Hey readers, in this post, I dive into diverse topics including the sneaky tactics scalpers use on Ticketmaster, thought-provoking insights on the UX of forms, and practical writing advice inspired by Imre Lakatos. I also touch on Apple’s exciting future tech, how silence can improve decision-making, and explore the benefits of a four-day work week. Curious? Keep reading!
- Reverse Engineering TicketMaster’s Rotating Barcodes (SafeTix): “Screenshots won’t get you in”, but Chrome DevTools will. Click here to skip the rant and go straight to the nerdy stuff. I recently purchased tickets to a concert from TicketMaster. If they had issue
- Scalpers Reverse-Engineer Ticketmaster’s ‘Non-Transferrable’ Tickets: Scalpers have reverse-engineered how Ticketmaster creates tickets, and are now generating and selling them on their own parallel infrastructure.
- DoP Deep – The UX of Forms: Exploring the form design of top tier companies including Airbnb, Linear, OpenTable, Mixpanel and more
- How to think in writing: Writing advice is usually focused on more superficial parts of the craft. Whatever I knew about thinking on the page, I had picked up through trial and error and conversations with other writers. But then I read Imre Lakatos’s Proofs and Refutations.
- What Trump doesn’t want you to know about Project 2025: Project 2025 is a radical blueprint for a potential second Trump administration, spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The plan calls for withdrawing approval for the abortion pill, banning pornography, slashing corporate taxes, abolishing the Department of Education, replacing thousands of experienced federal workers with political appointees, imposing a “biblically based… definition of marriage and families,” and placing the Justice Department and other independent agencies under the direct control of the president.
- How To Be More Resilient: 6 Steps To Success When Life Gets Hard: When life gets hard we all want to know how to be more resilient. Here’s what the research says can help us…
- Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships: Wisdom from Linus Torvalds, the creator of Git and Linux
- Superintelligence—10 years later: 10 years on, some things have changed and some did not
- FunAudioLLM Homepage: a framework designed to enhance natural voice interactions between humans and large language models (LLMs).
- Apple M5 Chip’s Dual-Use Design Will Power Future Macs and AI Servers: Apple will reportedly use a more advanced SoIC packaging technology for its M5 chips, as part of a two-pronged strategy to meet its growing need for…
- Apple Intelligence and a better Siri may be coming to iPhones this spring: Apple plans to roll out its Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Siri in the Spring, after beta testers have had a go at it starting later this year.
- What Months of Failing in My Habits Taught Me: Creating a habit routine where you fail more than you succeed is the best way to your goals, although… Tagged with productivity, habits, beginners.
- This AI skill pays over $100,000 a year and is in ‘crazy demand,’ says IBM exec—it’s one ‘you can use almost anywhere’: Generative AI is expected to affect over 300 million jobs, per Goldman Sachs. People who don’t learn AI skills risk losing career opportunities.
- You should keep a developer’s journal: Writing is a fantastic tool for processing and communicating abstract ideas. And developers are steeped in abstract ideas! From system design to the finest implementation details, we keep a tremendous amount of information in our heads.
- The Sound of Silence: How the Absence of Noise Affects Your Decisions: Have you ever found yourself stepping outside of a noisy room just so you could think? Through decades of research on noise, scientists have discovered that excessive noise competes with our ability to think clearly, while silence can improve our decision-making and might even keep us in good health.
- All 41 companies that recently tried out a four-day work week made it permanent. Here’s why your company may be next: This Torontonian is getting employers around the world to embrace a four-day work week — and global trials show it’s a win-win.
- Cannot Measure Productivity: It is impossible to measure the effectiveness of tools and techniques in software development because we have no way of measuring our output, and thus our productivity.
- Something happens to everyone.: “Why did this happen to me?” is the question we all have when something bad happens in our life.