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RE:CATCH (PRODUCT)

Automatically qualify, route, and schedule inbound leads to supercharge your sales pipeline.

SOFTWARE MARKET GENES

Software building on top of open-source LLMs, how defensible is that? A lot of AI, much like vertical SaaS, is a winner-take-most market. Investors and founders are racing to reach an inflection point that brings down their CAC and makes market capture increasingly easier.

TAKE TIME TO PROCESS A FAILURE BEFORE STARTING A NEW COMPANY

Shutting down a company often comes with a grieving process, just like a breakup or the loss of a loved one. Give yourself time to process before jumping back into the startup fray – investors tend to watch out for clear rebounds.

TRANSPARENCY IS HARD TO DO WELL

Teams with high trust often function more efficiently. Trust requires a degree of transparency, but transparency can be unsettling without context. How you share information is just as important as what you share.

A JOB IS JUST A PHASE IN SOMEONE’S LIFE

Managers and employees often play this bizarre game where they pretend the employee will be working at the company forever. That’s never the case and the company won’t be around forever either. Honest conversations about career ambitions will help with retention and trust building.

11 HOURS SINCE OPENAI DEV DAY: HERE IS WHAT PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY BUILT

If you haven’t seen the news about OpenAI Dev Day yet, this thread gives a good estimation of what is now possible. It’s pretty mind-blowing.

EVEN THE SMARTEST VCS SOMETIMES GET IT WRONG - BILL GURLEY AND REGULATED MARKETS

Bill Gurley gave an impassioned talk at the All-In Summit a few weeks ago that has been held in high regard. Here to give the counterpoint, Steve Blank lays out why he thinks Gurley might have gotten it wrong. Gurley’s talk and Blank’s rebuttal are both well said.

37 VULNERABILITIES PATCHES IN ANDROID SECURITY UPDATES

The first set of patches addresses 15 vulnerabilities in Android’s Frameworks and Systems. One critical information disclosure vulnerability can lead to local information disclosure with no additional execution privileges needed while the rest of the vulnerabilities are rated as high. The second set of patches addresses vulnerabilities in Arm, MediaTek, and Qualcomm components.

BLUENOROFF HACKERS BACKDOOR MACS WITH NEW OBJCSHELLZ MALWARE

The BlueNoroff hacking group, backed by North Korea, has developed a new macOS malware called ObjCShellz that can open remote shells on compromised devices. BlueNoroff is known for targeting cryptocurrency exchanges and financial organizations.

CRITICAL VULNERABILITIES EXPOSE VEEAM ONE SOFTWARE TO CODE EXECUTION

Veeam has issued patches for four severe security vulnerabilities that could expose users of its Veeam ONE product to remote code execution attacks. The flaws include two critical issues with CVSS severity scores of 9.9 out of 10.

K-MEANS CLUSTERING FOR LATERAL MOVEMENT DETECTION

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR RUNNING CONTAINERS ON ECS

A post from AWS that begins with an introduction to how the shared responsibility model applies to ECS and then launches into some best practices. The topics covered are IAM access to ECS, securing an ECS network, ECS secrets management, securing the ECS task and runtime, ECS logging and monitoring, and ECS security compliance.

FILTER AND STREAM LOGS FROM S3 BUCKETS TO SPLUNK

SNIFFNET

Sniffnet is a cross-platform, multi-threaded tool to monitor internet traffic. It supports filtering and can generate graphs and other statistics in real time and output reports of captured data. Sniffnet’s GUI is fully translated into multiple languages.

SECRET SCANNING EXPANDS DETECTION TO INCLUDE NON-PROVIDER PATTERNS (BETA)

GitHub has launched a beta version of secret scanning for non-provider patterns like database connection strings for MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB as well as private keys like RSA, SSH, etc.

SYSREPTOR

Fully customizable, offensive security reporting solution designed for pentesters, red teamers, and other security-related people alike.

TWO RUSSIAN NATIONALS CHARGED FOR CONSPIRING TO HACK THE TAXI DISPATCH SYSTEM AT JFK AIRPORT

Two Russian nationals, Aleksandr Derebenetc and Kirill Shipulin, have been charged with conspiring to hack the taxi dispatch system at JFK airport with the help of two US citizens, Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman. The group hacked the system to move certain taxis to the front of the line in exchange for payment, resulting in large numbers of taxi drivers skipping the line.

WHO’S BEHIND THE SWAT USA RESHIPPING SERVICE?

Part 2 of a deep dive from KrebsOnSecurity on unmasking the SWAT USA reshipping service. Krebs traces the operator of SWAT USA from his nickname to another nickname on the Verified forums. This username is then tracked via a password sent in a DM to four email addresses that use that password. A Russian individual is pinpointed through one of these emails.

