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CSS BATTLES

CSSBattle's LEARN is the first-ever gamified CSS course for beginners, intermediates, and experts. Each course consists of multiple levels, which you can play and learn.

A SWEET SPOT BETWEEN FUNCTION AND FLAIR: HOT TYPE'S KIT SANS FEELS AT HOME IN KIT'S BRAND REFRESH

Kit Sans, a custom typeface by Hot Type for marketing platform Kit, draws inspiration from Franklin Gothic with a warm, approachable twist to align with the brand's aesthetic. Balancing elements of Kit's logo, the bold, condensed font features rounded corners and a unique character suited for the brand's identity.

AMONG EQUALS DESIGNS NASA INSPIRED BRAND FOR FUTURISTIC ENERGY PROGRAMME

The STEP Energy Programme, backed by the UK government, aims to deliver sustainable fusion energy by 2040. With a brand identity inspired by NASA's Apollo missions to evoke ambition and excitement, its futuristic design features a plasma-inspired color palette, a custom tokamak-inspired typeface, and mission patches celebrating teamwork, all tied together by the tagline "Forward to Fusion."

FROM UX RESEARCH TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP: LESSONS FROM LAUNCHING A COFFEE BUSINESS

Balancing objectivity with passion in UX research can be challenging, especially when biases like confirmation bias influence decisions. Creating structured feedback loops helps ground decisions in data. Transitioning from UX to business ownership demands balancing vision with practicality, embracing uncertainty, and revisiting decisions iteratively. This journey expands skills, deepens understanding of product lifecycles, and emphasizes the importance of empathy and resilience in leadership.

CREATIVE CODING MEETS 3D TYPOGRAPHY: ANDREION DE CASTRO'S JOURNEY

Andreion de Castro blends creative coding with Blender's scripting to create mesmerizing motion design and 3D typography, transforming auditory emotions into dynamic visual forms and pushing the boundaries of digital art.

10 THINGS CREATIVES NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GEN ALPHA

7 HOTTEST UI COMPONENT LIBRARIES OF 2025 - COPY AND PASTE

When selecting UI libraries, consider the project size, design requirements, and framework compatibility.

→ Or explore the shorter Quantic for Founders Program

AMERICAN VS. EUROPEAN STARTUP DYNAMISM

Recent data shows a striking 70x valuation gap between US and European startups created in the last 50 years. Key structural challenges that are holding back European innovation include market fragmentation across countries, stringent regulations, less developed risk-capital markets, and cultural risk aversion. While the EU has strong fundamentals for innovation, addressing these barriers is crucial for competing globally.

ARM CEO RENE HAAS ON THE AI CHIP RACE, INTEL, AND WHAT TRUMP MEANS FOR TECH

Rene Haas, CEO of Arm, discusses the rapid evolution of AI and its impact on the tech industry, emphasizing Arm's role in AI and potential strategic shifts. He addresses the challenges faced by Intel, the geopolitical complexities with China, and Arm's IPO success. Haas also hints at Arm's possible move into chip manufacturing, which could position the company in new competitive landscapes.

THE DEADLINE DOOM LOOP

PostHog's James Hawkins explains how artificial deadlines create a destructive cycle: teams make optimistic estimates, reality intervenes with unexpected complications, quality suffers in the rush to meet new deadlines, and technical debt accumulates. The solution lies in small autonomous teams, engineers owning product decisions, and building trust through transparency rather than process - even if it means telling customers you don't set deadlines.

THE LAST STRATEGY FRAMEWORK YOU'LL EVER NEED

Strategy isn't hard because of frameworks - it's hard because of messy human contexts. While all frameworks help determine and answer key questions, their effectiveness depends on organizational context, thinking styles, and ability to handle complexity. Strategy is ultimately about negotiating narrative and identity within organizations, not just filling out templates.

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR PRODUCT

Anthony Pierri of FletchPMM shares a positioning framework to help B2B startups stand out in a crowded software and AI market. Key elements of product differentiation include identifying competitive alternatives, addressing their shortcomings, and offering unique features or delivery models. Effective differentiation strategies can involve price adjustments, targeting underserved segments, or transitioning to an immature market.

AI CRASH COURSE (RESOURCE)

AI Crash Course to help busy builders catch up to the public frontier of AI research in 2 weeks.

RETAPE

Create personalized demo videos at scale from a single recording.

ANYPARSER PRO

Parse multi-language images and documents into JSON/markdown.

COLD EMAIL ISN'T REALLY DEAD

The data paints a clear picture: even the best cold outbound agencies achieve just a 0.09% email-to-meeting conversion rate. Rather than focusing on channels like cold email, companies should think in terms of buyer journeys - making prospects aware of problems, educating them until they're ready, and being top-of-mind when they decide to buy.

