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HOW TO GET YOUR FIRST 20K APP INSTALLS WITHOUT ADS

Boost app downloads by offering apps for free on AppAdvice for 24 hours, engaging with subreddits, and updating ASO keyword research every 2 weeks.

BUILDING AN “EASY” WEB APPLICATION

This developer spent a long weekend trying to improve a Python utility by creating a user-friendly, “easy” web app. He first started using Flask and then a JavaScript-only approach, but the latter was made difficult by CORS restrictions. This meant he needed to create a Node.js server and REST API, which added even more complexity. The final result was made by just reverting to using Python, leading to a functional, but slightly less user-friendly, single-file Bottle app with added styling.

THE MISTAKES OF CSS

CSS has some inconsistencies and perceived mistakes, such as how “z-index” doesn't work on all elements. These inconsistencies are from CSS's rapid changes since it was created, so backwards compatibility has been challenging.

WHICH RICH TEXT EDITOR FRAMEWORK SHOULD YOU CHOOSE IN 2025?

Popular frontend rich text editors include Tiptap, BlockNote, Lexical, Slate, and Quill. Tiptap is recommended as the most well-rounded choice, as it's both easy to use and extensible. However, other editors have their own strengths and tradeoffs. For example, some editors support realtime collaboration via Yjs, while others support frameworks other than just React.

ON PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

The team at Sentry discovered that true product-market fit is when customers become passionate advocates who effectively sell the product for them. Their ideal audience was early-stage, new tech teams who really needed their solutions, rather than a broader, less engaged market.

WE ARE DESTROYING SOFTWARE

We are destroying software through a combination of neglecting complexity, over-reliance on external dependencies, prioritizing speed over design, and abandoning fundamental software engineering principles.

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JSTACK

JStack is a high-performance Next.js app stack designed for building fast, lightweight, and type-safe apps. It has a well-thought-out developer experience with automatic type safety, autocompletion, and easy deployment to platforms like Vercel and Cloudflare. It also supports serverless WebSockets and is compatible with any state manager.

MARKSMITH

Marksmith is a GitHub-style markdown editor for Rails apps. It supports Active Storage attachments and comes with a built-in markdown preview renderer.

THREE OBSERVATIONS

Sam Altman believes that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will build upon previous technological advancements to improve human lives and potentially solve major global challenges like disease. AI model intelligence scales predictably with resources, the costs of AI are decreasing fast, and its socioeconomic value increases super-exponentially.

WHY THE 'SPIRIT' OF OPEN SOURCE MEANS MUCH MORE THAN A LICENSE

“Open source” is more than just a license. The spirit of open source is more about community involvement and transparency. Companies that use open source often don't follow the spirit of it because they often limit community input.

BULLSHIT MACHINES

A series of lessons on LLMs and their benefits and risks.

VSCODE'S SSH AGENT IS BANANAS

VSCode's SSH remote editing feature installs a powerful agent with filesystem access and execution capabilities on remote servers, which is a security concern.

YOU'RE MISSING YOUR NEAR MISSES

Organizations should prioritize investigating near-miss incidents as seriously as high-severity incidents to prevent future, potentially catastrophic failures.

“TORRENTING FROM A CORPORATE LAPTOP DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT”: META EMAILS UNSEALED

Newly unsealed emails reveal Meta employees' concerns about the legality of using corporate laptops to torrent and seed over 81 terabytes of copyrighted data to train AI models.

investor.

GOOGLE STARTS TESTING NEW SEARCH ‘AI MODE' INTERNALLY – HERE'S AN EARLY LOOK AT IT

Google Search is working on an AI Mode that allows users to ask open-ended/exploratory questions and get generated AI Overview-style responses. The company has started testing the experience with employees. AI Mode is powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.0 that has advanced reasoning and thinking capabilities. A screenshot of the user interface is available in the article.

APPLE JUST BUILT AN ADORABLE ROBOT LAMP, A SNEAK PEEK INTO ROBOTICS WORK

Apple recently published a research paper and video that explains how the company built a non-anthropomorphic robot lamp prototype with an expressive design model rather than a functional one. The lamp resembles Pixar's iconic Luxo and displays human-like gestures. It can perform a variety of tasks with human-like expressions. A link to the full video from Apple is available.

