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INSIDE THE ROAS TRAP

Many brands are prioritizing performance marketing with conversion attribution, but this strategy risks underinvesting in brand marketing that meaningfully drives long-term growth.

SOCIAL FIRST MARKETING

Instead of treating social media as a last-minute distribution channel, content should be designed with social in mind from the start.

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A MAJOR POSTGRES UPGRADE WITH ZERO DOWNTIME

Instant, a Firebase alternative, successfully performed a zero-downtime major Postgres upgrade from version 13 to 16. Initial attempts using in-place upgrades and blue-green deployments failed due to downtime constraints and incompatibility with active replication slots. Instant used a manual process that involved creating a new Postgres 16 replica from scratch, carefully switching subscriptions, and writing a custom zero-downtime algorithm, which paused new transactions, waited for active ones to complete, and then switched writes to the new instance.

UX++ AND DX++ WITH SYNC ENGINES

Managing remote state in web web apps is complex. Current methods, while improving developer workflow, create unnecessary loading states, stale data issues, and complexities around optimistic UI updates. A better solution is to use sync engines, such as Replicache, that provide a local data copy, allowing for instant UI updates, offline capability, and efficient data synchronization via a push/pull model similar to Git.

WHY I STILL LIKE SUBLIME TEXT IN 2025

The author, a long-time Sublime Text user since 2010, explains why they continue to prefer it in 2025. The main reasons include its speed and efficiency, great support for Language Server Protocol (LSP) features, and a powerful snippet system with scope-based functionality. It also has good built-in project workspace management that allows for customized settings, build systems, and file exclusion.

NEXT.JS: AN HONEST REVIEW

Next.js 14 is fast and developer-friendly, but the App Router introduces complexity with use server, use client, and serialization quirks. While Vercel makes deployment easy and offers great DX, middleware limitations and accidental server code bundling can lead to unexpected issues.

INTRODUCING REACT NATIVE AUDIO API

The react-native-audio-api has been released. It brings Web Audio API functionality to React Native, with precise audio control and high-performance playback across iOS, Android, browsers, and desktop applications. The tool implements a modular routing system where audio flows from source nodes (like files or generators) through processing nodes (for effects) to output nodes (speakers/hardware).

MATHESAR

Mathesar is an open-source, self-hosted web application that provides a spreadsheet-like interface for interacting with PostgreSQL databases. It allows for viewing, editing, querying, and collaborative work on data without needing to write code.

WHY DID YOU RENDER

This is a React library that helps developers identify unnecessary component re-renders by monkey-patching React to log potential optimization opportunities. It supports React Native and offers various configuration options for tracking components and hooks.

EFFECTIVE AI CODE SUGGESTIONS: LESS IS MORE

An AI-powered code review tool initially attempted to prioritize code suggestions by severity (bugs, style, etc.), but this led to an overload of low-priority suggestions, drowning out important findings. A shift to a "laser focus" approach, instructing the model to only identify critical bugs and problems, improved results. This resulted in a 50% increase in suggestion acceptance rates and an 11% increase in overall impact.

WHY DEEPSEEK HAD TO BE OPEN-SOURCE (AND WHY IT WON'T DEFEAT OPENAI)

DeepSeek open-sourced its reasoning model R1, rivaling OpenAI's o1 in performance but at a fraction of the cost due to innovative training methods. This open-source approach, counterintuitive to standard business practices, was necessary for DeepSeek to overcome Western skepticism towards a Chinese AI company and gain market access. The increasing commoditization of LLMs that have similar performance across various models makes the higher cost of proprietary models like OpenAI's less appealing.

ON DEEPSEEK AND EXPORT CONTROLS

The advancements of the Chinese AI company DeepSeek, while impressive, do not weaken the case for US export controls on chips to China. There are three dynamics in AI development: scaling laws, shifting the curve (cost reduction), and paradigm shifts in training methods. DeepSeek's progress is largely consistent with expected cost reductions and doesn't represent a fundamental breakthrough, but rather shows that strong export controls remain crucial for determining whether the future of AI will be unipolar (US-led) or bipolar (US and China).

WIZ RESEARCH UNCOVERS EXPOSED DEEPSEEK DATABASE LEAKING SENSITIVE INFORMATION, INCLUDING CHAT HISTORY

Wiz Research discovered a publicly accessible DeepSeek database containing over a million sensitive log entries, including chat history and API keys.

SHOPIFY'S FORMER CTO SHARES INSIGHTS ON REACT NATIVE WITH ‘BOUNCIFY' GAME

Shopify's adoption of React Native was a four-year journey that involved extensive testing, internal projects, strategic acquisitions, and overcoming technical concerns.

