🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #114

Rise and grind! It's Friday and a beautiful day to excel.

#iOS18Privacy - Apple will have new two-step permissions pop-up screen for iOS 18? When you share your contacts, you can choose which ones you want to share, not all of them. iOS apps that build their own social networks on the back of users’ address books may soon become a thing of the past. In iOS 18, Apple is cracking down on the social apps that ask users' permission to access their contacts.

#SmartGlasses - Meta is training their AI on all the photos and videos you take with those smart glasses, and if you don't opt out, you're basically giving them permission to use them however they want.

Google Expands AI Efforts In India To Catch Up With Local Rivalry
Google is investing heavily in AI in India, a massive market where competitors are struggling to keep up. The company is deploying its AI model, Gemini, to enhance search, visual recognition, and language processing, and is launching AI Live, a natural-esque voice assistant, to support multiple Indian languages.

Google Pay Gets UPI Circle, Support Guide, And Personal Loans Features In India
Google Pay will soon integrate UPI circle, which National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced a month ago. Google Pay is now expanding its personal loan offerings in India by partnering with Aditya Birla Capital Finance. Users can borrow up to INR 5 lakh starting at a 14% interest rate for up to 1-3 years. Google also announced a new Android security feature to protect users from malicious apps.

Juniper Networks Launches Local Cloud Instance In India
Juniper Networks has announced the launch of a local cloud instance in India. The India-based cloud instance aligns with India’s data protection laws to restrict the transfer of sensitive data.

Google Gemini Available in 9 additional Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

Google Maps AI-powered summaries for places, search for experiences, and weather alerts added for Indian users.

Spotify Introduced Offline Backup feature for premium users, allowing access to a list of recently streamed tracks for offline playback.

WhatsApp You can now send Likes for Status Updates and have Private Mentions

YouTube Uploading now possible up to three minutes in length, new Shorts player, templates, and trends page introduced.

Schedule X | JavaScript event calendar. Modern alternative to fullcalendar and react-big-calendar.

Ttyd | Share your terminal over the web

Artificial Intelligence: A "game Changer" Or A "fad"?
AI is being used in software testing, software development and in life in general. The author is tired of how it is used and how it's marketed. He is also tired of proposals that are clearly written with the help of, or in many cases, entirely by ChatGPT.

On-call Best Practices
As a new engineer, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with on-call responsibilities. Remember, it's not your job to fix every issue by yourself. Your job is to assess the situation and help determine the best course of action. Don't be afraid to call for backup and communicate clearly, both with your team and stakeholders, during incidents. And, don't forget to document your findings and processes for later review.

Test-driven Development: Efficient Release
Implementing a test phase in development processes is crucial for releasing software quickly. Automating tools like JUnit, Jest, Newman, and Cypress are essential for code and component unit tests, API tests, and end-to-end tests. Engineers and stakeholders should share accountability to ensure successful software delivery.