🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #123

Happy Thursday! Let's make the most of the last few days of the week!

#GoogleIndia - Google in India are saying their Indian arm has no real power, just a support team, and all the important decisions are made in the US. Can you even imagine? They're raking in all this money from ads, but Indian businesses are stuck dealing with the States-based company's teams.

#AppStore - By the time you read this, it’s probably resolved already, but it seems like users are having a difficult time installing apps from the Apple App Store. Difficult is an understatement - they just cannot install any app at the moment.

#TechScandal - Winamp was a popular music player in the 2010s and recently they had open sourced their code. But users were quick to point out that the license under which it was uploaded did not truly indicate the code was open source, and some of the code that they uploaded was proprietary! They ended up deleting the entire repository now.

#Waymo - Ok. India has Uber and Ola. USA has Waymo and Uber (among other things). A video went viral where Waymo’s autonomous cars (much like Tesla’s) were honking at each other in the middle of the night in a parking lot much to the annoyance of nearby residents. To do some damage control, Waymo offered the person that recorded the video some coupons that she could also share with her friends - there was one problem though. Waymo forgot to put a spending limit on those coupons! The person, once they figured it out, decided to SPLURGE on her travel. She went on outstation trips and had the most fun out of it. A fun read.

Amazon Unveils Its First Color E-reader, Kindle Colorsoft
Amazon, the company behind the popular Kindle e-reader, is taking a bold step into the world of color e-ink with its new Kindle Colorsoft. This device marks a significant departure from the traditional monochromatic design of e-readers, which has been the standard for e-book reading for years. With its color capabilities, the Kindle Colorsoft offers a more immersive reading experience, especially for those who want to enjoy comics, illustrations, and highlighted texts in color.

Airbnb's Surprise Move To Simplify Hosting
Until now Airbnb was a huge online marketplace where people can rent out their properties. Now, the platform has just launched the Co-Host Network, allowing hosts to hire other trusted and highly-rated hosts to manage their properties, making it easier to handle tasks like pricing, guest management, and cleaning. It's like hiring a property manager, but on a smaller scale!

Lenovo Announced As FIFA Technology Partner For 2026 And 2027 World Cups
This means Lenovo will be providing tech solutions for the tournament, including stadium equipment, broadcasting, and fan engagement tools.

Spotify Expands Music Videos Beta To 85 New Markets
Yes, besides audio, Spotify is now working towards providing music videos for its audience.

Adobe Unleashes Genstudio For Performance Marketing
Adobe has released GenStudio, a new end-to-end solution to streamline content creation and marketing, using AI to optimize every step of the marketing process. It's designed to let brands deliver personalized customer experiences with greater efficiency, and integrates with popular ad platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok.

Whatsapp's Device Fingerprinting Vulnerability
Security researchers found out that WhatsApp may be exposing the operating system a user is running, as well as their device setup information.

YouTube Music - Upload custom playlist thumbnails with the new pencil icon.

Threads - Adds "activity status" feature, displaying a green bubble alongside a user's profile photo when they're online.

Google Flights - New "Cheapest" tab sorts flight options by price, including long layovers and mixed airlines and routes.

Assistant UI | React Components for AI Chat

Tailwind To Inline | Transform email templates with Tailwind classes into templates with inline styles.

This week (14th October to 18th October) we will not display any jobs. We are in the middle of making some changes to this section and hope to get it back soon.

How Hard Should Your Employer Work To Retain You
Many engineers have stories about submitting their resignation, or threatening to quit, and their managers plying them with stock or cash or promotions to stay. The boom and bust cycle is stressful and counterproductive, which leads to uneven and unfair outcomes.

Outcome-driven Product Development
Product teams are rightly told to focus on outcome over output. An output is a product update; the outcome is a business result. Most product updates should have a clear outcome to get prioritized. But, there’s a problem with outcome-driven product development: The feedback loop is slow.

How To Become A Senior Engineer: Shortcut
The author argues that the term "junior engineer" is outdated, and instead, companies should focus on hiring "early career" engineers. However, this change may not solve the problem of lack of independence and judgement, which can be difficult to shortcut.