WORLD'S FIRST LAB-GROWN MEAT FOR PETS GOES ON SALE

Meatly's Chick Bites, a dog treat made from lab-grown meat, are getting a limited release at a single pet store in the UK today. The company plans to expand production in hopes of making its lab-grown meat more widely available. The UK gave Meatly the green light to produce pet food made from lab-grown meat in July last year. Chick Bites are made from a combination of plant-based ingredients and Meatly's lab-grown chicken, which the company claims is just as tasty and nutritious as traditional chicken breast.

HOW DOES LIFE HAPPEN WHEN THERE'S BARELY ANY LIGHT?

Life still exists in some of the coldest, darkest places on Earth, where there is barely any light. Some phytoplankton living in the Arctic are able to survive without becoming dormant even during periods of 24-hour darkness. These organisms have their photosynthetic machines up and running as soon as the barest amount of sunlight returns. It is still unclear how the microalgae stay alive out of dormancy. The ability may be shared by algae in other areas of the deep sea, which means that the zone of productive ocean may be deeper than previously thought.

NONTRADITIONAL RED TEAMS

Every development team should have some exposure to red team practices. Developers should check user-generated content for offensive messaging and make sure their sites work correctly with ad blockers. They should also make sure their forms work with password managers. None of these factors are major blockers, but they're easy to prevent. It's important to use your eyes before shipping.

WHERE DID TIKTOK'S SOFTWARE ENGINEERS GO?

The uncertainty over TikTok's future has motivated the company's engineers to interview and quit when they get an offer. Publicly traded companies appear to be the most popular destination for employees who leave. People appear to be quitting for better liquid total compensation packages. A chart showing the flow of employees from TikTok to other companies is available in the article.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO IDEA GUYS WHO CAN JUST DO THINGS

AI will make execution cheap. This will make brand, distribution, and ideas much more important. There is currently an unbounded opportunity for any proficient software engineer. People are still stuck at the level of thinking about singular AI coworkers - it will be possible to have thousands of agents working on the same problems at the same time.

OPENAI LEAKS SALES AGENT IN TOKYO (3 MINUTE VIDEO)

OpenAI recently demoed an AI sales agent in Tokyo. The demo showed the agent using a Deep Research-like search to fill in customer information, check available time slots, and email leads to schedule meetings. It is unclear whether the demo was a mock-up of a product its API users could build or an actual release for Enterprise customers.

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OPENAI NOW REVEALS MORE OF ITS O3-MINI MODEL'S THOUGHT PROCESS

OpenAI changed the way its newest AI model communicates in response to pressure from rivals, including DeepSeek.

MISTRAL RELEASES ITS AI ASSISTANT ON IOS AND ANDROID

Mistral has launched a mobile app along with a Pro tier that comes with access to the company's highest-performing model, higher usage limits, and the ability to opt out of data sharing with the company.

YOUTUBE IS BUYING TIKTOK ADS TO LURE CREATORS BEFORE US BAN

YouTube is running ads targeting content creators on TikTok to capitalize on TikTok's uncertain future.

DISNEY+ LOSES 700,000 SUBSCRIBERS FOLLOWING PRICE INCREASE

Disney now has 124.6 million Disney+ subscribers after increasing its prices in the fall.

OPENAI'S EX-CTO, MIRA MURATI, HAS RECRUITED OPENAI CO-FOUNDER JOHN SCHULMAN

Not much is known about Mira Murati's new startup, but Murati was reportedly in talks to raise $100 million in October.

AMAZON SET TO PASS WALMART IN REVENUE FOR FIRST TIME

Amazon's expected reported revenue is $187 billion, while Walmart is projected to announce sales of $180 billion.

OPENAI CO-FOUNDER JOHN SCHULMAN LEAVES ANTHROPIC

John Schulman, a key figure behind ChatGPT, has left Anthropic after just five months. While his reasons remain unclear, the departure marks a significant shift in the AI research landscape.

LYFT AND ANTHROPIC PARTNERSHIP

Lyft is collaborating with Anthropic to integrate Claude-powered AI solutions, reducing customer service resolution times by 87% and enhancing the overall rideshare experience through AI-driven automation and engineering improvements.

