🍔🧠 Real-time TB transfers at Pinterest

🍔 THIS WEEK’S MENU 🥗

📚 Software Engineering Articles

• Never take meeting notes ever again

• How Pinterest handles hundreds of terabytes of data daily

• Cloudflare's strategy to fight thousands of DDoS attacks

• Why long polling beats WebSockets in certain scenarios

• Building polite web crawlers that won't anger server admins

• Smart database selection guide for system design

🗞️ Tech and AI Trends

• CES 2025's most innovative products revealed

• Nvidia unveils revolutionary personal AI supercomputer

• Meta replaces fact-checking with community notes

👨🏻‍💻 Coding Tip

• Use useEffect cleanup functions to prevent memory leaks in React

Reading time: 5 minutes

Food for Thought
A mindset, an example, and an action item to start the week

Mindset: Approach challenges with both logic and empathy to find the best solutions.

Example: Zappos, the online shoe retailer, is known for its customer-centric culture, where employees are encouraged to use their hearts to deliver exceptional service.

Action: Reflect on a recent interaction - did you use both your head and heart? Identify one way to improve.

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The Rabbit Hole
Deep dives, trends, and resources curated to stay ahead

💾 SIDE DISHES 💾

ESSENTIAL (ddd-oss it again)
How Cloudflare Mitigates Thousands of DDoS Attacks Every Hour

GITHUB REPO (swarm the moon)
Swarms - The Enterprise-Grade Production-Ready Multi-Agent Orchestration Framework

ARTICLE (long-polling party)
Back to Basics: Why We Chose Long Polling Over WebSockets

ARTICLE (ai boogie woogie)
How AI-assisted coding will change software engineering: hard truths

ARTICLE (slack check, please!)
Automated Accessibility Testing at Slack

ARTICLE (crawly now or never)
Building a Polite & Fast Web Crawler

GITHUB REPO (cline as wine)
Cline - Autonomous Coding Agent

ARTICLE (next not-next)
You don't need Next.js

ARTICLE (llm and me)
How I Program with LLMs

ARTICLE (codebase shenanigans)
Mistakes engineers make in large established codebases

ARTICLE (database dilemmas)
How to Choose the Right Database

ARTICLE (copying the cool kids)
What we learned copying all the best code assistants

ARTICLE (go for it!)
Go is a Well-Designed Language, Actually

The Weekly Digest
Software, AI, and startup news worth your time

🖥️ CES 2025: ZDNET's 25 Most Impressive Products Unveiled (5 min)

Brief: At CES 2025, major brands showcased 25 groundbreaking products, from AI-integrated TVs to smart glasses, set to redefine technology and consumer experiences.

📱 X Launches Grok’s iPhone App in the US (2 min)

Brief: xAI's Grok chatbot launches as a free standalone iOS app in the U.S., expanding its capabilities while competing with other leading AI chatbots.

🎉 New 'Invites' App in iOS 18.3 to Streamline Event Management (2 min)

Brief: iOS 18.3 hints at the upcoming 'Invites' app by Apple, aiming to enhance event management with features such as RSVP tracking and iCloud integration.

📢 Meta Shifts from Fact-Checking to Community Notes System (3 min)

Brief: Meta replaces its fact-checking program with a community-driven approach, citing a commitment to free speech amid changing political landscapes.

💻 NVIDIA Unveils Project DIGITS: The Smallest AI Supercomputer for Developers (2 min)

Brief: NVIDIA launches Project DIGITS, an ultra-compact AI supercomputer boasting a petaflop of AI performance, enabling developers to run large-scale AI models effectively and locally.

😜 Grok's 'Unhinged Mode' Set to Push Boundaries in AI Responses (2 min)

Brief: Elon Musk's Grok chatbot may introduce an 'Unhinged Mode' that aims to provide offensive and objectionable responses, potentially reshaping the boundaries of AI interaction.

The Quick Byte
One coding tip because you’re technical after all

This week’s coding challenge:

This week’s tip:

In React's useEffect hook, you can utilize the cleanup function to prevent memory leaks and handle component unmounting gracefully. The cleanup function runs before the effect runs again and when the component unmounts, making it crucial for managing subscriptions, event listeners, or any ongoing processes.

Wen?

• WebSocket Connections: Essential when dealing with real-time data streams or WebSocket connections that need to be properly closed when the component unmounts.

• Event Listener Management: Critical for removing event listeners attached to window or document objects to prevent memory leaks and unexpected behaviors.

• Timer Cleanup: Necessary when using setInterval or setTimeout to ensure timers are cleared and don't continue running after component unmounting.

Burp-A-Laugh
The most important meal of your day