AI & QUANT EXPERIMENTATION IN GROWTH MARKETING

Marketing is rapidly being transformed by AI. This article describes strategies in growth marketing that are working today, including agents that power self-improving websites and content personalization at large scale. These strategies are referred to as “quant experimentation”, a nod to quant trading, which similarly revolutionized the world of finance in the 1980s, and shares parallels with the transformation happening in growth marketing.

THE LARGEST AI STARTUP FUNDING DEALS OF 2024

In 2024, Databricks secured $10 billion, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion, and xAI obtained $6 billion twice, highlighting AI's dominance in startup funding. Waymo, Anthropic, Anduril Industries, G42, CoreWeave, and Wayve also marked significant raises over $1 billion each.

GEN AI PRESENT AND FUTURE: A CONVERSATION WITH RASHMI KUMAR, SVP AND CIO AT MEDTRONIC

Medtronic is leveraging AI to improve productivity and efficiency, with applications in contract management, customer service, healthcare diagnostics, and supply chain operations.

5 INTERESTING LEARNINGS FROM DATABRICKS AT $3 BILLION IN ARR

Databricks is valued at $62B, boasting impressive growth at 60% with $3B in ARR and 80% gross margins.

BUILDING FOR THE LONG RUN

Scaling a business requires balancing financial metrics with trust and empathy.

Download now

IVANTI WARNS OF NEW ZERO-DAY ATTACKS HITTING CONNECT SECURE PRODUCT

Ivanti has announced two high severity vulnerabilities in Ivanti Secure Connect appliances. The first vulnerability is a stack-based buffer overflow that allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. The second vulnerability is a privilege escalation vulnerability for local, authenticated attackers. Ivanti says that the first vulnerability is being actively exploited and urges customers to update vulnerable devices.

DATABASE TABLES OF STUDENT, TEACHER INFO STOLEN FROM POWERSCHOOL IN CYBERATTACK

PowerSchool, which serves 60 million K-12 students and teachers, suffered a data breach where hackers accessed personal information, including some Social Security Numbers and medical data, using stolen credentials. The company claims the data won't be shared publicly, though security firm Cyble suggests the breach may span years.

EXCELSIOR ORTHOPAEDICS FILES NOTICE OF DATA BREACH AFFECTING AN ESTIMATED 357,000

Excelsior Orthopaedics reported a data breach discovered in June 2024, exposing sensitive patient and employee data including Social Security numbers, medical records, and financial information. The company notified affected individuals on December 31, 2024, after investigating the unauthorized network access with cybersecurity experts.

HIDING LINUX PROCESSES WITH BIND MOUNTS

This post refines a methodology for hiding Linux processes by using a bind mount to mount a different directory on top of /proc/PID for the malicious process. The author was looking to refine the original methodology by creating a more realistic directory to overlay but realized that they could instead overlay the proc directory of a spontaneous process which is usually ignored by sysadmins. They note that this method would still be easy to detect if you are aware of the technique and provide a command to do so.

IMPLEMENTING SECURITY INVARIANTS IN AN AWS MANAGEMENT ACCOUNT

A Permission Boundary defines the maximum permissions that can be applied to a given principal. In an AWS management account, permissions boundaries are necessary because SCPs cannot be applied. This post introduces a set of security invariants that should be true in an AWS management account and provides an IAM policy to enforce them. It also links to a Lambda function that can be used to attach the policy to all newly created IAM principals.

HERE'S HOW HUCKSTERS ARE MANIPULATING GOOGLE TO PROMOTE SHADY CHROME EXTENSIONS

Google Chrome's Web Store policy prohibits developers from manipulating extension search results, yet hundreds violate this rule. Developers exploit language translation features to hide thousands of misleading keywords in alternative language descriptions, affecting search results and promoting unrelated or potentially abusive extensions.

about the implications on the Check Point blog

SLACK JACK

Slack Jack is a tool that allows penetration testers to hijack a Slack bot using its token to perform various exploitation and enumeration functions.

SYZKALLER

Syzkaller is a kernel fuzzer that finds bugs in various operating systems like Linux and Windows. Originally for Linux, it now supports other OS kernels. It is a coverage-guided tool developed by Google but is not an official product.

WAFW00F

WAFW00F is a tool that helps identify and fingerprint Web Application Firewall products protecting websites. It works by sending HTTP requests and analyzing responses to determine the type of WAF in place. Users can easily install WAFW00F from PyPI, run it in a Docker container, or build it from the source code available on GitHub.

100 DAYS OF YARA

100 Days of YARA is a community challenge to write a YARA rule every day for 100 days. This repository hosts individuals' YARA rules for the challenge as well as any tools or tips that users post.

SCHEMING REASONING EVALUATIONS

Apollo Research tested 6 popular LLMs to determine how they would react when given a prompt that gave them a goal, instructed them to achieve their goal at all costs, and then gave them a task to review files that contain proof that the developers have a different goal. 5 out of the 6 models tested would attempt to circumvent hurdles or safeguards to their goals and in some cases, models would lie about the actions on consultations. The researchers found that some models could deliberately underperform or otherwise scheme to attempt to achieve their goals.