KEYMAPPER

Keymapper is a cross-platform, context-aware key remapper that allows users to redefine keyboard layouts and shortcuts, manage shortcuts in a single configuration file, and share configurations across different operating systems.

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APPLE AND SPACEX LINK UP TO SUPPORT STARLINK SATELLITE NETWORK ON IPHONES

Apple has been working with SpaceX and T-Mobile US to add support for the Starlink network in its latest iPhone update. T-Mobile this week enabled a small number of iPhones as part of its beta test of the Starlink service. Users in the program have access to a new toggle switch in their iPhone cellular data settings to manage the satellite feature. T-Mobile is aiming to support the vast majority of modern smartphones when the service fully launches.

DEEPSEEK CHIEF'S JOURNEY FROM MATH GEEK TO GLOBAL DISRUPTOR

China's DeepSeek is led by Liang Wenfeng, a math geek who caught the investing bug. Liang's hedge fund, High-Flyer, manages around $8 billion, making it one of China's largest quantitative funds. He has been described as a hands-on leader who sometimes sleeps in the office with colleagues as they rush to get projects done. Liang keeps a low profile and was surprised to see DeepSeek turn into a frenzy overnight. DeepSeek's sudden popularity caught the company off guard, making Liang work with his team to address the demand before taking a break for the Lunar New Year holiday in China.

BOOM'S XB-1 BECOMES FIRST CIVIL AIRCRAFT TO GO SUPERSONIC

Boom Superconic's XB-1 demonstrator plane went supersonic in the skies over California's Mojave Desert on its 12th test flight. It cleared Mach 1 and stayed supersonic for around four minutes, reaching Mach 1.1. This is the first time a supersonic engine has come from something other than a nation-state. Boom already has customers waiting for its technology when it matures. The company is doing some work with the US Air Force, but it remains focused on making supersonic passenger travel a reality again.

NEW GLOWING MOLECULE, INVENTED BY AI, WOULD HAVE TAKEN 500 MILLION YEARS TO EVOLVE IN NATURE, SCIENTISTS SAY

Scientists used an AI model to simulate 500 million years of molecular evolution, which resulted in the code for a previously unknown glowing protein similar to those found in jellyfish and corals. While the simulated protein only exists in computer code, the model used to create it may help in the development of new medicines. The model, called ESM3, doesn't design proteins within the usual constraints of evolution - it is a problem-solver that fills in gaps of incomplete protein code. ESM3 learns fundamental biology and then creates functional proteins outside the space explored by evolution.

COMPLETE HARDWARE + SOFTWARE SETUP FOR RUNNING DEEPSEEK-R1 LOCALLY

This thread details a $6,000 setup for running the full DeepSeek-R1 model locally. The setup requires two CPUs and 768GB of RAM across 24 RAM channels. It doesn't include a GPU, though a GPU can be added for faster generation speed. The build described in the thread can generate six to eight tokens per second, depending on the specific CPU and RAM speed purchased. A video of the build running inference is available in the thread.

INTRODUCING CODENAME GOOSE

Goose is an open source AI agent built to automate tasks. It can be powered by a range of large language models and features a user-friendly desktop interface and command-line interface. Goose is designed to enhance productivity and workflows by taking instructions and then doing the work for users. Its first use cases are engineering focused, but the community has been exploring other non-engineering use cases.

DEEPSEEK PANIC AT THE APP STORE

DeepSeek's app shot to #1 on the US App Store recently and is getting around 300,000 global daily downloads. It may be the first non-GPT-based assistant to get mainstream usage in the US. Released on January 11, many users see it as a free version of OpenAI's premium models. This article looks at DeepSeek's rise, why its app is currently topping the charts, DeepSeek's business model, the company's impact on the stock market, and much more. DeepSeek's open source software means that anyone can run the technology on their own computer, so it is unlikely that the US government will be able to block it in any reasonable way.

INSIDE CHINA, DEEPSEEK PROVIDES A NATIONAL MIC DROP MOMENT

The news that a Chinese startup could build artificial intelligence models as good as OpenAI's at a fraction of the cost tanked the stock market and sent Silicon Valley into a panic. DeepSeek's achievement was a testament to China's ability to innovate, especially when faced with efforts to limit the country's access to the most advanced technologies. The company's rise may be putting it in an awkward position - China has been cracking down on the tech sector in recent years as it is wary of tech companies' growing influence. Investors are hoping the government will refrain from interfering with DeepSeek.

APPLE CHIPS CAN BE HACKED TO LEAK SECRETS FROM GMAIL, ICLOUD, AND MORE

Two vulnerabilities that open up Macs, iPhones, and iPads to side channel attacks have been discovered in later generations of Apple A- and M-series chip sets.

DISCOVERY CODING

Discovery coding is when developers try to understand a problem by writing code first rather than attempting to design processes or thinking beforehand.