ANDROID’S NEW REAL-TIME APP SCANNING AIMS TO COMBAT MALICIOUS SIDELOADED APPS

Google Play Protect has launched a new feature that enables real-time analysis of an app’s code and blocks installation if it is determined to be malicious. Play Protect will recommend a scan for any never before seen app, including sideloaded apps. The authors of this article tested the feature with 30 different apps ranging from stalkerware to spyware to fake apps and loan scams and found that, while most were caught by the scan, the fake apps and some of the loan scams were allowed.

FAKE LEDGER LIVE APP IN MICROSOFT STORE STEALS $768,000 IN CRYPTO

A fraudulent version of the Ledger Live app for cryptocurrency management was discovered in the Microsoft Store, resulting in users losing at least $768,000 worth of cryptocurrency assets. The fake app, named Ledger Live Web3, had been present in the Microsoft Store since October 19. The fraudster was able to transfer over $768,000 from victims before Microsoft removed the app.

LOONEY TUNABLES VULNERABILITY EXPLOITED BY KINSING

Aqua Security has discovered that the Kinsing threat actor has shifted tactics in a new experimental campaign targeting cloud environments. The threat actor manually exploited the Looney Tunables vulnerability in GNU libc’s ld.so, marking the first known instance of such an exploit. This vulnerability was reported in October. Any unpatched systems should be patched urgently.

UK MAY DEMAND TECH WORLD TELL IT ABOUT UPCOMING SECURITY FEATURES

The UK government may introduce legislation requiring tech companies to inform them in advance of new security technologies and possibly disable them when necessary. The proposed Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill would update the "notices regime" to provide advance access to technical details of security measures employed by major tech companies, enabling access to user data and monitoring nefarious activity.

GOOGLE’S TOP 100 MOST SEARCHED PRODUCTS OF 2023

TIKTOK SCRAPS $2B CREATOR FUND

TikTok’s $2 billion creator fund is ending on December 16th in the US, UK, Germany, and France. TikTok will instead pay creators through its Creativity Program, which rewards videos longer than 1 minute, signaling how long TikTok thinks videos on its platforms should be. A shift to longer-form video may be a triple win as advertisers, the platforms, and creators would all benefit from more ad space and greater time spent.

SHOPIFY’S DATA SHOWS HOLIDAY SALES GO WAY BEYOND GIFTS

64% of Americans are using the deals they find on Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) to self-gift. More than 1 in 3 shoppers will use holiday discounts to stock up on everyday products. Another 29% said they’re planning on making big-ticket purchases they’ve been holding off until BFCM. Gen Z wants to be able to shop anywhere, including in-person (34%) and through social media (48%).

REASSURE, DON’T PRESSURE PEOPLE

It’s beneficial to implement reassuring nudges, like personalized recommendations and product fit information. This approach can boost conversions while reducing product returns, compared to pressuring nudges that initially drive incremental sales but result in higher return rates.

INCREASE CONVERSION RATE BY 20% BY ADDING FRICTION TO A LEAD GEN FORM

A B2B software company was looking to improve the conversion rate (CVR) of its lead gen form without losing lead quality by shortening its multi-step form. However, this led to a significant drop in both CVR and qualified leads. It then tested adding a first step that asked users whether they currently had a similar software solution in place. This resulted in a 20% increase in CVR, a 10% increase in qualified leads, and the ability to personalize the lead form for each user.

TECHNICAL ECOMMERCE SEO CHECKLIST

A quick one-pager to ensure your website hierarchy is clear and pages are crawlable and indexable.

3 AI TOOLS FOR BETTER SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES

An engaging profile helps you stand out on social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Ahrefs’ free bio writer analyzes your profile page’s content and your inputted tone, then creates three variations of a bio. Beacons.ai’s link-in-bio landing page generator uses content on your social profiles to generate a single page for all channels. Taplio and Resume Worded provide recommendations to improve your LinkedIn profile.

9 CHATGPT PLUGINS FOR MARKETERS AND CONTENT CREATORS

ChatGPT plugins enable additional capabilities and are accessible through the native plugin store. The ‘Browse with Bing’ plugin lets the GPT-4 model search the internet, which is useful for generating a summary of the top search results for long-tail keywords. Dall-E 3 is an image generator that can be used for blog post images or simple branded imagery. Access Link is useful for summaries of web content.

GODADDY: HOW TO IMPROVE CHECKOUT FLOWS ETHICALLY

RESPONSES FOR TOP 3 OBJECTIONS ABOUT COMPETITORS

THE MOST (AND LEAST!) IMPORTANT ELEMENTS THAT IMPACT YOUR WEBSITE CONVERSION RATE

Testing CTA button colors isn’t going to significantly change conversion rates, but testing headlines and copy above the fold will.

