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VSCODE EXTENSIONS FOUND DOWNLOADING EARLY-STAGE RANSOMWARE

Two harmful VSCode extensions, "ahban.shiba" and "ahban.cychelloworld," deployed an early ransomware, exposed flaws in Microsoft's review process.

META CONTINUES TO INTEGRATE AI BOT PROFILES INTO ITS APPS

Meta plans to introduce millions of AI-generated profiles that will post, comment, and engage on Facebook and Instagram, mimicking real users. These profiles will include bios and visual identities, making them largely indistinguishable from standard human accounts. Meta's goal is to increase engagement by populating feeds with AI-driven social activity.

34% OF FORTUNE 500 FIRMS LACK A CMO

Only 66% of Fortune 500 companies had a marketing leader in 2024, down from 71% the year prior, with large gaps across sectors. 80% of tech companies had a CMO compared to just 51% of industrial firms. One-third of marketing leaders didn't hold a “chief” title, while 16% had dual roles blending marketing with revenue or customer oversight. These shifts reflect marketing's growing integration into broader business strategy, often extending beyond the traditional CMO role.

INBOX ANARCHY: AN AUDIENCE-FIRST EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

Marketing leaders don't need more content, they need better curation to make smarter decisions. Convince & Convert rebranded its newsletter to The Trendline to focus on strategic insights, broader curation, and a clearer format. Delivering immediate value without requiring clicks, the new structure includes key sections like “The Big Picture” for strategic takes, curated links, and interactive audience polls. Successful email marketing today requires audience research, zero-click content, and curated insights that build trust and authority.

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY PITCH OR START A PODCAST

To become a podcast guest, research the podcast, reference past episodes, and pitch a relevant idea. Personalize pitches using transcripts and prioritize quality podcasts by checking rankings on Listen Notes or Rephonic. Podcasters should focus on valuable content, repurpose episodes across channels, and leverage video for platforms like YouTube.

HOW TO DO SEO FOR GOOGLE MAPS

Google ranks businesses in Maps based on relevance, distance, and prominence, which includes online reputation and citations. To improve placement, businesses should claim and verify their Google Business Profile, ensure consistent NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) data across directories, and accumulate positive reviews. Engagement metrics like click-through rates, clicks to call, and direction requests also influence visibility and ranking.

13 TECHNICAL MARKETING SKILLS YOU CAN LEARN (EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT TECHNICAL)

Enhance your technical skills by learning to call APIs for data collection, write SQL queries for analysis, and automate workflows with tools like Zapier or Make. Use Google Apps Scripts to automate tasks in Sheets, clean data with Python and Pandas, and visualize trends with Looker Studio. Scrape public data with BeautifulSoup or Scrapy, and automate tasks with Python. Build dashboards using tools like Notion, Airtable, or Retool, master pivot tables and advanced formulas in Google Sheets, and use regex for data cleaning.

GOOGLE ADDS SEARCH TERMS VISIBILITY TO PERFORMANCE MAX CAMPAIGNS

Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads now show which search terms are triggering ads, allowing negative keywords to be added directly from the Search Terms report. This change gives advertisers the same level of insight and control they have with standard Search campaigns.

DEAR MARKETERS, SHOULD YOUR FOUNDER BE AN INFLUENCER?

Credible founders with strong opinions can outperform company brands on LinkedIn, especially with an active audience and marketing support. Instead of having executives write from scratch, marketing should capture insights from conversations, voice notes, or Slack threads and repurpose them into short-form content aligned with company messaging. Posts should reinforce 3-4 core brand themes, be published consistently, and include real-time engagement to boost visibility in LinkedIn's algorithm.

YOUR GUIDE TO BUILDING A SOCIAL MEDIA PORTFOLIO

A well-structured social media portfolio should highlight both creative execution and strategic thinking. Minimal text is best, letting the work speak for itself with a design inspired by social media feeds. Tools like Gondola help track past work by aggregating posts and metrics. Documenting work as it happens makes portfolio building easier, and crediting collaborators adds transparency. Starting with a basic Notion page or a list of links is a good first step.

5 CHARITY MARKETING CAMPAIGNS INSPO

Charity campaign inspiration from Mind, Refuge, and Women's Aid.

THE POWER OF WORD CHOICE IN INFLUENCER MARKETING

SCHEDULE A DEMO TO LEARN MORE.

THE NEW THREE-TIER APPLICATION

Application architecture has evolved from the traditional three-tier model to modern microservices-based backends. Nowadays, an orchestration tier is usually needed to manage complexity but there are limitations of existing DIY and dedicated orchestrator solutions. However, a good approach to this is combining the orchestration and application tiers using a lightweight library that persists execution state in a database.

