Swiss PGDay 2024 and PG conferences in general
Read about my impressions from the Swiss PGDay 2024 and learn why you should attend PostgreSQL conferences yourself.
Unlocking Efficiency and Performance: Navigating the Spark 3 and EMR 6 Upgrade Journey at Slack
Slack Data Engineering recently underwent data workload migration from AWS EMR 5 (Spark 2/Hive 2 processing engine) to EMR 6 (Spark 3 processing engine). In this blog, we will share our migration journey, challenges, and the performance gains we observed in the process. This blog aims to assist Data Engineers, Data Infrastructure Engineers, and Product…
Technical Decision-Making in a Fragmented Space: Spotify In-Car Case Study
Car rides have become connected and interactive these days with drivers jamming to music or catching up on podcasts or audiobooks while they’re on the road. A big portion of Spotify listening happens in the car — a key reason why it’s important for Spotify to ensure users have a smooth experience in the car, striking the perfect balance between safety, simplicity, and control. Achieving such balan
Tales Of An Eternal Summer (July 2024 Wallpapers Edition) — Smashing Magazine
Let’s welcome the new month with some fresh desktop wallpapers! Created by artists and designers from across the globe, they come in versions with and without a calendar for July 2024. Enjoy!
What happened to my /edu page, and why it came back
How the first 2024 US presidential debate influenced Internet traffic and security trends
See how the first 2024 US presidential debate between Biden and Trump influenced Internet traffic patterns, email trends, and heightened cybersecurity concerns across digital platforms
Supporting Postgres Named Prepared Statements in Hyperdrive
Hyperdrive (Cloudflare’s globally distributed SQL connection pooler and cache) recently added support for Postgres protocol-level named prepared statements across pooled connections. We dive deep on what it took to add this feature
Transitioning to Auto Height
I know this is something Chris has wanted forever, so it's no surprise he's already got a fantastic write-up just a day after the news broke. In fact, I first
How to waste bandwidth, battery power, and annoy sysadmins
Proactive Measures Against Password Breaches and Cookie Hijacking
At Slack, we’re committed to security that goes beyond the ordinary. We continuously strive to earn and maintain user trust by safeguarding critical components integral to every user’s experience. From passwords to session cookies, and tokens to webhooks, we prioritize protecting everything essential to how users log into the platform and remain authenticated. Through proactive…
How To Improve Your Microcopy: UX Writing Tips For Non-UX Writers — Smashing Magazine
Interface copy plays a crucial role in the overall user experience, helping guide users smoothly, allowing them to navigate easily through the app, discover and start using product features, and more. In this article, you’ll find simple, practical tips and a checklist to help you create a clear and concise microcopy, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Embedded function calling in Workers AI: easier, smarter, faster
Introducing a new way to do function calling in Workers AI by running function code alongside your inference. Plus, a new @cloudflare/ai-utils package to make getting started as simple as possible
Cloudflare incident on June 20, 2024
A new DDoS rule resulted in an increase in error responses and latency for Cloudflare customers. Here’s how it went wrong, and what we’ve learned
Automatically replacing polyfill.io links with Cloudflare’s mirror for a safer Internet
polyfill.io, a popular JavaScript library service, can no longer be trusted and should be removed from websites
Poppin' In
Oh, hey there! It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it? Thought I’d pop in and say hello while we get to know the Popover API a bit.
Why are we so afraid of code as a commodity?
An exploration of the problems that AI can currently solve, and where there is whitespace to go beyond that.
What is good design in the age of AI?
As AI democratizes product development, design will be the differentiator. But what exactly does “good” look like, and what does it mean for our craft? Four Figma designers weigh in.
Should robots be building our homes?
Jason Ballard, co-founder and CEO of Icon, explains why AI and his fleet of 3D-printing robots may be our ticket to more affordable housing.
Can we reach beyond the echo chamber?
Two creatives behind the browser that’s breaking the internet discuss what Zadie Smith, A24, and sunspots have to do with building a product.
Are we finally entering the age of androids?
Humanoid robots are here, and they’re asking us to come face to face with the promises and pitfalls of AI.
Inside the redesigned Figma, where your work takes center stage
Our biggest redesign of Figma’s interface in five years clears space on the canvas for designers to turn their wildest imagination into reality.
What is minimum viable data?
As many focus on the possibilities and limitations of AI tools and their output, Ovetta Sampson reminds us to pay attention to the power of the input.
