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AI & DESIGN: TAKEAWAYS FROM SXSW

Notes from the Arts & Technology conference talks on AI and design: Design Against AI by John Maeda, AI + UX: Product Design for Intelligent Experiences by Ioana Teleanu, Designing Successful AI Products, Services by John Zimmerman and Nur Yildirim, Creativity in Flux: Art & Artificial Intelligence by Brooke Hopper and Debbie Millman, Designing for AI by Marco Barbosa and Hjörtur Hilmarsson, and The Great Interface Shift: Five Trends to Know in 2024 by Jake Brody.

ARTISTS SELL THEMSELVES SO CHEAP

Creative people just want to create and don't want to deal with business, contracts, or lawyers, which makes them especially vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. It is precisely because of this that they get into trouble.

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATIONS & DESIGN WORK

Getting design done requires cross-team coordination, resource management, and buy-in. However, these aren't things you should focus on when building a portfolio. Show off the concrete things you've done and how you did them in your portfolio. Provide insight into how you make design decisions with a couple of examples. Go through the why at a high level and then the how at a low level.

THE GOAL OF A “STRATEGY” IS TO CHANGE OUR OWN TEAM’S BEHAVIOR

A well-crafted strategy should change behavior as a team and provide clear direction, goals, and priorities to create better customer outcomes and help every team member make better decisions and feel ownership and accountability for their work.

MIDJOURNEY BETS IT CAN BEAT THE COPYRIGHT POLICE

LEGO IS THE LATEST BRAND TO APOLOGIZE FOR USING AI ART

An AI-generated image was used in a Lego Ninjago-themed website quiz.

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NVIDIA CEO JENSEN HUANG ANNOUNCES NEW AI CHIPS

Nvidia has unveiled its new Blackwell B200 GPU, a powerful AI chip designed to significantly enhance AI performance, offering up to 20 petaflops of FP4 horsepower. The GB200 promises up to 30 times the performance for LLM inference workloads and up to 25 times more efficiency than the H100. This advancement is set to support the training of larger and more complex AI models, with companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle planning to offer the technology in their cloud services.

MICROSOFT HIRES DEEPMIND COFOUNDER TO HEAD CONSUMER AI

Microsoft has recruited Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and CEO of Inflection AI, to lead its consumer AI division, aiming to enhance its position in generative AI through Suleyman's oversight of the Copilot project. This move comes as Inflection AI, despite raising $1.3B in funding and launching its AI chatbot Pi, faces challenges in establishing a sustainable business model, prompting a strategic pivot towards B2B software sales.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CLOSE A DEAL?

This data-driven analysis reviews over 1.5 million data points on the touchpoints and tactics that effectively drive B2B sales cycles from lead to closed revenue. Whether you're striving to surpass sales targets or simply looking to optimize your sales machine, this insightful analysis provides you with the necessary insights to improve your approach.

WHY PRODUCT-LED FOUNDERS NEED BE COMFORTABLE SELLING

Many product-focused founders neglect sales until it's too late. However, when a company starts to scale, having a successful sales strategy is as crucial as the product itself. A start-up can live or die on the strength of its sales efforts. This article shares the story of Jyoti Bansal, the founder of AppDynamics, who transformed from being an engineering-centered founder to building a rigorous sales machine.

STARTUP LESSONS FROM Y COMBINATOR'S EXECUTIVE COACH

Amy Buechler, a licensed psychotherapist and the first in-house founder coach at Y Combinator, has taught founders to manage fear and uncertainty by focusing on self-care, establishing empowering narratives, and building trust in themselves, their co-founders, and the market. Her approach aims to improve startup success rates but also encourages founders to view entrepreneurship as an opportunity for personal growth and creating a unique impact in the world.

A GUIDE TO THE WEDGE MARKETING STRATEGY

Startups should identify a niche, or "wedge," to attract early users and customers effectively. This targeted approach ensures that marketing efforts resonate deeply, avoiding dilution across channels and improving conversion rates. By initially capturing a specific niche and gradually broadening either through additional use cases for the same audience or targeting new audience segments, startups can efficiently expand their market reach. This article provides a framework for implementing a wedge marketing strategy.

SCALING THROUGH CHAOS (BOOK)

The Founder’s Guide to Building and Leading Teams from 0 to 1,000.

