Techlist.io - Korean Tech Blog Curator

discordFeb 26, 20252 min readCurated summary

Discord Update: December 19, 2024 Changelog

Discord’s December 19, 2024 changelog recaps the year’s most useful performance and reliability improvements through a festive poem. The updates focused on making mobile apps more stable and responsive, speeding up servers, GIFs, chat, and APIs, and improving image quality and storage usage. Discord concludes by encouraging users to join voice, play games, or Go Live, while promoting Nitro gifting. ## Mobile Stability and Performance - iOS crash fixes reduced the overall crash rate by **84%**. - Android’s chat renderer reduced slow frames by up to **60%** and lowered chat-list memory usage by about **12%**. - The Android Expression Picker—covering emojis, GIFs, and stickers—saw up to **50% fewer dropped frames** and approximately **7.5% lower memory usage**. - Foldable-device support and multitasking were significantly improved. - Mobile server lists were virtualized so only visible servers remain loaded, improving scrolling performance. - Server switching on Android and iOS became more than **30% faster**. - Mobile GIF Picker loading times improved by up to **80%**. ## Backend and Media Improvements - Infrastructure changes, including moving to Google Cloud C3 instances and removing an Nginx layer, reduced p90+ API latency by roughly **25%**. - Discord’s media proxy now preserves ICC color-profile data when resizing images into WebP, improving color accuracy across platforms. - iOS data-storage changes reduced disk usage substantially; the most affected 1% of users went from approximately **5.7 GB to 1.7 GB**, with some users recovering up to **4 GB**. ## Seasonal Extras - The recap is presented as a “Fixmas” poem summarizing fixes from Discord’s 2024 Patch Notes. - Users who gift Nitro during the promotion also receive an Avatar Decoration. Together, these changes show Discord’s emphasis on incremental improvements that make everyday communication faster, more reliable, and less demanding on mobile devices.

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Android iOS API Performance Optimization+4

discordFeb 26, 2025Original article

Discord Update: September 26, 2024 Changelog (opens in new tab)

Discord’s September 2024 update centers on transforming the platform into a more interactive entertainment hub while significantly hardening its security infrastructure. By centralizing third-party integrations through a new App Launcher and implementing end-to-end encryption for audio and video, the platform aims to balance expanded developer functionality with robust user privacy. ### The App Launcher and Interactive Activities * The newly launched App Launcher is now available across desktop and mobile, allowing users to search, browse curated collections, and add thousands of apps directly to their accounts for use in chats and voice calls. * Four new Activities have been integrated: *Arena Kingdoms* for cross-server battles, *Echo Chess* for daily puzzles, the Viking-themed *Battletabs*, and the social-focused *Magic Circle*. * New image-editing capabilities allow users to hover over chat images to access the App Launcher for quick modifications, such as adding captions or using Viggle’s “Animate” command to generate motion from static photos. * The developer ecosystem has been expanded to allow third parties to build, launch, and monetize their own Activities, with options to opt-in to platform-wide discovery via the launcher. ### Security and Privacy Enhancements * End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) is being introduced for all audio and video communication, including DMs, Group DMs, voice channels, and Go Live streams, ensuring that stream data is accessible only to participants. * Support for Passkeys has been implemented, allowing users to replace traditional passwords with biometric authentication such as Face ID or Touch ID. * Passkey technology remains localized to the user's device, ensuring that Discord does not have access to sensitive biometric data. ### Platform Performance and Community Resources * Discord’s engineering team reported a significant performance milestone, reducing iOS application crashes by 84%. * The "Discord Dojo" initiative has launched to provide educational content, including videos and blogs focused on message formatting and advanced keybinds for power users. * A new partnership with *Street Fighter 6* introduces themed shop items and a specific Quest that rewards users with a "Battle Field" decoration for their profiles. To maintain the highest level of account safety, users should consider migrating to Passkeys and verifying the encryption status during their next voice or video call. For those looking to increase engagement within their servers, the App Launcher provides a low-friction way to introduce collaborative games and media tools directly into existing conversations.

iOS Performance Optimization End To End Encryption Passkeys+3

discordFeb 26, 20252 min readCurated summary

Checkpoint Reached: New Updates on our Quest to Connect More Game Developers with Players