REACT TRENDS IN 2025

A major trend in 2025 is the increasing adoption of React Server Components (RSC) as a standard and React Server Functions (RSF), which simplify data fetching and mutations in both Server and Client components. React is going through UI standardization through libraries like Shadcn UI and tooling streamlining with tools like Biome.

THE WORST PROGRAMMER I KNOW

Developer productivity metrics like lines of code are not always accurate for engineers. Since many engineers often spend more time architecting designs and mentoring others, this leads to lower lines of code output. However, these types of engineers generally cause the team overall to output more lines of code, so these metrics might be better as a team-wide metric rather than an individual one.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT: WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO BE A MANAGER, DIRECTOR, OR VP

Typical corporate "leveling" systems are often arbitrary. Instead, a proposed simplified management hierarchy consists of three meaningful levels: manager, director, and vice president. Managers execute plans with support, directors drive results independently, and VPs are responsible for creating and owning the plan. VPs, unlike directors, are ultimately accountable for the results of their plans and cannot hide behind prior approval if the plan fails.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF TYPES

There's a common aversion to creating new data types in codebases, which comes from a fear of altering the "grand design." However, creating new types to group related values, even for specific functions, makes code simpler and much easier to read. Devs should create types whenever necessary.

and future-proof your software. Watch the video

Paul Lambert from the Qt Group explore the concept of code debt

from an academic and commercial perspective. Learn how to identify technical debt, understand its financial impact, manage legacy code,

FASTOPENAPI

FastOpenAPI is a Python library that generates and integrates OpenAPI schemas. It uses Pydantic v2 for data validation and supports frameworks like Falcon, Flask, Quart, Sanic, Starlette, and Tornado. It auto-generates documentation in different formats and has features like data validation, proxy routing, and integration examples.

CLAUDE DESKTOP COMMANDER

Claude Desktop Commander is a server that gives the Claude desktop app terminal command execution, process management, and advanced file editing capabilities through Model Context Protocol (MCP). It allows Claude to run terminal commands, manage processes, and perform filesystem operations like reading/writing files, creating directories, and searching for files. It also supports code editing with surgical text replacements or full file rewrites, using a search/replace block format.

MANIFEST

Manifest is a "1-file micro-backend." It has features like authentication, validation, storage, and dynamic endpoints, and can be integrated into projects using a single command.

THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IDENTITY CRISIS

The rise of AI coding assistants is causing an identity crisis for software engineers, who are shifting from hands-on builders to orchestrators of AI-generated code. This transition challenges the core satisfaction engineers get from creating solutions and mastering technical skills. For devs to adapt to this change, they should balance deep technical work with strategic AI orchestration.

PYTORCH INTERNALS

This is a guide to the inner workings of the PyTorch library. It is structured in two parts: (1) a conceptual overview of tensor libraries, including data types, extension points, and automatic differentiation; and (2) practical coding aspects with guidance on navigating the codebase, kernel writing, and optimizing the development workflow.

MOST AI VALUE WILL COME FROM BROAD AUTOMATION, NOT FROM R&D

The primary economic impact of AI will come from broad automation across various industries, rather than being solely focused on automating research and development (R&D). R&D's contribution to overall economic growth is smaller than commonly believed and automating R&D is more difficult than it appears due to the need for capabilities beyond abstract reasoning.

USE LONG OPTIONS IN SCRIPTS

For better readability and maintainability, always use long-form options (e.g., `--create`) instead of short-form options (e.g., `-c`) when writing scripts that use command-line utilities.

NEXT.JS MIDDLEWARE EXPLOIT: CVE-2025-29927 AUTHORIZATION BYPASS

CVE-2025-29927 is a Next.js vulnerability that allows attackers to bypass middleware authorization by manipulating the `x-middleware-subrequest` header - it affects versions 11.1.4 through recent unpatched releases, though it has now been patched in Next.js version 15.2.3.

YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING, AND THAT IS OKAY

It's okay to not know everything as a dev - instead, focus on problem-solving, use your network, and always keep learning.

AN INTERVIEW WITH OPENAI CEO SAM ALTMAN ABOUT BUILDING A CONSUMER TECH COMPANY

OpenAI is clearly one of the defining companies of this era. Its founder, Sam Altman, recently appeared on a podcast interview that covered his background, the OpenAI origin story, and the genesis of ChatGPT. He also gave some hints about what's coming next, answered some philosophical questions about AI, and provided advice for seniors graduating from high school. A link to the audio for the podcast is available.

