🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #110

Good morning! Let's conquer this Monday with a smile.

#CaptchaDefeated - New research shows that locally run bots using specially trained image-recognition models can match human-level performance in a CAPTCHA. The researchers used a fine-tuned version of the open source YOLO ("You Only Look Once") object-recognITION model.

#Windows11 - Microsoft really wants you to upgrade to Windows 11. So much so that they will soon start charging customers for any security updates if they are still running Windows 10

#MetaFined - Even the best of us make mistakes. Meta was fined by the Irish Data Protection Commission because they found an instance where Meta was storing passwords in plain text. Word on the grapevine is that the passwords were encrypted, except due to some oversight, they were published in plain text in logs.

Akriti Chopra Steps Down As Zomato's Chief People Officer
Akriti Chopra has put in her papers, effective immediately. This marks the end of her 13-year stint at the 16-year-old firm. She joins the list of co-founders who have exited Zomato.

The European Space Agency Launches A Satellite To Destroy Itself In 2027
The European Space Agency plans to send a satellite into space to collect data. The satellite will have a capsule that will collect data as it reentry.

The Tor Project Merges Forces With Tails
The Tor Project, a well-known non-profit, is merging its operations with Tails, a portable Linux-based operating system that focuses on preserving user privacy and anonymity. This union comes as digital surveillance, censorship, and efforts to break end-to-end encryption continue to be major concerns globally.

X Lifts Ban On Brazil, Returns To Social Media Stage
X (Twitter) looks like they're finally ready to comply with the court orders and get back online! X has named legal representation, which is a crucial step, and the court has given them an extension to file the necessary paperwork. It's a big deal because X was in a long-standing fight with the Brazilian government and the country's highest court.

SESAC Takes Down Music On Youtube And Youtube Music
SESAC (Society of European Stage Authors and Composers) is a music licensing organization that represents over 1.5 million songs by 15,000+ affiliated songwriters, composers, and music publishers. Music from Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, and more has gone missing from YouTube and YouTube Music due to a dispute between SESAC and YouTube over licensing fees.

WhatsApp New Homescreen Badge Count Feature Now Testing, Allows Adjusting or Clearing Unread Counts

Microsoft Edge New Edge Sidebar feature is turned off by default for new and inactive users, with option to enable it in settings.

Instagram Introduces "Signature Sound" for Reels, a branding element appended to every downloaded Reel.

Meta Now includes the ability to tag your location on Threads posts.

YouTube Introduces Video Editing Feature to Allow Creators to Address Content Restrictions and Policy Violations

Next Saas Stripe Starter | Open-source SaaS Starter with User Roles & Admin Panel. Built using Next.js 14, Prisma, Neon, Auth.js v5, Resend, React Email, Shadcn/ui, Stripe, Server Actions.

Localstack | 💻 A fully functional local AWS cloud stack. Develop and test your cloud & Serverless apps offline

An Introduction To Chaos Engineering
Learn about the principles of Chaos Engineering, a method used by big tech companies to test their backend systems and identify potential bugs and issues. You'll discover how to apply the scientific method to understand and learn about possible failure modes in distributed systems, and how Chaos Engineering has become a popular approach amongst the largest companies in the world.

Thinking Like A Growth Engineer
Growth engineers are often misunderstood as bouncing around products aimlessly, tweaking signup flows, and running endless experiments. However, they're actually driving incremental improvements that accumulate to massive gains through their unique way of thinking and working. To learn their secrets, you need to think like them - starting by tracking and improving platform or business-level metrics. Focus on activation and retention numbers, and track how users move week over week.

Build In Public Creates FOMO
Indie hackers are over-emitting "build in public" posts, sharing revenue and achievements, whereas people crave product feature updates and long-term plans. This may lead to fatigue and make attendees question the value of such sharing.