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THERE’S NO OVERNIGHT FIX FOR “MORE ENGAGEMENT”

The key to engagement is to prioritize your consumers’ experiences and reward their contributions, leaving them wanting to engage with your brand time and time again.

45 TIME-TESTED COPYWRITING HEADLINES

45 headline templates for writing hooks for blog posts, carousel titles, FB ads, and landing page openers.

WHOOPS! AMAZON SERVED COSTLY ADS FOR PRODUCTS PEOPLE COULDN'T ACTUALLY BUY

Amazon's ad system charged a seller almost $300,000 for ads targeting California, where they couldn't sell their products due to state regulations, despite them flagging the issue to the company.

6 PRODUCT MANAGER STEREOTYPES TO AVOID

PM roles are often misconstrued and limited by stereotypes such as being perceived as CEOs, strategists, facilitators, process managers, or rainmakers. However, the ideal approach entails embodying a "full-stack PM" mentality that encompasses leadership, collaboration, strategic thinking, user focus, and adaptability to drive meaningful outcomes in product development.

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

PMs must effectively translate high-level strategies into actionable guidance for day-to-day decision-making within teams to ultimately deliver better outcomes for customers.

IS NPS THE OZEMPIC OF METRICS?

The NPS metric lacks actionable insights and provides empty promises. Better alternatives to better understand and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty include Customer Effort Score, rigorous sampling methods, qualitative feedback, customer journey analytics, and Net Dollar Retention Rate.

FREEMIUM TO PREMIUM: HOW COMPANIES NUDGE YOU TO UPGRADE

Nudging can effectively transition free users to premium subscriptions. However, companies should proceed with caution, ensuring they clearly communicate the advantages of upgrading, customize nudges based on user activity, and honor the preferences of their users.

PRODUCT OPS: NECESSARY OR NOT?

Product ops serves as an operational bridge that links product, engineering, and customer success. However, introducing a product ops role might merely serve as a temporary fix rather than solving any underlying issues. Leaders should focus on identifying and addressing the root cause of disconnection between product, engineering, and business functions instead of relying on adding new roles for optimization.

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A BREAKDOWN OF X’S NEW FEATURE, ARTICLES

X recently launched Articles, a long-form content feature with rich editing. The feature has been challenging to integrate into X due to issues with feed previews and posting complexity.

HOW TO USE AI IN YOUR COMPANY

Discover practical AI applications to enhance productivity, from AI agents handling administrative tasks to boosting brainstorming, collecting knowledge, automating workflows, and analyzing data. Tools like Adept AI Labs, Strut AI, Rewind AI, Respell AI, and AI integrations in Excel demonstrate AI's transformative potential in simplifying complex tasks and fostering innovation.

BRING BACK FUN

There is a diminishing sense of joy and camaraderie in the tech industry, with a shift towards a more serious and competitive environment. Teams should revive fun, challenge, and collaboration to foster better well-being and productivity.

THE TRAP OF TYING YOUR IDENTITY TO YOUR JOB TITLE

Focusing too much on job titles and career advancements won't lead to fulfillment. It's crucial to detach our self-worth from our professional roles, adopting a more holistic outlook on success. This perspective values personal development, happiness, and finding roles that align with our unique skills and interests.

HOW TO GET AN ENTHUSIASTIC YES

We often need other people’s help to make things happen. The secret to eliciting agreement lies in highlighting the advantages for both parties involved. By focusing on what others stand to gain rather than your own benefits, you provide compelling reasons for them to agree with your proposal.

MEASUREMENT ERROR IN UX RESEARCH (3 MINUTE VIDEO)

Measurement error refers to inaccuracies introduced during user observation or measurement, stemming from various sources like participant count, differences among participants, the testing environment, or external influences.

7 STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES

Storytelling techniques include the Hero's Journey, In Medias Res, Flashbacks, Kishoutenketsu, Third-person Narration, Framing, and Yokai - each offers unique ways to engage audiences and articulate product value.

WHY I DON’T LIKE THE TERM ‘PRD’

A PRD implies a waterfall approach - strategic problem-solving and collaboration prove more productive than rigid documentation.

HOW FIGMA'S DATABASES TEAM LIVED TO TELL THE SCALE

Figma's database team had to deal with hypergrowth that was starting to outpace their database's capacity. To address this, they first focused on vertical partitioning, which bought them time but was not a long-term solution. They then embarked on a complex nine-month project to implement horizontal sharding, tailoring their approach to Figma's specific needs. To manage their horizontally sharded databases, they built a service in Golang to support load-shedding, transaction support, database topology management, and more.