APPLE'S NEW SHAKE-UP PROVES SIRI'S NOW BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY, HERE'S WHY

Former Apple Vision Pro head Mike Rockwell is now in charge of Siri. While Rockwell's experience doesn't make him a natural choice, it shows that Apple has decided that Siri deserves attention from a top-tier Apple leader. Rockwell has developed and launched major hardware and software platforms for Apple. The new leadership represents a big shift in how much the company is valuing and prioritizing Siri.

BOSTON DYNAMICS SHOWS OFF ANOTHER MAJOR LEAP IN HUMANOID MOBILITY

Boston Dynamics has released a new video (available in the article) that shows its Atlas robot running, cartwheeling, and breakdancing. Atlas' walking now resembles walking rather than taking a bunch of steps - its other movements are starting to look less forced too. The current explosion in humanoid robotics is still at a very early stage, but it is looking clearer than ever that humans and androids will soon be interacting regularly in daily life. Chinese company Unitree has also been doing incredible work with its lightweight G1 humanoid, which has a starting price tag of $16,000.

INSIDE ‘ECCENTRIC' RIPPLE FOUNDER'S MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR SPACE STATION PLAN

Jed McCaleb, the serial entrepreneur who founded Mt. Gox and Ripple, has a new company, Vast, that is on track to launch a commercial space station into orbit by May 2026. Vast is building its spacecraft with components developed by SpaceX. If it succeeds, it will be better positioned to win a lucrative contract from NASA to replace the International Space Station - if it fails, McCaleb could see $1 billion wiped from his net worth. Vast is competing with Axiom Space, Voyager Space Holdings, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin to win the NASA contract.

ACCELERATING LARGE-SCALE TEST MIGRATION WITH LLMS

Airbnb recently completed its first large-scale large language model-driven code migration. It updated nearly 3,500 React component test files from Enzyme to use React Testing Library instead. This was estimated to take 1.5 years of engineering to do by hand, but Airbnb managed to finish the entire migration in just six weeks using a combination of frontier models and robust automation. This blog post looks at the challenges the Airbnb team faced during the migration, how large language models helped solve this particular type of challenge, and how the team structured its tooling to run an AI-driven migration at scale.

LIFE ALTERING POSTGRESQL PATTERNS

There are several things you can do when working with Postgres databases that can make the experience much more pleasant. These include using UUID primary keys, naming tables singularly, and representing statuses as logs. This post presents a list of tips for working with Postgres. Each tip is backed up by a reason for why it is helpful and code examples.

PERPLEXITY'S CEO HAS AN AMBITIOUS PLAN TO TAKE ON GOOGLE

Perplexity AI is ramping up its rivalry with Google on multiple fronts. It has expanded its research options for businesses, created tools to look up financial data, expanded a partnership with SoftBank for its sales team to resell Perplexity's premium products, and made a long-shot bid to merge with TikTok. Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas, envisions a world where Perplexity serves as a central hub for more sophisticated and affordable AI tools that can generally act as a personal assistant for users. This article contains an interview with Srinivas where he discusses how he's growing Perplexity's enterprise business, why he's bullish on DeepSeek, and the thinking behind his TikTok bid.

APPLE LOSES $1B A YEAR ON PRESTIGIOUS, MINIMALLY VIEWED APPLE TV+

The Apple TV+ streaming service is losing more than $1 billion annually. The service's subscriber count reached around 45 million in 2024. Apple TV+ typically spends over $5 billion annually on content, but it cut its budget by about $500 million last year. It is reportedly the only part of Apple's services business that is not turning a profit. While its library boasts prestige, its viewership is scant, hindering its ability to make money.

ANUBIS

Anubis is a tool that tests connections using a sha256 proof-of-work challenge to protect upstream resources from scraper bots.

A DEEP DIVE INTO MCP AND THE FUTURE OF AI TOOLING

MCP is an open protocol that allows systems to provide context to AI models in a manner that's generalizable across integrations.

ANTHROPIC ADDS WEB SEARCH TO ITS CLAUDE CHATBOT

Paid Claude users in the US can now access web search in preview - support for free users and additional countries is coming soon.

FETCHER MCP

Fetcher MCP is a model context protocol that fetches web page content using Playwright.

OPENAI UPGRADES ITS TRANSCRIPTION AND VOICE-GENERATING AI MODELS

OpenAI will not be making its new transcription models openly available, unlike Whisper.

AUTOMATING MATH

AI models will soon find utility as assistants for many mathematicians, but the extent to which this will increase the rate of true math breakthroughs is unknown.

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