Discord reports early success for Quests, its advertising format that rewards players for discovering and playing games. Campaigns involving titles such as Fortnite, Genshin Impact, and World of Warcraft produced a 16% increase in average playtime and a 9% increase in average player counts. Building on these results, Discord is piloting Video Quests to help developers promote trailers, launches, seasons, and other content. ## Quests Are Increasing Gameplay - Millions of players have completed Quests since the program launched. - Genshin Impact’s first Quest generated: - An 80% increase in gameplay hours. - A threefold increase in friend-to-friend game streams. - World of Warcraft: The War Within Quest attracted more than one million participants and contributed to a 63% increase in the number of people playing the game on Discord. - Krunker Strike’s Quest reached largely new or returning players: 90% of participants from Discord Activities were new or lapsed users. - Krunker Strike saw a 33% increase in player count during launch week. - Developers have requested more tools for promoting upcoming games, new seasons, DLC, and major content releases. ## Introducing Video Quests - Video Quests are a new pilot format designed to promote game-related video content. - Developers can feature: - Trailers. - Gameplay reveals. - Season launches. - Other development and marketing announcements. - Videos appear through Discord’s Quest Bar and can be watched without significantly interrupting the user’s Discord experience. - Players choose when and how to engage, while still earning rewards for completing the Quest. - Discord is initially testing Video Quests with a limited group of developers. ## Discord’s Broader Gaming Strategy - Discord aims to become an important platform for discovering, building, and launching games. - The company says its advertising products will prioritize both developer results and the player experience. - Discord plans to refine Quests based on feedback from players and developers and will share more information as the Video Quest pilot expands. Discord’s early data suggests Quests can drive meaningful engagement and attract lapsed or new players. Developers interested in promoting game releases or video content should monitor the Video Quest rollout and consider joining Discord’s pilot updates.

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Discord Game Development Live Streaming Video Quests+2

discordFeb 26, 2025Original article

Discord Update: November 18, 2024 Changelog (opens in new tab)

Discord’s November 2024 update introduces a major cosmetic collaboration with the series *Arcane* alongside several practical tools designed to simplify content sharing and profile management. These changes emphasize a more integrated media experience, allowing users to interact with external content and their own gaming data more fluidly within the app. **Arcane Collaboration and Shop Items** * A limited-edition *Arcane* collection has been added to the Shop to mark the show's final season. * New Avatar Decorations and Profile Effects feature characters such as Jinx, Vi, and Ekko, as well as themed weapons and technology. * The collection is a temporary release available for users to customize their visual presence across servers. **Streamlined Sharing and Media Integration** * A native "Forward" button has been introduced, allowing users to share messages directly to other conversations without needing to take and store manual screenshots. * TikTok embeds can now be played directly within the desktop client, eliminating the need to open an external browser or application. * The emoji reaction picker now suggests a user’s top three most-used emojis to facilitate faster communication. **Profile Features and Social Activities** * Desktop profiles now display a list of recently played games to friends and community members. * New privacy controls allow users to manually clear specific games from their play history if they do not want them visible. * "Quiz Planet" has been added to the Activity Directory, providing a new trivia-based interactive experience for users in voice channels. **Mobile Performance and Multitasking** * The mobile application has received optimizations for fluid resizing, specifically targeting users who utilize split-screen or multitasking modes on phones and tablets. * General performance patches have been implemented to improve the stability of the interface when switching between Discord and other resource-heavy apps. To maintain privacy, users should review their new gaming history section on desktop and clear any entries they prefer not to share. Additionally, users interested in the *Arcane* cosmetics should visit the Shop soon, as the collection is designated as a final celebration for the series.

