Fast and Accurate Document Detection for Scanning
Cannes: How ML saves us $1.7M a year on document previews
How image search works at Dropbox
Optimizing payments with machine learning
Accelerating our A/B experiments with machine learning
Don't you (forget NLP): Prompt injection with control characters in ChatGPT
Is this a date? Using ML to identify date formats in file names
Putting everything in its right place with ML-powered file organization
Smart move uses machine learning to analyze a user’s existing subfolder structure and suggest folders where they might want to move their files. Here's how the feature was built.
Bye Bye Bye...: Evolution of repeated token attacks on ChatGPT models
Building on prior prompt injection research, we recently discovered a new training data extraction vulnerability involving OpenAI’s chat completion models.
Bringing AI-powered answers and summaries to file previews on the web
Selecting a model for semantic search at Dropbox scale
Nautilus is our search engine for finding documents and other files in Dropbox. Here's how it created the foundation for us to build better search functionality to understand more nuanced queries.
zxcvbn: realistic password strength estimation
Implementing end-to-end encryption for Dropbox teams
Learn more about our implementation of end-to-end encryption for teams, the threat model of our design and encryption algorithms, and our commitment to minimizing the risk of data loss with a team-centric key management approach.
Inside the Magic Pocket
Optimizing web servers for high throughput and low latency
Rewriting the heart of our sync engine
Testing sync at Dropbox
How we migrated Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy
Broccoli: Syncing faster by syncing less
How we designed Dropbox’s ATF - an async task framework
Alki, or how we learned to stop worrying and love cold metadata
Lessons learned in incident management
Boosting Dropbox upload speed and improving Windows’ TCP stack
That time we unplugged a data center to test our disaster readiness
A look inside our sixth generation of server hardware
Everything in its write place: Cloud storage abstraction with Object Store
Future-proofing our metadata stack with Panda, a scalable key-value store
Increasing Magic Pocket write throughput by removing our SSD cache disks
Balancing quality and coverage with our data validation framework
After four years of SMR storage, here's what we love—and what comes next
How the data center site selection process works at Dropbox
From AI to sustainability, why our latest data centers use 400G networking
Meet Chrono, our scalable, consistent, metadata caching solution
What’s new with Robinhood, our in-house load balancing service
By leveraging PID controllers, Robinhood can now more quickly and effectively manage load imbalances.
The art of art direction
We hand the mics over to Maria Chimishkyan and Jefferson Cheng on Figma’s Brand Studio team and eavesdrop as they discuss the ins and outs of their work.
From prompt to production: Building a landing page with Copilot agent mode
See how I built a developer-focused landing page in under 30 minutes using GitHub Copilot agent mode and Claude 3.5 Sonnet—with just screenshots and prompts.
Building An Offline-Friendly Image Upload System — Smashing Magazine
Poor internet connectivity doesn’t have to mean poor UX. With PWA technologies like `IndexedDB`, service workers, and the Background Sync API, you can build an offline-friendly image upload system that queues uploads and retries them automatically — so your users can upload stress-free, even when offline.
Vercel's Bot Protection stops malicious bots in a single click
Mitigate unwanted bot traffic by challenging requests from non-browser sources. Now available in public beta and free for all users on all plans.
New year, no shutdowns: the Q1 2025 Internet disruption summary
In Q1 2025, we observed Internet disruptions around the world caused by cable damage, power outages, natural disasters, fire, a cyberattack, and technical problems. Interestingly, no government-directed shutdowns were observed during the quarter.
Type alignment and padding bytes: how to not waste space in PostgreSQL tables
Learn the concepts of data type alignment and padding bytes in PostgreSQL and how to define your table so that you don't waste storage space.
Open sourcing the home CMS
I’ve been bragging about my website software for years! For… whew, it’s been 5 years! I didn't want to make a CMS! I did it out of spite! I’ve been teasing folks about the cool things I did from the beginning — here are all the articles and series I’ve written that mention it: 2020: A new website 2021: Don’t shell out! 2022: Updating fasterthanli.me 2024: Face cams: the missing guide 2024: State o
The power of play
When Designer Advocate Laura Fehre set out to design a digital nail salon, she had a vision in mind. Nailing it, however, meant letting go of perfection and letting herself play.
Exploring GitHub CLI: How to interact with GitHub’s GraphQL API endpoint
Discover practical tips and tricks for forming effective GraphQL queries and mutations.
Impossible Components
Composing across the stack.
Racing into 2025 with new GitHub Innovation Graph data
Discover the latest trends and insights on public software development activity on GitHub with the quarterly release of data for the Innovation Graph, updated through December 2024.
How to take climate action with your code
There are 60,000+ climate-focused projects on GitHub, explore one this Earth Day!
How to make your images in Markdown on GitHub adjust for dark mode and light mode
When you want your images to look good in Markdown on GitHub, you might have to adjust for the UI around them.
Cracking the code: How to wow the acceptance committee at your next tech event
Want to speak at a tech conference? These four practical tips will help your session proposal stand out—and land you on the stage.
What Does It Really Mean For A Site To Be Keyboard Navigable — Smashing Magazine
Keyboard navigation is a vital aspect of accessible web design, and a detail-oriented approach is crucial. Prioritizing keyboard navigation prioritizes the user experience for a diverse audience, extending your reach while simultaneously fostering a more inclusive web environment.
So, You Want to Give Up CSS Pre- and Post-Processors...
There was once upon a time when native CSS lacked many essential features, leaving developers to come up with all sorts of ways to make CSS easier to write over the years.
Investigating the impact of HTTP3 on network latency for search
Version control: How a UX writer weighs one word against another
UX Writer Henry Freedland chose his words very carefully when he was brought in to help polish a new prototyping feature.
Which AI model should I use with GitHub Copilot?
Ever wondered which AI model is the best fit for your GitHub Copilot project? Here are some things to consider.
Fostering An Accessibility Culture — Smashing Magazine
While there’s no definitive playbook for building an accessibility culture, Dani shares lessons from his experience in shaping it through habits rather than mandates.
How we tested the conversion impact of global payment methods
Learn about some of the key decisions we made, and lessons we learned, as we ran a statistically significant experiment to measure the global impact of 50+ payment methods.
The promise of Rust
The part that makes Rust scary is the part that makes it unique. And it’s also what I miss in other programming languages — let me explain! Rust syntax starts simple. This function prints a number: fn show ( n : i64 ) { println! ( "n = {n}" ); } And this program calls that function — it looks like any C-family language so far, we got parentheses, we got curly brackets, we got, uhh…
Version control: Three ways Figma explored horizontal scrolling
What seemed like a straightforward request—add a horizontal scroll bar to the Layers panel in Figma—presented unexpected challenges.
GitHub Availability Report: March 2025
In March, we experienced one incident that resulted in degraded performance across GitHub services.
JSX Over The Wire
Turning your API inside-out.