In this week’s roundup, we dive into how Hearst Newspapers is using AI to enhance local news, dispel myths surrounding digital wallets, and examine the health impacts of poor sleep. We also explore cutting-edge tools for understanding complex issues, improving software requirements, and a deep dive into the consequences of Turing-completeness. Plus, there are insights into the architecture of basic LLM applications, creative strategies for managing tech debt, and the intersection of music and AI with Hybrid-Net. There’s something for everyone, from the tech-savvy to the book lovers and those intrigued by secure voting systems. Join me on this intellectual journey across various fields!

• Hearst Newspapers leverages AI to build local content, reader loyalty: Tim O’Rourke, vice president/content strategy for Hearst Newspapers, leads the company’s DevHub, which helps provide high-quality interactive local content typically only found in much larger publications. He shared the strategy behind the technology with INMA members.
• Digital wallets and the “only Apple Pay does this” mythology: Apple Pay is great, but I think there is some misunderstanding out there about the details of how it works.
• Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds study: Beyond simply feeling decrepit, perception of being older can affect health by encouraging unhealthy eating and reducing exercise
• Rootclaim. Calculating reality.: Rootclaim helps people understand complex issues by combining the power of crowdsourced information with the mathematical validity of statistics.
• Better Software Requirements:
• Core Delegation Playbooks for Executive Assistants: Actionable playbooks and standard operating procedures for email inbox management, calendar management, and more
• These 50 companies have donated over $23 million to election deniers since January 6, 2021: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Then, according to the report of the bipartisan January 6 Commission, Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.” Trump did not do this alone. He was supported by members of Congress who endorsed his lies and voted against certifying the election results, state attorneys general who filed briefs in support of Trump’s baseless legal claims, and local officials who helped Trump create slates of fake electors. This all culminated in the violence of January 6, 2021, by a mob that was incited and encouraged by Trump, both before and during the attack.
• What Computers Cannot Do: The Consequences of Turing-Completeness: I have found a lot of programmers that do not understand the Halting Problem and its implications, so here is my attempt to fix that.
• BooksByMood: Find books to read based on your mood (e.g., what to read when I’m tired). Suggested books have an average rating of 4.09/5 on Goodreads.
• How to Get Tech-Debt on the Roadmap: At QCon San Francisco 2023, Ben Hartshorne talked about integrating technical debt resolutions into a roadmap. It is essential to articulate tech-debt value beyond just calling them technical fixes.
• Programmatic Html to PDF Generation using the WebView2 Control: In this post I describe how to use the Microsoft WebView2 control to automate HTML to PDF generation generically for any kind of Windows application, including services. We’ll look at the WebView and it’s printing functionality and some of the intricacies that are involved in hosting the WebView control outside of a desktop application context to provide unattended mode even in service context.
• The Current Architecture of a Basic LLM Application: A few years ago, artificial intelligence was a specialized topic for a small set of tech companies with deep expertise and even deeper pockets. Fast forward to today, and it’s hard to find a tech…
• How Hearst Magazines is using its digital membership model to grow its e-commerce marketplace business: Hearst’s Sheel Shah took the stage at the Digiday Publishing Summit to speak about why its marketplace business is focusing on authority.
• Hybrid-Net: Real-time audio source separation, generate lyrics, chords, beat.

  A transformer-based hybrid multimodal model, various transformer models address different problems in the field of music information retrieval, these models generate corresponding information dependencies that mutually influence each other.

  An AI-powered multimodal project focused on music, generate chords, beats, lyrics, melody, and tabs for any song.

• What is CodeCanvas?: A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team
• Standardise, Simplify, Automate – In That Order!: If we want to succeed with an automation project, it is important that we do the right steps in the right order. Let’s explore why.
• The Power of Creative Constraints in Scrum: How to enhance creativity and boost innovation by embracing Scrum framework constraints.
• On Secure Voting Systems: we believe that the hallmarks of a reliable and optimal election process are hand-marked paper ballots, which are optically scanned, separately and securely stored, and rigorously audited after the election but before certification.
• Building a modern specialist consumer media business: The latest publishing news, jobs, analysis, comment, interviews and in-depth features about UK newspaper, magazine and online publishers.
• Knowledge Series #29: How does the release process work?: Pipelines, builds, Jenkins, Docker, continuous integration and more explained
• Unlocking Growth: Strategies for Scaling Your Product Successfully: Taking a product from its initial launch to widespread adoption is a thrilling yet challenging journey. You’ve poured your heart and soul into crafting a solution, but now comes the real test…
• This is the only Strategy Framework you need. Period.: Get to the bottom of the strategy with this question-based approach and avoid all other frameworks. Strategy is about understanding where you’re headed, why it matters and how to get there.
• 101 things I would tell my self from 10 years ago: 10 years ago, I started my freshman year of college. This is the advice I needed to hear, not the advice you need to hear. In fact, some of it may be actively bad for you. See Should you reverse any advice you hear? 1. You are overly obedient. You
• Friends don’t let friends export to CSV: I worked for a few years in the intersection between data science and software engineering. On the whole, it was a really enjoyable time and I’d like to have the chance to do so again at some point. One of the least enjoyable experiences from that time was to deal …
• The best engineering interview question I’ve ever gotten, Part 1: It’s been a while since I was on the receiving end of a software engineering interview. But I still remember my favorite interview question. It was at MemSQL circa 2013. (They haven’t even kept their name, so I assume they’re not still relying on this specific interview question. I don’t feel bad for revealing it. It’s a great story that I tell people a lot; I’ve just never blogged it before.)
• Spaghetti all’Assassina (Assassin’s Spaghetti): In this spicy spaghetti all’assassina, spaghetti is cooked raw in tomato sauce.