User Experience Discord Responsive Design Mobile App Development+4

discordFeb 26, 20251 min readCurated summary

Celebrate Arcane’s Second Season with a new Shop Collection

Discord announced a limited-time Shop collection celebrating the second and final season of *Arcane*. The collection lets fans customize their profiles with Avatar Decorations and Profile Effects inspired by Jinx, Vi, Ekko, and the show’s distinctive technologies and weapons. ## Arcane-Themed Discord Customization - The collection is designed to bring *Arcane* imagery into Discord profiles and communities. - Featured items include: - Avatar Decorations - Profile Effects - Designs based on Jinx, Vi, Ekko, and iconic weapons and technology - Discord encourages fans to use the items while discussing the show and sharing reactions with friends. ## How the Collection Was Created - Discord selected recognizable imagery from *Arcane* for each item. - The production process included: - Concept development - 2D sketching - Coloring - Animation - Each item reportedly took several months to plan and create from scratch. ## Availability and Future Releases - Fans can access the collection through the Discord Shop. - The items are available for a limited time. - A second batch of *Arcane* decorations was scheduled for release on November 18, 2024, featuring elements connected to events revealed later in the season. Fans interested in *Arcane* can visit the Discord Shop to purchase the limited-edition profile decorations and effects before they are no longer available.

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Discord Avatar Decorations Profile Effects League Of Legends+1

discordFeb 26, 20253 min readCurated summary

Come Build Where the World Plays

Discord is opening its Activities platform to all developers, enabling them to build, distribute, and monetize games and interactive experiences directly within Discord. The company argues that Discord’s social communities, voice channels, and existing gaming audience create a powerful environment for discovery and rapid product feedback. Early examples suggest Activities can achieve substantial engagement by combining gameplay with native social interaction. ## Discord as a Platform for Social Gameplay - More than 90% of Discord’s 200 million monthly users play games, generating over 1.5 billion hours of gameplay each month. - The Embedded App SDK lets developers create games, music experiences, and other interactive Activities that run inside Discord. - Discord’s servers and voice calls allow friends to launch lightweight games together without leaving conversations. - The platform supports both playing with existing friends and forming new social connections. - Developers are exploring ideas such as: - Games that support collaboration across different schedules and time zones - Bots and memes integrated directly into conversations - Generative AI combined with built-in social communication ## Faster Feedback and Product Development - Tens of thousands of developers adopted the Embedded App SDK during its developer preview. - Building on Discord gives developers access to an active, game-oriented audience and immediate user feedback. - Developers can observe how people interact with their products and quickly adjust features, languages, content, and monetization. - Playroom’s *Death by AI* used Discord feedback to: - Add features and fixes - Expand support to more than 10 languages - Introduce AI voices and new prompt packs - Implement in-app purchases - The game reached nearly 7 million players and more than 1 million hours of gameplay within weeks. ## Easier Discovery and Engagement - Developers can now submit Activities for verification through the Discord Developer Portal and opt into discovery. - Discoverable Activities can appear in: - Discord’s App Launcher - Text and voice channels - Rich embeds shared with friends - Users can launch an Activity from a conversation and invite others to join. - Native rich presence allows Activities to appear in server member lists and user profiles. - Recommendations and visible friend activity help games spread organically. - Discord reports that these improvements have contributed to approximately 1 million additional game launch days per month. Discord’s recommendation to developers is clear: build social, easily accessible experiences that take advantage of Discord’s existing communities and communication features. By opening Activities broadly, the company aims to make Discord a complete platform for discovering, playing, and growing interactive games.

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Generative AI Game Development Discord Activities Social Gaming+3