DOES AI NEED ALL THAT MONEY? (TECH GIANTS SAY YES)

DeepSeek's claim of training a top-performing AI model for $5.6m shook the US market, impacting Nvidia's valuation and raising questions about hefty AI infrastructure investments from the likes of Meta and Microsoft. Despite skepticism, leading tech firms including OpenAI remain committed to major spending on AI advancements. Meanwhile, OpenAI plans a new, free ChatGPT version, maintaining high spending levels alongside ambitious AI projects like Stargate.

HIGH-FIDELITY SIMULTANEOUS SPEECH-TO-SPEECH TRANSLATION

Kyutai has released an amazing audio system which is a real time, audio to audio, translation system. It is built on a powerful multi stream transformer and boasts expressive voice ability.

INTERACTION PROCESSING UNITS

This article explores the development of computer hardware based on Interaction Nets, a computational model that represents calculations as interacting graph nodes. While current implementations like HVM show promise for parallel processing, traditional hardware isn't optimized for graph-based operations. The author proposes that custom hardware architecture could better utilize Interaction Nets' inherent parallelism and local memory access patterns, particularly benefiting algorithms with non-homogeneous parallelism like optimization problems and graph processing.

MLLM'S FACE UNDERSTANDING BENCHMARK

FaceXBench is a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating MLLMs face understanding across 14 tasks in 6 key categories.

DEEPSEEK RELEASES VL2, A SERIES OF MOE VISION-LANGUAGE MODELS

DeepSeek-VL2 introduces a new series of Mixture-of-Experts Vision-Language models with up to 4.5B activated parameters that excel in tasks like OCR, visual grounding, and chart understanding.

COLQWEN 2 (HUGGING FACE HUB)

A new vision based retrieval model based on Qwen that blew away state of the art for later interaction document retrieval.

CONTROLLING GENERATED LENGTH IN LLMS

The "Ruler" method helps LLMs generate responses of a specific length. It improves models' ability to follow length constraints in user instructions using Meta Length Tokens.

CONTROLLING AI'S GROWING ENERGY NEEDS

AI model training requires significant energy, with LLMs like GPT-3 consuming vast amounts. Alternatives such as neuromorphic and optical computing are being explored to reduce this footprint. Meanwhile, smaller fine-tuned models are emerging as an energy-efficient option for specific applications.

AI MEMORY AND CONTEXT: OPEN SOURCE, DEEPSEEK, META, AND MODEL RESEARCH

Yann LeCun emphasizes that true AI intelligence requires a system of interconnected components rather than a single powerful model, highlighting the need for persistent memory and context. He calls for new AI architecture, possibly through "world models," to better mimic human cognition. LeCun also advocates for open-source AI development to advance the field.

AI HATERS BUILD TARPITS TO TRAP AND TRICK AI SCRAPERS THAT IGNORE ROBOTS.TXT

Nepenthes, a malicious AI tarpit inspired by anti-spam techniques, was created to trap and poison AI crawlers ignoring robots.txt, raising operational costs for AI companies. Developer Aaron's tool disrupts AI training by feeding bots gibberish, with only OpenAI's systems reportedly escaping its grasp. While some criticize its efficacy, Nepenthes symbolizes resistance against unchecked AI scraping, sparking similar tools like Iocaine designed to protect online content.

COPYRIGHT OFFICE OFFERS ASSURANCES ON AI FILMMAKING TOOLS

The U.S. Copyright Office clarified that AI-assisted creations can still qualify for copyright protection, provided they involve human authorship.

CUSTOMERS DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR AI FEATURE

Research by Irrational Labs found labeling products as "AI" doesn't increase trust, justify higher prices, or improve performance expectations.

OPENAI INKS DEAL WITH LOS ALAMOS LAB TO CRAM O1 INTO VENADO

OpenAI partnered with Los Alamos National Laboratory to deploy its o1 LLM on the Venado supercomputer for nuclear security and scientific advancements.

CZECH PRESIDENT SIGNS LAW EXEMPTING CAPITAL GAINS TAXES ON CRYPTO HELD FOR THREE YEARS

The Czech Republic has exempted crypto holdings from capital gains if held for more than 3 years, with retroactive application to assets purchased before 2025. The tax reform aligns with the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework, which has generally been seen as controversial, though the country has been routinely introducing crypto-friendly initiatives. The National Bank previously proposed to allocate 5% of its €140 billion reserves to Bitcoin.