🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #124

Happy Friday! Let's finish the week with energy!

#TechMogulsFight - Mohandas Pai (of Infosys fame) and Sridhar Vembu (of Zoho fame) are having a war of words. Why? Because the former attributed Government of India’s decision to NOT have any AI center of excellence in Bangalore to Step-motherly treatment… and the latter denied it, because they were part of the committee that took that decision.

#CheatingScandal - A kid got in trouble for using AI in a project. Like, he's a total genius and his parents are trying to clear his name. The school says he cheated, but he claims it was just for research. Now his parents are fighting for him to get a B on the project and his academic record to be cleared.

#Apple - Apple has a new feature that lets businesses customize how they appear in emails and phone calls on iPhones. It's called Business Connect and it's like, super convenient for identifying legit calls and emails from actual businesses. They can add their brand name and logo, and even opt in for Business Caller ID to show up on your call screen. And, let's be real, it's gonna make it way easier to figure out if that random number calling you is spam.

#SocialLibrary - Instagram is building a Social Library?! Apparently, it'll let you access all your favorite posts, Reels, and even chat threads in one place. No word yet on when it'll drop though…

Zerodha Commits $1 Million To Support Open-source Projects
Zerodha, India's largest stock brokerage, has launched a dedicated fund to support open-source projects worldwide, aiming to provide structured financial support to projects that have contributed significantly to the development of technology companies. The FLOSS Fund will offer a minimum of $10,000 and up to $100,000 to each recipient, totalling $1 million annually.

Wipro Shifts Focus To Lead Generative AI Consulting
Wipro's chief Srini Pallia announced that the company has won two large deals in the quarter, including a total outsourcing deal with a software technology company. The deal involves implementing GenAI-powered solutions to solve business challenges and deliver operational efficiencies. Pallia also emphasized the company's focus on AI-first mindset, training over 44,000 employees on advanced AI and using AI developer tools across the company.

Snapchat's New Report On Gen Z In India Unveils Spending Power Insights
Boston Consulting Group and Snapchat partnered to release a report on Gen Z consumers in India, showcasing their shopping and engagement habits. According to the report, Gen Z is now the largest generational group in India, with significant expected spending power growth in the next few years. The report provides insights on where Gen Z spends, what influences their purchasing decisions, and how brands can connect with them.

Okta Solves Identity Management For Generative AI Applications
Okta is a company that helps manage access to digital resources, like a digital bouncer for websites and apps. Today, they launched a new product that helps secure identity for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, which are becoming increasingly important in our daily lives. This new product, called Auth for GenAI, allows developers to control who can access sensitive information and prevent data misuse.

Uber Eyes Expedia Acquisition
Uber, the ride-hailing giant, has reportedly explored a potential bid for Expedia Group, a Seattle-based travel company. Uber's interest is in the early stages, but the news comes as no surprise given the company's push for growth beyond ride-hailing.

Meta Lays Off Multiple Teams
Multiple teams at Meta were hit by layoffs on Wednesday, the company confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch. Employees who previously worked on Facebook, recruiting, legal operations, and design said they had been laid off.

Dot IO Domain Phasing Out Soon
.io is a top-level domain (TLD) provided by the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) government. The UK finalized a treaty with the Chagos Islands to end the use of .io domains. This means that .io domains will likely be phased out in the next few years, like .cs and .yu before it.Here are seven suggested steps to take, depending on your usage of .

GSAP Joins The Webflow Family
Webflow is a No-Code Platform that empowers marketing and engineering teams to build, manage, and optimize stunning websites. They're known for their clean interface and expertise in creating user-friendly tools. GSAP, a popular animation library, has been acquired by Webflow to continue developing its product and innovation. The acquisition will bring together the two companies' shared mission to make complicated things simple and help people bring their ideas to life.

Terraform - Introducing Stacks, a new feature allowing users to streamline provisioning and management of cloud resources, including Kubernetes, with a single configuration and multicloud support.

Instagram - New Features to Protect Users from Sextortion Scammers, Including Prevention of Screenshots and Screen Recording of Ephemeral Content and Enhanced Safety Notices.

Pipet | Swiss-army tool for scraping and extracting data from online assets, made for hackers

Nhost | The Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL.

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.

Mastering The Stripe Interview Process
Learn about the challenges engineers face when interviewing at Stripe, the skills required beyond just coding, and the importance of being "product-minded". Also learn about the different types of interviews and assessments that Stripe uses, including coding interviews, system design assessments, and integration tasks.

Database Fundamentals
A young developer shares his experience of building a simple database from scratch, highlighting common issues like durability, atomicity, isolation, and performance. He shows how to improve the bashdb database to achieve ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) and explores the concept of durability, discussing fsync and fdatasync.

LLMs: Setting Realistic Expectations
A recently published blog post explores the misconceptions surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs), providing insights into building a useful mental model for their application. The author shares lessons learned from working directly on meaningful use cases and recommends a revised approach to avoid common pitfalls.