Search the archive

PAYMENTS ON POLYGON ARE SCALING FAST

Polygon-based payment transfers grew from near zero in 2021 to roughly 1.5 million monthly transactions by late 2025.

CRYPTO NEOBANKS COMPETE WITH FINTECH AND CRYPTO

Crypto apps now rank alongside top US fintech banking apps.

BROCK PIERCE'S FRIENDSHIP WITH JEFFREY EPSTEIN REVEALED

Newly released documents reveal that Brock Pierce facilitated a $3 million Jeffrey Epstein investment in Coinbase during the 2010-2018 period.

OPENAI'S SORA APP IS STRUGGLING AFTER ITS STELLAR LAUNCH

OpenAI's Sora video-generation app experienced a dramatic decline after its stellar October launch, with downloads dropping 32% in December and 45% in January despite initially reaching 1 million downloads faster than ChatGPT. Consumer spending also fell 32% month over month in January, with the app dropping from the top spot in the US App Store to No. 101 overall. The decline is attributed to increased competition from Google's Gemini and Meta AI, as well as ongoing copyright infringement issues.

ADOBE ANIMATE IS SHUTTING DOWN AS COMPANY FOCUSES ON AI

Adobe is shutting down its long-running 2D animation tool Adobe Animate as it continues to reorient its product lineup around AI, with the software set to be discontinued on March 1. While enterprise customers will receive extended support through 2029, many users are frustrated by the lack of a true replacement and Adobe's suggestion to piece together Animate features using other Creative Cloud apps. The move follows months of signals that Animate was being deprioritized, including its absence from Adobe Max and the lack of a 2025 release.

ALL-NEW MACBOOK PRO DESIGN REPORTEDLY SET TO LAUNCH IN FINAL QUARTER THIS YEAR

Apple is expected to launch updated MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips soon, keeping the current design but delivering major performance gains, likely alongside macOS 26.3. A larger update, expected in Q4, will introduce a slimmer redesigned MacBook Pro with Samsung-made OLED displays in 14- and 16-inch sizes, possibly a punch-hole camera, and even touch support, though some Apple-specific components are still being finalized.

UI DESIGN WITH NANO BANANA PRO: PRACTICAL USE CASES, WORKFLOW, AND SAMPLE PROMPTS

Nano Banana Pro is a visual thinking engine for UI designers that offers strong spatial understanding, accurate text rendering, and 4K output to accelerate early-stage design exploration. The tool enables rapid ideation by generating style explorations, layout variations, wireframe translations, and complex dashboard interfaces through prompt-based methods. While it doesn't replace production design tools or address accessibility and technical constraints, Nano Banana Pro shortens feedback loops by producing high-fidelity mockups that effectively communicate structure and aesthetic direction.

HOW TO BUILD A CREATIVE BRAND STRATEGY THAT ACTUALLY CONVERTS

A creative brand strategy is a structured plan that uses storytelling and creative ideas to define how a brand expresses its identity and differentiates itself from competitors. It strengthens market position by providing clarity that makes your brand the obvious choice rather than just another option, while attracting the right customers who are already halfway sold because your brand resonates with them. The strategy builds emotional connections by understanding how customers actually think, leading to stronger preference and loyalty over time.

DON'T ASK QUESTIONS YOU CAN FIND ANSWERS TO ONLINE

Beyond skills, hiring decisions often hinge on fresh perspectives, values alignment, genuine engagement with the company, and thoughtful preparation—factors that can help less-experienced candidates stand out against more senior competition.

AI PRESENTATION CREATOR

Kimi Slides is an AI-powered presentation creator that transforms ideas into stunning slides within minutes.

AUDIO TO VIDEO AI

LTX Studio offers an AI-powered audio-to-video converter that transforms uploaded audio files, recorded voice, or generated sounds into video content.

AI ASSISTANT FOR SOLIDWORKS

Describe your design in plain language, and LAD will translate it into SolidWorks operations, creating sketches, features, and assemblies all through natural conversation.

AGENT ORCHESTRATION UI

AI products have evolved from behind-the-scenes models to chat interfaces to agents, and now to agent orchestration, where multiple agents coordinate on unified tasks. Intent by Augment introduces a new UI approach for agent orchestration that focuses on workspaces, context management, and specialized agents working in parallel. The platform uses isolated spaces with living specifications that allow coordinator, implementer, and verifier agents to work together while maintaining alignment through shared context.

HOW TO MANAGE BREAKING CHANGES IN DESIGN TOKENS

Design systems require a three-phase approach to manage breaking changes in design tokens: deprecation, migration, and removal. During deprecation, mark tokens with flags and provide clear timelines; during migration, offer both old and new tokens with guides and tools; and during removal, clean up deprecated tokens in a major version release. Success depends on clear communication, adequate migration periods, and proper documentation throughout the process.