COMPARING JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORKS PART 1: TEMPLATES

This is a thorough comparison of the template languages used by React, Vue, Angular, and Svelte. It looks at how the frameworks define and use components, event handling, and more advanced techniques like slotting. While all four frameworks can do everything that was tested, React still feels most natural to the author.

HTTP/2 AND HTTP/3 EXPLAINED

HTTP is the backbone of the web, and it is constantly evolving. HTTP/1.1 introduced persistent connections and headers for better efficiency. HTTP/2 improved performance with multiplexing (sending multiple requests over one connection) and binary formatting. HTTP/3 is built on the QUIC protocol for enhanced performance on unstable networks, overcoming issues with TCP and TLS. Currently, both HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 are widely used.

THE CURSE OF THE SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Staying in a senior position for too long can hinder your future job prospects. This is known as the "Curse of the Senior Software Engineer" – you become too experienced for typical Senior roles, but lack the leadership experience necessary for higher-level positions. To avoid this curse, either proactively pursue promotions and leadership opportunities within your company or seek out companies that offer less structured career paths.

WHY SOFTWARE PROJECTS FAIL

Software projects often fail due to hidden complexities and human factors rather than technical shortcomings. Overconfident developers can underestimate task complexity and the challenges of using new technologies or third-party dependencies. Inexperienced managers may prioritize personal ambitions over project success, lack firm leadership, or cave to every change imposed by higher-ups. Projects can become zombies, draining resources without delivering value, as stakeholders become reluctant to admit defeat due to fear or embarrassment.

QUIETLY GOING INSANE WITH TOOLS & AUTOMATION

This author started a project of automating a simple Unreal Engine task, but it quickly spiraled into an overly complex solution. His first attempt was a PowerShell script to delete specific project folders, but this evolved into a full-blown Windows installer using GitHub Actions to build a release. Eventually, he decided to use the language Zig to build an executable for the script, but Zig’s low-level nature proved hard to work with.

PSD

PSD is a lightweight parser for Adobe Photoshop PSD and PSB files. It can be used both in web browsers and Node.js, uses WebAssembly to speed up decoding image data, and pulls in zero dependencies.

LAVAGUE

LaVague is a framework that transforms natural language instructions into browser interactions.

SKYVERN

Skyvern automates browser-based tasks using LLMs and computer vision. It is able to handle unfamiliar websites and changes in website layout without breaking.

ONBOARDING ROULETTE: DELETING OUR EMPLOYEE ACCOUNTS DAILY

While automated testing is crucial for quality software and preventing regressions, complex features can be difficult and time-consuming to test, leading to situations where teams prioritize building features over writing robust tests. In cases like this, developers should consider alternative strategies like canary releases, beta testing, and dogfooding. The startup in this article decided to start automatically deleting an engineer's account daily. This forced them to experience the onboarding process firsthand, uncovering bugs and building empathy for the user experience.

THE MESSY REALITY BEHIND A SILICON VALLEY UNICORN

A VC-funded startup aiming to disrupt the local services industry experienced rapid growth fueled by pressure from investors. To keep up with demand, the company hired Filipino contractors to perform routine tasks that software could technically handle. This allowed engineers in San Francisco to focus on strategic initiatives and experimentation, leading to significant user growth. The story highlights how automation is not necessarily a reality for a lot of engineering companies today.

WINNING A HACKATHON, LOSING MY SANITY

Students created a "Spotify Wrapped" for student dining habits for a hackathon by scraping data from Tufts University's outdated meal plan portal. The project found numerous security flaws in the portal's design, for example, session keys were stored in URL parameters and guest access permissions were easily circumvented.

ECSS

Simple but comprehensive list of rules for efficient CSS.

PERFORMANCE-AWARE PROGRAMMING SERIES

This course teaches experienced programmers the fundamentals of modern CPU architecture, enabling them to write faster code through performance estimation and optimization techniques.

SPREADSHEETS ARE ALL YOU NEED

Learn how AI works from a real LLM implemented entirely in Excel.

MAKE YOUR FUNCTIONS MORE REUSABLE WITH GENERICS

TypeScript generics enable developers to create type-safe, reusable functions by allowing them to infer the type of a promised return value, removing the need for the overly broad 'any' type.