PEERLESS PITCH (COMPETITION)

$1M pitch competition for female and underrepresented founders. Deadline is April 26.

GILION

Automated tracking and forecasting of company metrics.

THE TOP 100 GENAI CONSUMER APPS

Ever since ChatGPT launched over a year ago, we’ve been introduced to thousands of new consumer products that incorporate the magic of AI — from video generators to workflow hacks, creativity tools to virtual companions. a16z conducted a deep dive into web traffic data to rank the most popular generative AI web products based on monthly visits and uncovered patterns in how consumers were actually using Generative AI.

THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS

In this evolving landscape, customer success will become ingrained deeply into a company's DNA rather than existing as a separate function. This shift will likely involve specialized roles focused on different stages of the customer journey, from onboarding to activation. As businesses transition towards consumption models, emphasis will be placed on continuous value delivery throughout the customer lifecycle, with metrics other than revenue serving as early indicators of success.

DANGEROUS LANGUAGE IN START-UPS

This article discusses the impact of language and metaphors on how startups conceptualize and market themselves, particularly focusing on the patterns "X for Y" and "with AI." While these linguistic shortcuts can help explain and impress initially, they can dangerously narrow founders' focus, leading them to prioritize the technology or business model over the actual problem being solved. Founders should opt for a balanced approach, leveraging metaphors for early traction without distorting their strategic focus.

HOW RESEND WENT FROM 0 TO 10K TWITTER FOLLOWERS

Resend shares 9 tips its team used to rapidly build an impressive online following and how to use "building in public" to outpace competitors.

DON’T PLACE YOUR FAITH IN PLAYBOOKS

While playbooks can help distill knowledge, genuine mastery comes from hands-on experience and practice.

MASTERING INTRODUCTION REQUESTS FROM YOUR INVESTORS

A well-thought-out introduction can transform a cold connection into a warm one, leading to valuable partnerships, investments, or collaborations.

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MISCONFIGURED FIREBASE INSTANCES LEAKED 19 MILLION PLAINTEXT PASSWORDS

Three cybersecurity researchers found nearly 19 million plaintext passwords exposed on the internet due to misconfigured Firebase instances. They scanned over five million domains and identified 916 vulnerable websites. These instances revealed more than 125 million sensitive user records that included emails, names, passwords, phone numbers, and bank details.

BYPASSING USBGUARD ON LINUX

USBGuard on Linux can be bypassed when not configured with specific vendor and product IDs, allowing attackers to circumvent USB authorization policies. Attackers can present devices as innocuous HID or hub devices while actually being malicious by exploiting the kernel's matching process.

APEX LEGENDS REGIONAL FINALISTS HACKED MID-MATCH

GAINING KERNEL CODE EXECUTION ON AN MTE-ENABLED PIXEL 8

This blog post describes a logic bug in the memory management unit of the ARM Mali GPU used in Pixel 8 phones that can be used to bypass Memory Tagging Extension (MTE). This vulnerability, GHSL-2023-005, is related to GPU memory handling, particularly JIT memory, and how it is managed by the kbase_context in the Mali GPU driver. Attackers can cause inconsistencies in GPU memory mapping by exploiting the race window between memory growth triggers.

HOW TO EMULATE A RANSOMWARE ATTACK

This blog post delves into how SpecterInsight’s ransomware emulation capability functions and provides insights into the operational flow of a full emulated ransomware deployment kill chain. It details the tools used, the ransomware deployment process, ethical considerations, defense evasion techniques, obfuscation methods in PowerShell and C#, and the user prompt element in the ransom message. It also outlines the responsibilities of the encrypter, loader, ransom message/decrypter, and deployment script components in orchestrating the kill chain.

BEYONDCORP AND THE LONG TAIL OF ZERO TRUST

This article discusses the challenges faced by Alphabet in migrating to a BeyondCorp-style architecture, specifically the long tail of difficult use cases where gaps in tooling, available data, management buy-in, or specialized technical knowledge historically prevented users from migrating to a zero-trust model. The article also describes the processes, tools, and solutions created to handle these use cases and provides lessons learned to help others address the long tail of migration to a BeyondCorp-style architecture.