Config 2024 in review
We’re launching a redesigned Figma, Figma Slides, and a new suite of AI features, along with major updates to Dev Mode and usability improvements.
Welcome to The Prompt
AI promises to reinvigorate the way we design and build, but how we realize that potential is still an open question.
Meet Figma AI: Empowering designers with intelligent tools
We’re introducing a suite of AI-powered features to help you push past creative blocks and bring your best ideas to life.
Stack the deck with Figma Slides
Say goodbye to lackluster presentations. Today, we’re announcing the open beta of Figma Slides, here to set a new standard for telling visual stories that move work forward.
Making Figma work better for freelancers and agencies
As part of a broader effort to refine our billing model, we are sharing our roadmap to better address the needs of independent freelancers and agencies.
Attack of the clones: Getting RCE in Chrome’s renderer with duplicate object properties
In this post, I’ll exploit CVE-2024-3833, an object corruption bug in v8, the Javascript engine of Chrome, that allows remote code execution (RCE) in the renderer sandbox of Chrome by a single visit to a malicious site.
How To Make A Strong Case For Accessibility — Smashing Magazine
Gaining buy-in for accessibility can be challenging due to common myths and misunderstandings. For many, accessibility remains a big mystery. Here are some practical techniques for winning stakeholder support. Part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com) by yours truly.
Making the PostgreSQL visibility map visible
This article explains how to examine the PostgreSQL visibility map and showcases performance improvements added in recent releases.
The key to a happy Rust/C++ relationship
The history of Rust at Meta goes all the way back to 2016, when we first started using it for source control. Today, it has been widely embraced at Meta and is one of our primary supported server-side languages (along with C++, Python, and Hack). But that doesn’t mean there weren’t any growing pains. Aida […]
Enhancing Netflix Reliability with Service-Level Prioritized Load Shedding
In November 2020, we introduced the concept of prioritized load shedding at the API gateway level in our blog post, Keeping Netflix Reliable Using Prioritized Load Shedding. Today, we’re excited to…
Three ways our usage-based billing product is unique
Our usage-based product integrates naturally alongside your other billing pathways, while scaling with you as your usage-based pricing ambitions grow.
Using machine learning to detect bot attacks that leverage residential proxies
Cloudflare's Bot Management team has released a new Machine Learning model for bot detection (v8), focusing on bots and abuse from residential proxies
Helping keep customers safe with leaked password notification
To help protect against account compromise via credential stuffing attacks, Cloudflare will notify dashboard users when we detect that a password was found in an external data breach
Beginner’s guide to GitHub repositories: How to create your first repo
Git started on your first repository in the third installment of GitHub for Beginners. Discover the essential features and settings to manage your projects effectively.
Leveraging AI for efficient incident response
We’re sharing how we streamline system reliability investigations using a new AI-assisted root cause analysis system. The system uses a combination of heuristic-based retrieval and large language model-based ranking to speed up root cause identification during investigations. Our testing has shown this new system achieves 42% accuracy in identifying root causes for investigations at their […] Read
Feed reader score project participants: I made a mistake
Catching Compromised Cookies
Slack uses cookies to track session states for users on slack.com and the Slack Desktop app. The ever-present cookie banners have made cookies mainstream, but as a quick refresher, cookies are a little piece of client-side state associated with a website that is sent up to the web server on every request. Websites use this…
So Your Website Or App Is Live… Now What? — Smashing Magazine
The biggest mistake you can make in UX design is to launch a website or app and then walk away. Monitoring and improving after launch will benefit users and your metrics. Nothing will bring bigger gains.
How the UEFA Euro 2024 football games are impacting local Internet traffic
Discover how UEFA Euro 2024 is shifting Internet traffic patterns during games across Europe with insights into traffic drops and cybersecurity concerns during national team games
Exam-ining recent Internet shutdowns in Syria, Iraq, and Algeria
Similar to actions taken over the last several years, governments in Syria, Iraq, and Algeria have again disrupted Internet connectivity nationwide in an attempt to prevent cheating on exams. We investigate how these disruptions were implemented, and their impact
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Multimedia Writing — Smashing Magazine
Balancing the age-old simplicity of words on paper with the myriad creative possibilities of the web is a tension as old as the web itself. Leaning into that overlap can bring new dimensions not just to the things we write but also to how we write them.