discordFeb 26, 20253 min readCurated summary

Discord’s Headed to Tokyo! See What We’re Doing at TGS 2024

Discord announced its participation in Tokyo Game Show 2024, taking place September 26–29 at Booth 07-C03. The Discordopolis-themed booth will feature Street Fighter 6, giveaways, merchandise, a collectible newspaper, and opportunities to learn about Discord’s role in multiplayer gaming. Two panels will also explore the future of cross-platform gaming and Discord Quests. ## Discordopolis Booth Experience - The booth presents Discordopolis, a neon futuristic city representing Discord as a living game community. - Visitors can play Street Fighter 6 on PC or PlayStation 5 through crossplay. - On September 28 at 10:30 a.m. JST, attendees can challenge Wumpus. - Anyone who participates receives a reward. - Players who defeat Wumpus win a Wumpus-themed Elgato Wave:3 microphone. - Secret in-booth quests offer chances to win Discord merchandise, including a limited-edition Wumpus-themed item. ## Discord Quests and Street Fighter 6 - Players at home can participate in a Discord Quest for Street Fighter 6. - Playing for 15 minutes on PC or a connected console earns a temporary avatar decoration valid for two months. - Discord directs readers to its support documentation for more information about Quests. ## The Discordopolis Newspaper - Attendees can receive a limited-run newspaper designed as an artifact from Discordopolis. - It explains how communities, people, and games connect through Discord. - The newspaper also includes information about the booth and TGS activities. ## Panels on Gaming and Developer Partnerships ### Building for the Future of Multiplayer Gaming - **Date:** September 26, 1–2 p.m. JST - **Location:** Main Stage, Makuhari Messe Hall 1 - Discord and Sony Interactive Entertainment will discuss multiplayer and multiplatform gaming. - Speakers include representatives from Sony PlayStation, Kadokawa/Famitsu, and Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy. ### Discovering Discord Quests - **Date:** September 27, 2–3 p.m. JST - **Location:** Business Stage, International Conference Hall Room 301 - The panel explains how developers can use Discord Quests to reach its global gaming audience. - Discord highlights that users spend more than 1.5 billion hours per month playing games on the platform. ## Online TGS Community - People unable to attend can join the TGS 2024 Discord server at `discord.gg/discord-tgs` through October 4. - The server will share booth updates, merchandise information, influencer videos, gameplay clips, and event photos. - Discord will also post coverage through its TikTok and Japanese X accounts. The post encourages Tokyo Game Show attendees to visit Booth 07-C03 for hands-on activities and panels, while remote fans can follow the event through Discord’s dedicated online community and social channels.

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Discord Voice Chat Multiplayer Gaming Pc Gaming+4

discordFeb 26, 20252 min readCurated summary

This Halloween, Treat a Friend to Nitro & Get a Haunting Avatar Decoration!

Discord’s October 2024 Halloween promotion offered two ways to decorate profiles. Users who gifted Nitro to a friend by November 3 received a permanent Minions Avatar Decoration, while the Shop featured a limited-time Spooky Nights collection. The campaign encouraged seasonal participation through both gifting and profile customization. ## Gift Nitro and Receive a Minions Decoration - During October 2024, gifting Discord Nitro to a friend earned the giver a Halloween-themed Minions Avatar Decoration. - The promotion ran until **November 3, 2024**. - Once awarded, the decoration could be kept and used year-round. - Discord directed users to its Nitro Gifting Help Center article for eligibility and gifting details. ## Spooky Nights Shop Collection - Discord’s Shop featured the **Spooky Nights** collection throughout October. - The collection included new Halloween-themed Avatar Decorations. - It also brought back popular Profile Effects from the previous Halloween season. - Users could browse and purchase the items directly through the Discord Shop. ## Staying Updated - Discord hinted that additional Halloween surprises might appear during October. - Users were encouraged to follow Discord’s X account for further announcements. The promotion’s practical appeal was simple: gift Nitro before the deadline to secure the exclusive Minions decoration, or browse the Shop for additional Halloween profile cosmetics.

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Discord Nitro Profile Effects Avatar Decoration+1

discordFeb 26, 2025Original article

Leveling Up Black Voices in Gaming (opens in new tab)

Discord is celebrating Black History Month 2025 by spotlighting the contributions of Black creators, developers, and communities within the gaming industry. Led by the Black and African American Movement (BAAM) Employee Resource Group, the initiative aims to foster inclusivity and recognize the profound impact of Black culture on gaming. Through these efforts, Discord highlights how diverse voices are essential to creating a more representative and welcoming global gaming landscape. **The BAAM ERG and Community Support** * The Black and African American Movement (BAAM) Employee Resource Group is driving this initiative by curating a selection of influential creators and innovators. * The focus spans the entire gaming spectrum, including competitive players, casual gamers, professional game developers, and community builders. * The initiative emphasizes the intersection of identity and representation, inviting the wider community to engage with experiences that honor the spectrum of Black involvement in tech and gaming. **Spotlighted Creators and Organizations** * Aurélia Durand: A French graphic artist who designed the event's header artwork, her work focuses on celebrating diversity, identity, and womanhood. * Black Girl Gamers: Founded by Jay-Ann Lopez, this organization advocates for diversity and inclusion while specifically amplifying the voices of Black women in the industry. * Brown Girl Gamer Code: Created by Brandii JaVia, this digital community supports women and femmes of color in both gaming and technology to ensure their stories and contributions are recognized. To support these efforts and help build more inclusive digital spaces, Discord encourages users to engage with these featured creators and explore professional opportunities through the company's career portal.