APPLE BUYS DARWINAI AHEAD OF MAJOR GENERATIVE AI UPDATES COMING IN IOS 18

Apple acquired DarwinAI to focus on smaller, more efficient AI systems and potentially integrate generative AI into products like Siri and Messages.

SPACEX HAS A LICENSE TO LAUNCH STARSHIP—THIS TIME IT MIGHT FLY AT DAWN

The US Federal Aviation Administration has approved a commercial launch license for SpaceX's Starship rocket's third test flight. The test is scheduled for this morning at 7 am CDT, with a launch window of 110 minutes. SpaceX will target the Indian Ocean for Starship's slashdown. Details about the changes planned for flight 3 are available in the article.

DID OPENAI JUST ACCIDENTALLY LEAK THE NEXT BIG CHATGPT UPGRADE?

OpenAI appears to have accidentally published a blog post that was indexed by Bing and DuckDuckGo before it was quickly taken down. The post was an announcement for GPT-4.5 Turbo, a new model that surpasses GPT-4 Turbo in speed, accuracy, and scalability. The cached description mentions a knowledge cutoff date of June 2024 and a 256k context window. OpenAI has not commented on the leak.

FIGURE 01 CAN NOW HAVE FULL CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE

Figure has implemented OpenAI's technology to allow its robots to have full conversations with people. OpenAI's models provide high-level visual and language intelligence while Figure's neural networks deliver fast, low-level dexterous robot actions. This X post contains a video showing a person talking to a Figure robot and getting it to perform tasks, explain the reasoning behind the tasks, and self-assess on how the tasks went.

MINING HELIUM-3 ON THE MOON HAS BEEN TALKED ABOUT FOREVER—NOW A COMPANY WILL TRY

Interlune, a company that has been operating in stealth since its founding by two of Blue Origin's earliest employees in 2022, aims to extract helium-3 from the Moon. The company recently came out of stealth with an announcement that it has raised another $15 million. While the funding is relatively small, its implications are potentially large. Most lunar efforts are focused on providing services to NASA, but Interlune's goal directly derives value from extracting resources on the Moon.

A COLLECTION OF DESIGN ENGINEERS

The design engineer is someone who sits at the intersection of design and engineering and works to bridge the gap between them. They know how to run a design process and have the engineering chops to implement it. This allows them to quickly iterate on ideas - their skillset is ideal for prototyping, exploratory interaction design, and building robust design systems. This blog post contains a list of people who are considered design engineers to more fully illustrate what the role entails.

DEVELOPERS ARE ON EDGE

Layoffs are still dragging on and industry veterans are finding it hard to get a callback from recruiters. However, wage gains secured during the good days are still massive, despite what inflation has eroded over the last few years. Developers are still looking mighty privileged compared to premium programmers from a decade ago. AI will have a huge impact on the industry - no profession has ever successfully resisted automation or redundancy in the face of technological advancement over the long term.

THE END OF THE MRBEAST ERA

MrBeast's influence on YouTube can be seen everywhere, from the types of content people make to the brisk editing styles populating all of YouTube's trending content to even the way YouTubers style their video thumbnails. Copycats can be seen all over the platform. While it is unlikely that MrBeast will be dethroned anytime soon, there are signs that people are growing fatigued with sensationalism and are hungry for authenticity and relatability.

WHY META COULD FINALLY HAVE ITS ANDROID MOMENT

The Vision Pro may just be an over-engineered devkit. There is some genius and audacity behind some of Apple's hardware decisions - gaze and pinch was a major industry 'a-ha' moment. However, the device's software/content story is dull and unimaginative and most people likely won't use the Vision Pro for watching media. The Vision Pro's debut was the best thing that ever happened to Meta's Quest brand as it elevated VR to a level of mainstream consumer curiosity, set new standards and pricing envelopes for VR devices, and created a competitor for Meta teams to chase.

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ECSS

ECSS is a global approach to producing efficient design systems with CSS.

OPENAI’S SORA TEXT-TO-VIDEO GENERATOR WILL BE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE LATER THIS YEAR

OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that Sora, a model capable of generating hyperrealistic video scenes based on text prompts, could be available to the public in the next few months.

WHY DATABASES WON'T CHARGE FOR STORAGE IN THE FUTURE

Market demand is pushing for a deeper separation of compute and storage, with customers preferring open formats, as the diversity of demands on data expands.

THE BILL THAT COULD BAN TIKTOK PASSES IN THE HOUSE

The US House has voted in favor of a bill that may require ByteDance to sell TikTok or have the app banned in the country.