 2022, but it achieved breakeven cash flow this year.
Instagram now allows all users to download public Reels to their devices. Users were previously only able to save them to the Instagram app for later viewing. Downloaded Reels will have an Instagram watermark with an account name, just like on TikTok. Reels that use licensed audio clips will not have any audio in the downloaded clip.
A study on mouse embryos grown in space suggests that the radiation and weightlessness of space might not pose immediate obstacles to mammalian reproduction. While the study only isolates one part of the complicated process of reproduction and development, it provides a starting point for biologists. Future alterations to the procedure could potentially increase the success rate. The absence of perfectly sterile conditions in space probably affected the experiment results.
Scientists from the University of Texas and the University of Delaware have discovered a memory system that allows E. coli to remember past experiences for several hours and generations. The scientists have yet to identify the molecular mechanism behind the memory system or its inheritability, but there is strong evidence to suggest that there is a level of persistent conditioning at play. It is related to the level of intracellular iron in the bacteria. Iron is connected to multiple stress responses in bacteria, so a memory system that uses it makes a lot of evolutionary sense.
A short pull request might not offer a comprehensive view of the changes, but an excessively large PR can overwhelm viewers and make it challenging to identify issues or provide meaningful feedback. This article analyzes the PRs of around 30,000 developers to see how the size of PRs correlates with lead time, comments received, and change failure to try to find what statistically is the best size and examine what affects it. It will look at the stats from various angles to see how this correlation varies by company, developers, and other factors.
Every software giant has some skeletons in their development closets. Projects may start with the best intentions, but harsh realities make it challenging to maintain the original vision of a project. Large releases are less about achieving perfection and more about managing controlled chaos. The IT world is messy and every product, no matter how successful, has its hidden weaknesses. The key to a successful product is not the absence of problems, but the ability to handle them efficiently.
Tech giants understand that what makes the magic happen is the people they employ. They are able to offer demanding challenges, handsome rewards, and glowing prestige to attract talent. Small businesses can also compete in this arena. This article looks at the tech giants that attract the most talent from their competitors and where that talent goes next.
This thread contains a discussion of software that developers are grateful for and the reasons that make the software great. Popular mentions are the Linux kernel and various flavors of Linux, shells in general, ffmpeg, Firefox, and Emacs.
A list of the best Black Friday deals available now.
This introduction to large language models discusses what they are, where they are headed, comparisons and analogies to present-day operating systems, and some of the security-related challenges in the field.
Colossal Biosciences' quest to revive the Dodo involves building environments to help the bird population flourish before they can be released into the wild.
Mohammad Moniruzzaman allegedly showed off source code he stole from a former employer during a Microsoft Teams call with the same company.
Outflows from Binance have amounted to more than $1 billion, not including bitcoin, and liquidity has dropped 25% since CEO Changpeng Zhao stepped down.
Tesla has open-sourced all of the design and engineering of the original Roadster. This includes everything from Owner's Manuals to Circuits and Connectors. The next-gen Roadster is now several years behind schedule. The release of the design may be a hint that the next-gen Roadster is close to being produced. Elon Musk had said earlier this year that the final design and engineering of the Roadster will be completed by the end of 2023, so the vehicle should reach production by the end of 2024.
OpenAI researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery they said could threaten humanity days before Sam Altman's ouster. The letter and algorithm were key developments that contributed to the decision. The development could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for artificial general intelligence. This article collates some of the rumors about what the breakthrough may be.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will be launching a pair of Mars probes for NASA on its first mission. The mission is a relatively low-cost one, with a budget significantly less than any mission NASA has sent to Mars in recent history. It aims to measure plasma and magnetic fields around Mars. Mars launch windows typically come every 26 months, so if the mission doesn't launch by late 2024, the next opportunity will be in late 2026.
A new study found that virtual meetings exhaust the brain more than face-to-face conversations. The rise in remote work and online learning has revealed a phenomenon called Zoom fatigue, a feeling of exhaustion linked with videoconferencing. It results in a deterioration in the quality of communication and collaboration and can impact both professional and personal relationships. The absence of nuanced nonverbal cues makes it challenging for participants to fully engage and connect in a meaningful way.
This article looks at different ways to obfuscate email addresses from bots on websites. The author set up live examples for each obfuscation technique to test how effective they were in blocking spam. It covers obfuscation techniques for both clickable links and plain text.
Developers need to write robust software to handle request failures or they might be presented to users as errors. One of the most common techniques for handling a failed request is to retry it. This post presents a visual exploration of the different methods for retrying requests and demonstrates why some common approaches are dangerous. It aims to present readers with a solid understanding of what makes safe retry behavior and what doesn't.
This blog post was written by someone who worked at Google for 18 years starting in October 2005. They experienced the early post-IPO Google and watched the company throughout the years as it received criticisms for actions that were sincerely intended to be good for society. The culture at Google has changed significantly since it started. The deterioration of its culture will eventually become irreversible as the people who are needed to act as a moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an organization without a moral compass.
Anyone who has spent enough time working on spreadsheets will have experienced similar issues. There are similar problems when programming, except there's usually a way to solve them. Spreadsheets are used for storage, presentation, and computation. They are like regular programs in many ways. This article looks at problems with spreadsheets and ways to overcome them.
Block will cut hundreds of employees over the next year by firing underperforming workers quickly.
Sonos is months away from releasing a high-end wireless headphone and reportedly working on a set-top box that would allow users to watch video from a wide range of streaming apps.
This article contains internal memos from both Microsoft CTO and EVP of AI Kevin Scott and CEO Satya Nadella about the recent OpenAI drama.
This article compares M1 and M3 chips to find out what's changed between them so readers can better choose the right chip for their next Apple silicon Mac.
Bard's YouTube extension can now handle complex queries about specific video content.
This article attempts to piece together what happened with OpenAI over the weekend.
Sam Altman is returning to OpenAI as CEO. There will be a new initial board with Bret Taylor as Chair. The other members will be Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo.
Changpeng Zhao will step down as the CEO of Binance after the company pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and other charges. Binance will pay more than $4.3 billion to settle the charges. Zhao also agreed to a $50 million fine as part of the settlement. Richard Teng, Binance's head of regional markets, will take over as CEO. Zhao will remain as a shareholder. There were no allegations related to the misuse of customer funds or market manipulation.