Graphic Design Gaming Community Building Diversity And Inclusion+2

figmaFeb 25, 20252 min readCurated summary

Save Time on Building Decks—Without Sacrificing Design | Figma Blog

Figma’s Slides plugins extend the presentation tool with Figma’s design capabilities, helping teams create polished decks without sacrificing speed or visual quality. The post highlights plugins for finding assets, creating custom backgrounds, importing PDFs, and adding animation. Together, they support the full slide-building process, from initial content gathering through final presentation preparation. ## Populating Your Slides - **IconScout** provides millions of icons, illustrations, Lottie animations, and Unicons. - Users can customize assets with their own color palettes. - Reverse image search helps find visually similar graphics. - **Mesh Gradient** creates custom backgrounds and color fills. - Designers can edit grid vertices and edges. - Live previews and the ability to save or upload gradients support iterative design work. - **PDF.to.design** imports PDFs as editable designs. - Text and images can be extracted and reused in slides. - Files remain private on the user’s local machine, which helps protect sensitive information. ## Adding Power and Polish - **Jitter** is presented as a tool for animating slide designs, helping make presentations more dynamic and engaging. - The broader plugin ecosystem includes tools for visual refinement, color controls, and motion, allowing teams to tailor slides to their brand and narrative. ## Preparing to Present - The article’s final section focuses on tools for getting decks presentation-ready, continuing the workflow from asset creation and design polish to delivery. Figma recommends using Slides plugins as a practical way to speed up deck creation while preserving control over layout, branding, visuals, and storytelling.

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Figma Plugins Figma Slides Lottie Animations Pdf Import+1

figmaFeb 19, 20252 min readCurated summary

Double Click: When Coding Becomes Conversation | Figma Blog

Vibe coding replaces much of traditional programming with an ongoing conversation with AI: users describe an idea, review the result, and iterate through prompts. It lowers the barrier to creating software and makes experimentation faster, especially for prototypes and side projects. However, the approach can become unreliable as projects grow, producing tangled code and weak internal architecture. ## From Code to Conversation - Andrej Karpathy coined “vibe coding” to describe building software by talking to AI tools such as Cursor Composer and using voice input. - The process emphasizes seeing results, describing changes, running the project, and copying or pasting outputs rather than understanding every line of code. - The idea reflects a broader history of abstraction, from punch cards to assembly, C, Python, and now AI-assisted development. ## Faster, More Accessible Prototyping - Vibe coding lets people express interactive ideas without mastering syntax or a programming language. - Charmaine Lee of Val Town compares it to casually writing in a document or creating a spreadsheet. - Figma designer Nikolas Klein argues that the main benefit is shortening the gap between imagining an interaction and seeing it work. - Replit CEO Amjad Masad reported that 75% of Replit customers never write a line of code. - Figma engineer Vincent van der Meulen used AI to create projects, including a running coach and a loading animation, despite lacking SwiftUI expertise. ## The Complexity Ceiling - Vibe coding is most effective at the beginning of a project, when requirements are simple and experimentation matters more than structure. - As complexity increases, AI-generated solutions may stop fitting together coherently. - Developers can reach a “valley of despair”: an initial burst of progress gives way to difficult debugging and maintenance. - Vincent described ending up with “spaghetti code” and no consistent internal data model after reaching roughly 80% of his goal. Vibe coding is best treated as a powerful prototyping and exploration technique, not a replacement for engineering judgment. Teams should still inspect, test, refactor, and architect AI-generated code when projects become complex or production-critical.