SIX POWERFUL WAYS TO MAKE YOUR NEXT REBRAND BETTER

Branding has moved beyond static assets into flexible, evolving systems that integrate type, colour, sound, motion, and cultural awareness from the start. Design brands as living frameworks — emotionally expressive, accessible, adaptable, and culturally engaged — rather than fixed visual checklists meant only for launch day.

TIPS ON HOW TO PICK THE RIGHT ICONS FOR YOUR WEBSITE

Icons should be meaningful, culturally relevant, and labeled when their meaning isn't universally clear.

HOW TO MEASURE THE IMPACT OF FEATURES

The TARS framework helps measure feature impact by tracking the funnel from Target audience (% of users with the problem) to Adoption (% who engage with the feature) to Retention (continued usage) and Satisfaction scores.

LI WANG CAPTURES LIFE, LOVE AND LONGING IN COLOUR

Artist Li Wang explains how moving from Beijing to New York reshaped his painting into a deeply personal exploration of queer identity, masculinity, and memory, with his work now serving as an emotional documentation of lived experience.

DEEP DIVE: HOW CLAUDE CODE'S /INSIGHTS COMMAND WORKS

The `/insights` command in Claude Code generates an HTML report that analyzes users' interaction patterns across all their sessions. This process involves filtering session logs, extracting metadata, and using an LLM to perform qualitative "facet extraction" on session transcripts. The aggregated data and LLM insights then identify interaction styles, successful workflows, and friction points, and proposes actionable suggestions.

SUBAGENTS: WHEN AND HOW TO USE THEM

Subagents are specialist agents that your main AI agent can spawn to handle focused tasks in their own clean context, keeping your main conversation readable instead of cluttered with noise. The two useful patterns are chaining them sequentially (like scout files → implement → verify) or running them in parallel for exploration.

7 SLACK HACKS FOR ENGINEERS AND MANAGERS

To improve productivity when using Slack or Teams, organize channels into priority-based categories (read now/daily/weekly), mute lower-priority groups until scheduled check-ins, and use message reminders instead of leaving things unread.

I LEFT FAANG FOR A STARTUP AND REGRETTED IT

A dev left Amazon for a $300K startup in SF and got let go after 3 weeks when he admitted he didn't actually like the work. Startups need obsession and not just talent, and he wasn't willing to sacrifice everything for someone else's vision.

WHAT, THEN, ARE WE PAYING FOR?

Despite AI making it easier to build custom solutions, the true value of buying software lies in paying another entity to own and continually maintain a specific problem domain, freeing the buyer from that ongoing responsibility.

XCODE 26.3 UNLOCKS THE POWER OF AGENTIC CODING

Xcode 26.3 introduces agentic coding, allowing developers to integrate AI agents directly into their app development workflow. This new capability enables agents like Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex to autonomously tackle complex tasks, interact with project architecture, and visually verify their work.

INTRODUCING DENO SANDBOX

Deno Sandbox is a new platform designed to securely run untrusted code, especially LLM-generated code, that frequently calls external APIs with sensitive credentials. It provides lightweight Linux microVMs with defense-in-depth security with features like granular network egress control and a unique mechanism that protects secrets from exfiltration by only materializing them during approved outbound requests.

INTRODUCING THE NEW V0

Vercel's v0 now allows users to work directly on existing codebases, integrates Git workflows for entire teams, has secure database connections, and guarantees enterprise-grade security by default.

LESSONS LEARNED SHIPPING 500 UNITS OF MY FIRST HARDWARE PRODUCT

A former software engineer ventured into hardware by launching "Brighter," a powerful lamp, after a successful crowdfunding campaign. He immediately faced numerous challenges, including prototype brightness issues, unexpected tariff hikes, manufacturing errors with parts like heatsinks and knobs, and quality control problems with wiring and accessories. Despite these hurdles, the team iteratively fixed problems, produced the 500 units, and delivered them to customers.

RESURRECTING CRIMSONLAND

Banteg embarked on a project to resurrect the cult classic 2003 game Crimsonland by reverse engineering its binary to achieve a pixel-perfect, behaviorally identical rewrite. This process involved static and runtime analysis using tools like Ghidra, Binary Ninja, Windbg, and Frida to understand the game's undocumented architecture and logic. A large part of the project was using AI, particularly GPT-5.2 and Codex, to automate tasks like function renaming and deciphering custom file formats.

NOTEPAD++ SUPPLY CHAIN ATTACK BREAKDOWN

From June to October 2025, the Notepad++ update infrastructure was compromised in a supply chain attack, allowing threat actors to deploy malware.