EU COURT FINES EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR BREACHING ITS OWN DATA PRIVACY LAWS

The EU General Court fined the European Commission €400 for violating GDPR by transferring a German citizen's personal data to U.S. companies through a conference registration system using Facebook login, marking the Commission's first such penalty.

2024 CYBER SECURITY VENDOR FUNDING REPORT

Report on cyber security vendor funding, with funding raised by cybersecurity firms increasing to $9.5 billion in 2024 a decrease in funding volume.

SPACE BEARS RANSOMWARE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Space Bears is a new Moscow-based ransomware group that emerged in April 2024, notable for its unique corporate-style presentation and professional marketing approach, which includes using business-like stock images and offering "guarantees" to victims while operating as part of the Phobos ransomware-as-a-service organization.

OWASP TOP 10 NON-HUMAN IDENTITY RISKS FOR 2025: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The OWASP Top 10 Non-Human Identity Risks for 2025 focuses on the growing challenges of managing Non-Human Identities (NHIs) in enterprise cybersecurity.

WE NEED TO LEAVE THESE 10 MARKETING VICES IN 2024

INSIDE NETFLIX'S HUGE EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN FOR 'SQUID GAME'

Squid Game season 2 success, with 68 million views in just three days, was driven by Netflix's extensive experiential marketing, which included events across 25 countries and six continents. Highlights included the Paris "Red Light, Green Light" game, a 4.56K run in Los Angeles, and "Squid Game: The Experience" in NYC, all designed to immerse fans in the show's dystopian world. The campaign's global reach and interactive elements reignited audience excitement and established a new standard for entertainment marketing.

THE TRIGGER TECHNIQUE: TURN BUYER STORIES INTO SMARTER MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Shackleton's recruitment ad highlights the power of clarity and focus in marketing. Modern marketing struggles with soaring costs and ineffective targeting, as 85% of marketers lack the information to reach their audience effectively. The Trigger Technique transforms customer stories into actionable insights, helping marketers identify "trigger events" that prompt purchases. Interviews with recent best-fit buyers uncover their needs, pains, and motivations, which are used to design targeted campaigns that resonate. By running hyper-targeted experiments and collaborating with teams, marketers can craft compelling offers and achieve significant growth with minimal resources.

DEEP DIVE: MISDIRECTION MARKETING

Misdirection Marketing uses intentional mistakes to boost engagement and generate buzz. On social media, it drives comments; in emails, it improves open and read rates; and in traditional media, it can create earned media coverage. Examples include typos in email subject lines, "leaked" promotional emails, and playful errors in social posts. Successful campaigns include Virgin Voyages' Black Friday email stunt, Lululemon's "We Made Too Much" sale rebranding, and Hostess' sports-themed social media mix-up. While effective for engagement, overuse risks damaging a brand's reputation, so this tactic is best reserved for occasional, well-executed campaigns.

WHAT'S OUT ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2025

Break away from strict brand guidelines and shift from teaching to facilitating collaboration. Prioritize community engagement by actively responding to feedback and involving audiences. Diversify content formats like carousels, newsletters, and Threads to avoid video fatigue. Replace generic strategies with personalized approaches, relying on intuition for creative decisions. Focus on immersive, non-sales content and seek inspiration from a variety of sources to stay ahead of trends.

HACKING NEWSLETTER GROWTH: PROVEN STRATEGIES AND QUICK WINS (WEBINAR)

EJ White from beehiiv will be sharing tactics on how to optimize signup forms for better conversions, create viral loops, and build effective referral programs during a webinar that takes place on January 14 at 12 PM ET.

HOW TO USE LINKEDIN NEWSLETTERS: A GUIDE FOR BUSINESSES

LinkedIn has over 1 billion users, but fewer than 100,000 active newsletters, which creates a somewhat low-competition channel. Built-in tools help distribute content through email, notifications, and the newsfeed, allowing marketers to maximize visibility and engagement without starting from zero. Strategies such as publishing content directly from personal profiles or company pages, maintaining optimal frequency (weekly to monthly for profiles, more frequently for company pages), and using LinkedIn's profile features and cross-platform promotions can help grow the subscriber list and enhance brand visibility.

TOP 5 PAID MARKETING COURSES WORTH THE INVESTMENT

CXL's "Content Strategy for Demand Generation" focuses on leveraging AI and tracking results. Girls in Marketing's "Empower Your Brand" focuses on personal branding, employee-generated content, and showcasing unique experiences. Its "Leverage Your Company LinkedIn" highlighted LinkedIn trends, short-form videos, and creating impactful content. CIM's "LinkedIn Advertising" provides strategies for campaign optimization and audience segmentation.