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Large Language Models Prototyping Vibe Coding Swiftui+2

datadogFeb 19, 20253 min readCurated summary

Achieving relentless Kafka reliability at scale with the Streaming Platform

Datadog built a Streaming Platform to make Kafka resilient and dynamically manageable across hundreds of clusters, thousands of topics, and millions of partitions. By decoupling applications from physical Kafka resources, the platform can reroute traffic, rebalance workloads, and fail over in seconds without redeployments. Its design trades strict processing order for parallelism and durability, while adding mechanisms to prevent poisoned events and backlogs from blocking entire partitions. ## A Fluid Control Plane for Multi-Cluster Orchestration - Kafka infrastructure is treated as interchangeable commodity hardware rather than a fixed application dependency. - Workloads can shift between clusters, availability zones, and Kubernetes environments automatically. - The control plane continuously replaces unhealthy components and maintains uninterrupted data flow. ### Resilient Pipelines with Streams - Streams abstract away Kafka topics and clusters behind stable identifiers. - A single Stream can span multiple Kafka clusters, availability zones, and Kubernetes clusters. - Producers and consumers do not need to know the underlying Kafka topology. - Infrastructure can be reconfigured in real time without application changes or redeployments. ### Live Traffic Failovers - When a cluster becomes unhealthy, the platform creates a replacement topic and redirects new traffic to it. - Consumers drain the backlog from the original topic before transitioning to the replacement. - The same mechanism supports proactive traffic redistribution, cluster decommissioning, capacity changes, and partition adjustments. - Operations that traditionally take hours can be completed in seconds. ### Consumer Semantics for Scale and Durability - Datadog uses at-least-once delivery rather than strict processing order. - Events can be processed independently and in parallel. - Ordering is restored later in the event store. - This trade-off enables efficient processing of petabytes of data across distributed infrastructure. ### The Assigner Coordinator - Kafka’s default group coordinator depends on session timeouts, making failover detection take tens of seconds or minutes. - Datadog’s Assigner monitors cluster health, resource usage, and workload distribution continuously. - It reacts in seconds to failures, traffic spikes, and capacity changes. - Workloads are balanced using real metrics such as CPU load and available resources, allowing heterogeneous environments to be used efficiently. ## Preventing Head-of-Line Blocking Kafka’s strict per-partition ordering means a single unprocessable event can block all later events. Datadog addresses this reliability problem through independent Stream lanes and a more flexible commit log. ### Stream Lanes and Quality of Service - Streams contain separate lanes for different priority levels and traffic requirements. - High-priority real-time traffic can be isolated from slower bursts or late-arriving data. - A dedicated dead-letter queue lane receives poison pills that cannot be processed. - Consumers can commit progress after moving failed events to the DLQ, preventing one bad event from blocking the partition without losing data. ### Advanced Commit Logging - Kafka traditionally maintains one committed pointer per partition. - That model prevents consumers from advancing past older events that are delayed or still being processed. - Datadog uses Kafka’s commit metadata to record multiple offsets or offset ranges simultaneously. - This allows consumers to continue processing live traffic while older events are handled separately, reducing backlog-related blocking. ## Overall Design Philosophy - The Streaming Platform combines stable logical Streams, real-time orchestration, flexible consumer semantics, QoS isolation, and enhanced offset tracking. - Together, these components make Kafka more self-healing and suitable for Datadog’s extreme scale. - The approach prioritizes uninterrupted processing, rapid recovery, and operational flexibility over Kafka’s default assumptions of fixed topology and strict ordering. Datadog’s design demonstrates that Kafka at very large scale requires a control layer around the broker infrastructure. Abstracting resources, automating failovers, and allowing independent progress through partitions can provide substantially better reliability and throughput than relying solely on Kafka’s native coordination model.

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Database Design Kubernetes Apache Kafka Load Balancing+4

datadogFeb 19, 20251 min readCurated summary

Achieving relentless Kafka reliability at scale with the Streaming Platform | Datadog

The provided content does not include the blog post itself. It contains Datadog’s navigation menu and a promotional link, including a URL suggesting an article about building a Kafka streaming platform with custom abstractions, but no article text or technical sections to summarize. Please provide the full blog post content for an accurate summary.

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Kubernetes Datadog Observability Infrastructure Monitoring+2

