🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #109

Good Friday morning! Let's tackle the day with zest.

#GoogleMaps - So, apparently, Google Maps is cracking down on businesses that fake reviews to get more ratings! They're putting a warning message on profiles that have had fake reviews removed, saying something like, "Suspected fake reviews were recently removed from this page!" Like, how do they even catch these fakes?

#LG - LG's smart TVs are now showing full-screen ads before the screensaver kicks in? Like, right after you pause the show, ads for LG's own products and third-party brands will pop up on your TV! They are trying to compete with YouTube I guess!

#BibleThump - Twitch, the streaming platform’s most iconic emote - the “bible thump” will be sunsetted. They are losing the licensing rights to the emote.

#PasswordRules - Did you guys know there’s an government organization in the USA, a federal body that sets technology standards for governmental agencies, standards organizations, and private companies? Well, looks like they tried to sign up for one of the job sites because they seem to have finally woken up and are planning to set guidelines about password policies. Changing your password every n days, password length, password characters - all are on their radar for stupid password policies.

#HP - A new entrant for Artificial Intelligence is here… HP! But guess their product? AI in Printers! You read that right! It can clean up messy pages and even turn photos into greeting cards apparently!

India Extends Import License Scheme For Hardware Makers
India extends scheme requiring hardware makers to secure import permits. The government introduced the licensing requirement in August 2023. The first licenses were due to expire in September 30, but an extension has emerged.

Tech Mahindra To Launch Project Indus 2: A Sovereign LLM For Hindi Dialects
Nikhil Malhotra, chief innovation officer at Tech Mahindra, announced at Cypher 2024, India’s biggest AI conference, that the company will launch Project Indus 2 within a couple of months. The model has 1.2 billion parameters and was trained on 22 billion tokens. It is designed to handle the complexities of the Hindi language.

Galaxy S24 FE And Galaxy Watch FE LTE Announced
Samsung's Galaxy S24 FE and Galaxy Watch FE LTE will be available next week. Both devices pack in tools from the Galaxy S 24 and Galaxy watch, including things like AI-powered photo editing, fitness tracking and more. Starting at $650, the phone offers many of the attractive features from the regular S24 at a more affordable price.

Android 15: Android's Latest Update Brings Major Enhancements
Android 15 has finally been pushed to the Android Open Source Project. It will be released for Pixels in October and brings many improvements on the security side of things, alongside new useful features.

Wordpress Drama Reaches New Heights: WP Engine Banned By Wordpress[dot]org For Good
WordPress[dot]org, the open-source web hosting software, banned hosting provider WP Engine from accessing its resources after a public feud between WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine. This move prevents WP Engine customers from installing plugins, updating themes, and accessing security updates, leaving them vulnerable.

CTO Of OpenAI Leaves As Company Plans To Go Public
Mira Murati, OpenAI's Chief Technical Officer, announced she is leaving the company in a surprise resignation shared on the social network X. Murati joined OpenAI in 2018, serving for six-and-a-half years in various leadership roles. She was in charge of overseeing the company's technical strategy and product development.

Mozilla's Privacy-preserving Attribution Feature Under Fire
Mozilla, a well-known browser company, is facing a privacy complaint from European digital rights group NOYB, alleging that its Firefox browser is secretly tracking users' online behavior using a feature called "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" without their consent.

Winamp Reborn As Open-source Project
Winamp is a media player that was launched in 1997 and gained popularity in the early days of MP3s. It was known for its customizable interface and ability to play a wide range of audio file formats.

Snapchat Leverages Google Gemini's AI to Power Multimodal Chatbot Experience.

Reddit Bringing machine learning-powered localization and translation to more than 35 new locales in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

WhatsApp Apply effects directly to in-app camera with new filter button and range of filters, including skin-smoothing, background changing, and low-light mode.

Scalar | Scalar is an open-source platform with Modern Rest API Client, Beautiful API References and 1st-Class OpenAPI / Swagger Support

Ts Blank Space | A small, fast, pure JavaScript type-stripper that uses the official TypeScript parser.

Revealing The Hairiest Ball Of Code
In this article, you'll learn how to simplify a taxi-hailing app's driver assignment code, transforming it from a five-level nested if-statement maze to a clean, maintainable, and alteration-friendly algorithm.

Understanding Error Handling
Errors are unavoidable, but it’s ineffective error handling that can truly damage a business. Abiodun Olowode, Engineering Manager at Cleo, simplifies error handling for all levels.

Goodhart's Law: A Cautionary Tale For Engineers
Goodhart's Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. This logical fallacy applies to software development, where metrics like test coverage, cyclomatic complexity, and benchmarking can diverge from actual goals. To avoid this, engineers should use their best judgement when setting and optimizing metrics, rather than relying solely on numbers.