ASK HN: WOULD YOU STILL CHOOSE RUBY ON RAILS FOR A STARTUP IN 2025? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

'Boring' technologies that have been around for a long time and battle tested are great for building apps.

WHY SORTING IS HARDER THAN IT SEEMS

Sorting in JavaScript requires a suitable comparator - mistakes virtually guarantee that some arrays will sort incorrectly.

SEVEN THINGS I KNOW AFTER 25 YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT

A loose transcript of a talk by Victor Shepelev, principal engineer at Hubstaff and a Ukrainian actively serving the Armed Forces, presented at the EuRuKo conference in September 2024.

AUTOMATTIC AND OTHERS BACK OPENVIBE, AN APP THAT'S UNIFYING THE OPEN SOCIAL WEB

Openvibe is an app that integrates multiple open social networks, including Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, and Threads.

HUGGING FACE'S OPEN-R1

Hugging Face has released Open-R1, a fully open reproduction of DeepSeek-R1.

OPENAI'S MODEL FOR GOVERNMENT USE

OpenAI's ChatGPT-Gov is a tailored version of ChatGPT for government agencies. It ensures security, compliance, and efficiency in public sector applications.

NOTES ON DEEPSEEK: GENERATIVE AI IS ALL ABOUT THE APPLICATIONS NOW

DeepSeek R1, a new open-source AI model from China, significantly reduces the cost of running AI models to just 3-5% of OpenAI's comparable models. This cost reduction shifts focus from infrastructure investment to actual AI application development, challenging existing economic models in the AI industry. The development has the potential to spur new AI products but also raises concerns about adequate generative AI applications.

YUE MUSIC MODEL

The YuE model is a full song generation model that generates lyrics and music together. It is quite high fidelity and easily the best open source model to date. YuE is not quite as strong as the closed models, but is still quite compelling. It uses a two stage approach and uses discrete audio tokens.

A ROBUST SLAM SYSTEM

LCP-Fusion introduces a new approach to dense SLAM that addresses challenges in mapping unknown environments with high accuracy.

PING PONG GEMM KERNEL FROM CUTLASS

A pretty technical deep dive into lightning-fast multiplication kernels for hardware accelerators. Specifically, the Ping Pong asynchronous kernel, which works for fp8 and has extremely strong final performance.

image generation without compromise.

Experience it yourself with $25 in free credits - use code "TEXT2IMAGE" [10] before February 26th.

PARAMETRIC RETRIEVAL-AUGMENTED GENERATION

Parametric RAG embeds external knowledge directly into the parametric space of LLMs, improving reasoning while reducing reliance on large context windows. The repository includes an end-to-end implementation and benchmark datasets.

A UNIFIED SELF-DRIVING WORLD MODEL

HERMES integrates scene understanding and future scene generation for autonomous driving through a unified framework. It uses Bird's-Eye View representations and world queries for contextual enrichment.

LANGCHAIN: OPENAI IN JAVASCRIPT WITH REACT.JS & NEXT.JS

This tutorial shows readers how to build a chatbot application using LangChain in JavaScript that interfaces with OpenAI's API via Next.js and React. Key steps include setting up the frontend, implementing server logic for chat interaction, and securely handling API keys. The project's source is available on GitHub for further experimentation and enhancement.

RESEARCHERS USE AI TO DESIGN PROTEINS THAT BLOCK SNAKE VENOM TOXINS

Researchers used AI tools like RFdiffusion and ProteinMPNN to design proteins that inhibit snake venom toxins, showing potential for antivenoms that don't need refrigeration. They successfully created a protein that inhibits neurotoxic venom but faced challenges with toxins disrupting cell membranes. This showcases AI's power to solve complex biological problems that were previously difficult to tackle.

TIKTOK OWNER BYTEDANCE POWERED AN E-READER'S UNHINGED AI ASSISTANT

Boox e-readers, which used ByteDance's Doubao LLM, were criticized for spreading Chinese propaganda. Doubao responded to specific questions with pro-China, Russia, and North Korea narratives while criticizing Western countries. Following backlash, Boox reportedly switched back to OpenAI's GPT-3.

OPENAI IS BANKROLLING AXIOS' EXPANSION INTO FOUR NEW MARKETS

OpenAI has partnered with Axios to fund the expansion of its local newsletters to four new cities. This marks the first time OpenAI has directly funded a news organization's newsroom. OpenAI aims to help publishers integrate AI tools into their operations.

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ZUCKERBERG SAYS AI WILL REPLACE MID-LEVEL ENGINEERS SOON

Mark Zuckerberg predicts AI will replace mid-level engineers by 2025, allowing the remaining engineers to focus on strategic tasks.