figmaFeb 18, 20252 min readCurated summary

In Good Company: How Publishers Use Figma to Help Design the News | Figma Blog

Publishers are adapting to digital-first journalism by redesigning products, developing new visual identities, and experimenting with formats that attract and retain readers. The article argues that Figma helps media organizations coordinate designers, editors, engineers, and executives while maintaining accuracy, clarity, and accessibility. The New York Times’ redesigned app illustrates how collaborative prototyping can support a broader subscription ecosystem without losing journalism’s central role. ## The shift toward digital-first publishing - Legacy publishers face accelerating change as audiences move from print to web and mobile. - Subscription models are becoming more important amid an unpredictable advertising market, although many readers remain reluctant to pay for online news. - Media teams must build stronger relationships with readers while exploring new products and formats. - Figma supports this work by keeping multidisciplinary teams aligned during design and experimentation. ## The New York Times’ redesigned app - Relaunched in October 2024, the app reflects The Times’ strategy of connecting multiple products, including News, Games, Cooking, Audio, Wirecutter, and The Athletic. - The redesign places the **Today** section and the latest news at the center of the experience. - A top navigation system makes other verticals easier to discover, with each product receiving its own home screen. - Rather than creating one “super app” feed, the design gives each section a distinct visual identity: - Lifestyle uses image-heavy grids with headline overlays, based on a component called a “poster.” - Opinion uses stylized headlines to communicate its different editorial perspective. - The overall concept treats journalism as the central “sun,” with other products orbiting around it. ## Figma as a newsroom collaboration space - The project involved section editors, engineers, senior management, product designers, and The Times’ storytelling group. - Teams used Figma asynchronously to explore layouts combining text, images, video, and audio. - Designers could share interactive prototypes directly instead of preparing as many presentation decks or relying on screen-sharing meetings. - The shared workspace helped stakeholders see colleagues’ work immediately and participate in shaping the app’s editorial formats. The article’s broader recommendation is that collaborative design tools can help publishers manage complex digital transformations while preserving strong editorial identities.

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Figma Design Systems User Experience Prototyping+3

figmaFeb 12, 20253 min readCurated summary

Meet the Makers Defining Tech’s Next Chapter | Figma Blog

The post previews Config 2025 and introduces speakers exploring how technology can become more human-centered. Their work spans AI-native devices, creator tools, AI interfaces, and expressive robotics. Together, they suggest that technology’s next chapter will depend not only on technical capability, but also on accessibility, empathy, and thoughtful design. ## Config 2025 and Its Vision - Figma’s Config conference will take place in San Francisco from May 6–8 and in London on May 14. - The event will examine how AI and automation are changing the way people create and experience technology. - Figma emphasizes tools and experiences that respond to evolving human needs. - In-person London tickets are sold out, while San Francisco tickets and free virtual attendance remain available. ## Building the Next Computing Platform - Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Meta’s CTO and Head of Reality Labs, began coding through a 4-H club and later taught Mark Zuckerberg’s AI class at Harvard. - As Facebook’s 10th engineer, he helped create the News Feed. - He now leads Meta’s work on AR glasses, mixed-reality headsets, and the metaverse. - Bosworth envisions AI-native devices and proactive, personalized assistants becoming part of everyday computing. - At Config, he will discuss Meta’s efforts to develop a new computing platform. ## Making Creator Tools More Inclusive - Ebi Atawodi, Director of Product Management for YouTube Studio, combines experience in literature, technology, and product leadership. - Her work focuses on helping creators develop ideas and reach new audiences, including through AI-powered features. - Atawodi stresses that technology must be accessible and designed for people who have historically felt excluded by products. - Her approach centers on creating tools that serve a broad range of creators rather than assuming a single user experience. ## Designing Interfaces for Advanced AI - Joel Lewenstein, Head of Product Design at Anthropic, works on the interface for Claude. - He compares designing AI systems to watching a child discover new abilities, highlighting the uncertainty and possibility of emerging technology. - AI’s growing sophistication challenges traditional assumptions about how software interfaces should work. - Lewenstein argues that strong designers are defined more by how they think than by experience in a particular industry. ## Giving Robots Personality - Dr. Madeline Gannon uses her research studio, Atonaton, to transform industrial robots into expressive, lifelike mechanical creatures. - Supported by a Knight Foundation grant, she investigates how art and empathy can influence relationships with autonomous machines. - Her work explores how easily people attribute life and intention to nonliving objects. - Rather than reproducing the complexity of the human mind, Gannon demonstrates how movement, appearance, and context can make robots feel animated. Config’s featured makers represent a broad view of technological progress: more capable devices and systems must also be accessible, intuitive, expressive, and emotionally resonant. The conference aims to explore that balance through the experiences of people actively shaping AI, design, and robotics.

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AI Augmented Reality Virtual Reality Robotics+4