Introducing Stream Generated Captions, powered by Workers AI
With one click, users can now generate video captions effortlessly using Stream’s newest feature: AI-generated captions for on-demand videos and recordings of live streams
Patrick Finn: why I joined Cloudflare as VP Sales for the Americas
Patrick S. Finn is joining Cloudflare as Vice President of Sales in the US, Canada, and Latin America
Execute commands by sending JSON? Learn how unsafe deserialization vulnerabilities work in Ruby projects
Can an attacker execute arbitrary commands on a remote server just by sending JSON? Yes, if the running code contains unsafe deserialization vulnerabilities. But how is that possible? In this blog post, we’ll describe how unsafe deserialization vulnerabilities work and how you can detect them in Ruby projects.
Uniting Web And Native Apps With 4 Unknown JavaScript APIs — Smashing Magazine
Have you heard of the Screen Orientation API? What about the Device Orientation API, Vibration API, or the Contact Picker API? Juan Diego Rodriguez is interested in these under-the-radar web features and discusses how they can be used to create more usable and robust progressive web apps if and when they gain broader support.
PVF: A novel metric for understanding AI systems’ vulnerability against SDCs in model parameters
We’re introducing parameter vulnerability factor (PVF), a novel metric for understanding and measuring AI systems’ vulnerability against silent data corruptions (SDCs) in model parameters. PVF can be tailored to different AI models and tasks, adapted to different hardware faults, and even extended to the training phase of AI models. We’re sharing results of our own […]
T-Shaped vs. V-Shaped Designers — Smashing Magazine
Job openings typically cast a very restrictive frame for candidates, with long lists of expectations and requirements. But what if this narrow focus can overlook the value of “V”-shaped designers who excel by crossing boundaries, connecting dots, and innovating beyond rigid boxes?
Dropbox API server root certificate changes coming in 2026
Learn about planned changes to the root certificates used on the Dropbox API servers, and how that will affect SDKs used to access the Dropbox API.
AI + design: Navigating the promise and pitfalls of AI
In this continuation of our AI + Design report, we explore how leaders can keep moving forward with building AI products.
GitHub Enterprise Server 3.13 is now generally available
With this version, customers can choose how to best scale their security strategy, gain more control over deployments, and so much more.
Testing the impact of buy now, pay later across 150,000+ checkout sessions
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) methods tend to be priced at a premium, so our users wanted to know whether the financial benefits would offset the added costs. We ran an experiment to help them assess when and how to offer BNPLs.
Introducing Vercel AI SDK 3.2
Vercel AI SDK 3.2 enables agent and embeddings workflows while improving provider support and DX.
Useful Email Newsletters For Designers — Smashing Magazine
Whether you want to take your user research skills to the next level, get better at UX writing, or stay up-to-date on the latest design trends, a newsletter is the perfect opportunity to get the best of the best resources delivered straight to your inbox on a regular basis. In this post, we highlight some design newsletters that you might want to consider subscribing to.
Advanced Rollout Techniques: Custom Strategies for Stateful Apps in Kubernetes
In a previous blog post—A Simple Kubernetes Admission Webhook—I discussed the process of creating a Kubernetes webhook without relying on Kubebuilder. At Slack, we use this webhook for various tasks, like helping us support long-lived Pods (see Supporting Long-Lived Pods), and today, I delve once more into the topic of long-lived Pods, focusing on our…
What Are CSS Container Style Queries Good For? — Smashing Magazine
What are these CSS Container Style Queries, and why should you use them? Juan Diego Rodríguez delves deeply into style queries, and not at the syntax level, but at what exactly they are solving and what sort of use cases you would find yourselves reaching for them in your work if and when they gain browser support.
Unlocking the power of unstructured data with RAG
Unstructured data holds valuable information about codebases, organizational best practices, and customer feedback. Here are some ways you can leverage it with RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation.
MLow: Meta’s low bitrate audio codec
At Meta, we support real-time communication (RTC) for billions of people through our apps, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. We are working to make RTC accessible by providing a high-quality experience for everyone – even those who might not have the fastest connections or the latest phones. As more and more people have relied on […]
2-Page Login Pattern, And How To Fix It — Smashing Magazine
The 2-page login pattern is becoming pervasive. Here are the reasons behind this design choice and alternative solutions to create a more efficient and user-friendly authentication experience.