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LUDUS (GITLAB REPO)

Ludus is a system built on Proxmox to simplify building easy-to-use cyber environments, or 'ranges', for testing and development. It comes with various templates.

HAKTRAILS

HakTrails is a command line tool for querying the SecurityTrails API for DNS recon.

RETINA

Retina is an eBPF-based Kubernetes network observability platform that provides a centralized hub for monitoring application and network health and cluster security.

TWO BYTES IS PLENTY: FORTIGATE RCE WITH CVE-2024-21762

This document details the steps taken to identify a vulnerability in FortiGate and create a working exploit. It explains the changes made to the function, such as additional length checks and error messages, to address the vulnerability.

KUBERNETES RBAC

A deep-dive into Kubernetes RBAC. The guide provides an overview of RBAC options in Kubernetes, best practices, and tool comparisons. It explores of how RBAC factored into k8s attacks in 2023 and includes a tutorial on using KSOC.

MUDDING AROUND: HACKING FOR GOLD IN TEXT-BASED GAMES

This post describes the process of escalating privileges from a restricted shell to an unrestricted shell in a text-based game. It details a method for using echo and history to read and write arbitrary files when standard tools are restricted.

WHITE HOUSE, EPA WARN WATER SECTOR OF CYBERSECURITY THREATS

The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have warned US governors that cyberattacks are disabling water systems throughout the country.

FTC WARNS SCAMMERS ARE IMPERSONATING ITS EMPLOYEES TO STEAL MONEY

The US Federal Trade Commission has issued a warning about scammers impersonating its employees to steal money from American citizens.

ORACLE WARNS THAT MACOS 14.4 UPDATE BREAKS JAVA ON APPLE CPUS

Oracle has advised Apple users to hold off on installing the macOS 14.4 update on ARM-based Macs due to a bug that causes Java processes to abruptly terminate on affected devices. It affects all Java versions from 8 to the latest JDK 22 builds.

YOUTUBE WILL REQUIRE DISCLOSURE OF AI-MANIPULATED VIDEOS FROM CREATORS

YouTube now mandates disclosure of AI-manipulated videos by content creators. The new policy is particularly focused on content that presents realistic depictions of individuals, places, or events. Google says the labels will start rolling out across all YouTube surfaces and formats in the weeks ahead.

HOW TO TACKLE MEASUREMENT AS GOOGLE ROLLS OUT OPEN-SOURCE MARKETING MIX MODELING

Google announced the launch of Meridian earlier this month. Meridian is an open-source marketing mix model (MMM) that aims to provide marketers with a foundation for comprehensive, privacy-durable measurement. It represents a major step in boosting marketers’ measurement capabilities, but comes with its own caveats and challenges. MMMs won’t be able to provide the same level of granularity that third-party cookies allow, but can fill some attribution needs once cookies are deprecated.

FORGET A LTV:CAC RATIO TO PREDICT GROWTH. LOOK AT THIS INSTEAD!

Looking at Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) payback period and Net Dollar Retention (NDR) together provides you with a strong predictor of efficient growth. Companies with a high NDR (>100%) and low CAC payback period (<18 months) have a median growth rate of 65% YoY. Meanwhile, those with a low NDR and high CAC payback period typically grow by 20% YoY. This data is based on a SaaS benchmark survey of 700+ companies from last year.

11 TIPS ON FINDING CUSTOMERS ON REDDIT

You can have 0 followers and still generate thousands of visitors by posting on Reddit. However, it’s important to note that Redditors hate spam, lazy marketers, and emojis, and that every subreddit is different. Tips for leveraging Reddit include hosting engaging AMA sessions, posting when communities are most active, targeting active niche subreddits, and engaging in comments on popular posts. A list of 224 growing subreddits is available in this post (requires an email for access).

LINKTREE IS NOW ALLOWING USERS TO HIGHLIGHT LINKS BETTER WITH FEATURED LAYOUT FUNCTION

Linktree launched a new featured layout to highlight links better. It fetches the latest posts from Instagram and supports larger profile pictures to enhance link visibility. When you select “Featured layout” for a link, it automatically expands with a content preview for links from YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, and Instagram. “Text Links” are also available for displaying information like detailed bio, opening hours, or whatever you typically write on your blog.