After a month of boot camp at work, I am transitioning into my real team this week. I loved the relaxed environment to chill and learn. But I can’t also wait to meet my new teammates and lead my first project, which apparently will overhaul the revenue-generating part of our product.
Software Engineering ⚙️
Node.js 20 is now available!
I am glad that the competition between JS runtimes leads to a safer platform for developers. Node.js 20 comes with an experimental permission model feature to limit a JS program’s access to system resources. This permission model was the big selling point for Deno, Node.js’s main competitor. I wonder if Node.js will eventually default to be closed as Deno does.
Introducing npm package provenance
GitHub introduced a way to tie a published package to a specific commit in its code. It should make account takeovers like this far more difficult.
GitLab’s Merge trains
I learned about this GitLab feature at work. A merge train helps stabilize the main branch. Without it, two separate pull requests that are green on their own can break the main branch if both have conflicting changes. A merge train prevents that by automatically verifying a pull request again when another pull request is merged into the main branch.
People ❤️
Generative AI at Work
Here is another study on generative AI’s impact on human productivity. Similar to the study I shared last week, generative AI was observed to have reduced the skill gap between novices and experts.
Business 💰
Exclusive: Time to remove digital paywall
When it’s rare to find a decent publication without a paywall, Time chose to remove the paywall and go back to the ad-supported business model. Will they be able to find enough readers when Twitter is in disarray and short-form content is taking over the internet?
Amazon Is The Latest Major Ad Platform Going All-In On Machine Learning Tech
Amazon Ads has been growing rapidly as it can connect an ad campaign with consumers’ purchases despite Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy. On the other hand, Meta and Google had to invest heavily in machine learning to maintain the return on ad spend since they don’t have purchase data.
Navigating the FTC’s new rules on deceptive patterns in subscription cancelations
I love the new proposed rule that a subscription cancellation should be as easy as a sign-up. This will surely hurt a lot of teams’ retention KPIs.