1 KILOBYTE IS PRECISELY 1000 BYTES

While a kilobyte is commonly understood as 1,024 bytes in computing due to binary systems, its precise and standardized definition is 1,000 bytes.

ENGINE FAILURE

Google's Project Genie is an AI world-builder that triggered stock declines for Unity and Roblox.

UNLESS THAT CLAW IS THE FAMOUS OPENCLAW

OpenClaw, an autonomous AI agent with full shell access and browser control, has security risks, including prompt injection and session theft, so developers must use dedicated hardware and burner accounts to keep their main accounts safe.

Read more on the Metronome blog

PATIENT CAPITAL WILL EAT THE WORLD

Venture capital has grown into massive funds like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, but the traditional VC model struggles with today's software and AI markets. Growth-stage software no longer requires or generates capital in the way early SaaS or consumer internet companies did, and AI companies increasingly need infrastructure financing, not conventional venture funding. Institutional VC is constrained by LP mandates, fund timelines, and deployment expectations, forcing investment even when better opportunities would be to wait. As a result, funds invent narratives to justify current positions while real liquidity remains scarce due to limited IPOs and conservative M&A markets.

YC SPRING 2026 REQUESTS FOR STARTUPS

YC published a list of 10 startup areas it wants to fund this spring. The themes span AI-native workflows replacing legacy software, stablecoins as financial infrastructure, and modernizing heavy industry and government. Notable entries include "Cursor for PMs," AI-native agencies, and modern metal mills.

FINDING GTM ALPHA

'Alpha' is an investment's outperformance over a market benchmark. It is what separates market-beating investors from the rest. GTM alpha starts with having better data than your competitors. Unique data is a competitive edge. Top teams stay ahead by experimenting, learning, and launching better plays faster.

WHEN TO RAISE VC

Venture capital requires extremely high returns, often 50x, which rules out businesses in small or focused markets that can still generate strong profit and exits. Forcing a VC narrative onto a business misaligned with hypergrowth pressures leads to wasted time and compromised product decisions. Founders should match their financing strategy to market opportunity, using angels or bootstrapping for steady growth and VCs only when capital materially changes outcomes.

HOW TO BUILD AI PRODUCT SENSE

Product managers and founders can develop AI intuition by using tools like Cursor for non-technical work. This interactive guide walks through practical exercises that help you understand AI capabilities and limitations firsthand. The best way to know what AI can do for your product is to experience it yourself rather than relying on demos or documentation.

MOLTBOOK

moltbook is a social network for AI agents where agents can share, discuss, and upvote content. Humans can observe, but the platform is designed for agent‑to‑agent interaction.

POLYVIA

Polyvia is a Visual Knowledge Index that turns large collections of images into a queryable, disambiguated source of truth for multimodal agents and knowledge workflows.

HUGO

Hugo is an AI support teammate that resolves customer tickets autonomously, reducing support workload while maintaining quality responses.

WE NEED MORE ANGEL INVESTORS

Founders drive more economic value. However, they don't create value in a vacuum - they need angel investors for capital. AI might make things cheaper, but that doesn't change the need for capital, only how it is used. Early capital from angel investors results in more viable companies that are more likely to succeed.

THE ECONOMICS OF A SUPER BOWL AD

Ro ran its first Super Bowl ad featuring Serena Williams to boost brand awareness for its GLP-1 products. The fully loaded cost including media, production, talent, and additional spend is $16–29M. Success is measured both short-term through customer acquisition and traffic spikes, and long-term through brand awareness and marketing efficiency. The upside is asymmetric and compounding while downside is capped. Ro chose this moment because the product is ready, the market is large and underserved, and Serena's story aligns with the brand.

WE'VE BEEN QUIETLY BUILDING OUR OWN 0 -> 1 REVENUE STACK INTERNALLY AT @TRYRAMP - RAMP REVENUE

Sellers at Ramp don't have to worry about switching between dozens of systems just to figure out who they should reach out to or what they should say.

AI'S IMPACT ON 2026 BUDGETS

CFOs are opening budgets for AI tools that promise productivity gains, but the bar for traditional SaaS spend is rising as every new purchase must compete with the perceived ROI of AI alternatives.

WHICH AI LAB IS WINNING THE ENTERPRISE?

OpenAI and Anthropic are emerging as key players in the enterprise AI sector, with Anthropic reportedly gaining ground on OpenAI.

Get the guide

HACKERS LEAK 5.1 MILLION PANERA BREAD RECORDS

Extortion group ShinyHunters stole roughly 14 million records from Panera Bread by compromising a Microsoft Entra SSO code, then leaked a 760GB archive after failed ransom demands. The dump includes 5.1 million unique customer email addresses, along with names, addresses, and phone numbers, creating significant downstream risk of phishing, credential stuffing, and identity-based attacks that can extend far beyond Panera's ecosystem.