ECONOMICS VS TAYLOR SWIFT

Taylor Swift priced her Eras tour tickets at $254 on average, but due to higher demand than available supply, the average resale ticket went for $3,801. While it seems like missed profits, it’s actually a lesson in branding.

WRITING A COMPILER IS SURPRISINGLY EASY (PART 1)

This article discusses the process of writing a code generator for a systems programming language with a focus on translating a high-level language into x86-64 assembly code. It explains how to represent integer literals, variables, negation, and addition in the compiler and provides code examples for each.

HOW WE REDUCED OUR DOCUMENTDB COST BY NEARLY 50% AND OPTIMIZED PERFORMANCE

The activity feed team at Postman investigated their DocumentDB usage and was able to reduce the monthly cost from $6k to $3k with 50% performance gains. They optimized their feed collation query, refined their indexing strategy, shifted from TTL-based deletes to direct deletes, and updated their collation strategy to use updates instead of inserts and deletes. These changes led to significant reductions in both read and write I/O operations and a 35% reduction in CPU utilization.

REACT SERVER COMPONENTS, WITHOUT A FRAMEWORK?

This article explores React Server Components and React Server Actions, clarifying key terms and concepts related to these features and highlighting the experimental and under-documented nature of these APIs. It shows how both can be used to address various challenges in web development, such as data fetching, routing, latency, and more. The article uses an example of migrating a React Notes App to React Server Components without using a framework, showcasing the use of React Canary, React Server & React Flight APIs, and other dependencies.

OH MY POOR BUSINESS LOGIC

In large organizations, there is a tendency to focus on technical minutiae and overcomplicate solutions rather than addressing core business problems. There are two types of companies: the ones that prioritize measurable business outcomes but accumulate technical debt, and those that obsess over technical details and tools without considering the business impact. Finding a middle ground where developers can focus on core business logic without unnecessary complexity is essential.

NAVIGATING CAREER ADVICE IN THE TECH INDUSTRY

It's crucial to be aware of survivorship bias when seeking advice in the tech industry as individuals tend to believe their path is the only path to success. The job market is constantly changing and what worked in the past may not work today. Your experience will also vary depending on factors like location and educational background.

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INSHELLISENSE

inshellisense, made by Microsoft, provides IDE-style autocomplete for shells. It's a terminal native runtime for autocomplete which has support for 600+ command line tools. inshellisense supports Windows, Linux, & macOS.

HOTKEY

Hotkey allows the triggering of actions on target elements when specific keys or key combinations are pressed on the keyboard. These hotkeys can be scoped to form fields and are extracted from a target element's data-hotkey attribute by default. GitHub uses hotkeys extensively to declare shortcuts on its platform.

ARE LANGUAGE MODELS GOOD AT MAKING PREDICTIONS?

A recent experiment showed that GPT-4 is not well-calibrated in predicting the probability of various events and questions, often overestimating or underestimating probabilities. It also shows variations in prediction quality across different categories, with better performance in some areas like sports, and poorer performance in others like personal questions. This suggests that GPT-4's performance variations are not solely due to question difficulty but also reflect differences in its ability to provide confident and well-calibrated predictions across categories.

HOW TO WRITE COMPONENTS THAT WORK IN ANY FRAMEWORK

Web Components that work in any framework consist of three key technologies: Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, and HTML Templates. Custom Elements allow you to define your own custom HTML elements that can be reused across your site and even published for use by other developers. Shadow DOM provides encapsulation, ensuring that the styles and behavior of your custom elements are not affected by global styles. HTML Templates allow you to create reusable templates for rendering content within your web components. While building web components can involve some boilerplate code, there are tools like Lit that simplify the process, making it more streamlined and ergonomic.

HOW CORE WEB VITALS SAVED USERS 10,000 YEARS OF WAITING FOR WEB PAGES TO LOAD

Chrome introduced Core Web Vitals (CWV) in 2020 to measure web performance. Today, over 40% of sites pass all of the CWV metrics, resulting in pages that load and respond to interactions more quickly.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN API LATENCY AND API RESPONSE TIME?

API latency refers to the time it takes for a request to travel from the client to the server, get processed on the server, and then return a response back to the client. API response time encompasses the entire time it takes for a client to send a request to an API, the server to process that request, and for the server to send a complete response back to the client.

THE NEW CSS MATH: REM() AND MOD()

This article explains how the new CSS math functions work and shows how they can be implemented with example code examples.

HOW TO WRITE A GREAT README

A great README needs to explain what the project does, how to use it, and how people can help out.