🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #132

Good morning! Let's conquer this Wednesday together!

#YouTube - YouTube is reportedly testing a new website layout that removes the date when a video was uploaded and the amount of views it has.

#MacMini - Well, our news section will tell you that this has been launched now, but before it did, for a couple of hours, Amazon accidentally published the product in their shopping site before taking it down. “Leaked” specifications of the mac mini did the rounds for a few hours until Apple decided to officially publish it on their website

#Meta - Meta's trying to break free from Google and Microsoft's grasp after getting hurt from Apple's tracking feature. They're building their own search engine for its chatbot.

#CloudWars - Microsoft accuses Google of funding groups conducting allegedly biased studies to discredit Microsoft and mislead antitrust enforcers and the public. A Microsoft lawyer alleged that an astroturf group called the Open Cloud Coalition will launch this week.

#RedPanda - A new image generation model is beating models from Midjourney, Black Forest Labs, and OpenAI on the crowdsourced Artificial Analysis benchmark. The model, which goes by the name “red_panda,” is around 40 Elo points ahead of the next-best-ranking model. It is also one of the better-performing models on the leaderboard in terms of its generation speed. Who could it be?

Jio, Airtel lose subscribers - Government owned BSNL is the only gainer
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, a state-owned telecom provider, added 25.3 lakh new subscribers in August, while private telecom companies like Reliance Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea lost around 83 lakh users. This is due to recent tariff hikes by the private companies, which is driving price-sensitive users to seek more affordable alternatives like BSNL, which has kept its rates stable.

LinkedIn Unveils AI-powered Hiring Assistant
LinkedIn, the social platform for working professionals, has launched its latest AI initiative, Hiring Assistant, aimed at automating recruitment tasks. This new product is designed to take on tasks like ingesting notes and thoughts into job descriptions, sourcing candidates, and engaging with them. It's now live with a select group of large enterprises and will be rolled out more widely in the coming months.

Apple Unveils Powerful New Mac Mini
Apple's Mac Mini, a compact desktop computer, has been upgraded with the M4 and M4 Pro chips, featuring a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and upgraded Neural Engine. The M4 Pro supports up to 64GB of memory and has a compact size of 5 by 5 inches. It's available for pre-order in 28 countries and starts at ₹59,900.

Apple TestFlight - Developers Gain Control over Beta Testing with Redesigned Invitations and Improved Metrics.

GMail - Expanding "Help me write" to Gmail on the web, allowing users to whip up or tweak emails using Gemini AI.

YouTube Music - Introduces Speed Dial feature for quick access to most-listened-to content

GitHub Copilot - Empowering Developers with Choice, Introducing Multi-Model Support for Copilot Chat. Users can now select between Claude, OpenAI and Google Gemini for their Github CoPilot Chat.

Rip2 | A safe and ergonomic alternative to rm (the remove file command)

Repopack | Repopack is a powerful tool that packs your entire repository into a single, AI-friendly file. Perfect for when you need to feed your codebase to Large Language Models (LLMs) or other AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini.

A Comprehensive RoadMap To Learn LLMs In Two Weeks
The author presents a comprehensive list of resources they came across that helped to learn everything about LLMs in two weeks.

Domain Name's Dark Past
A domain name is “haunted” when something in its past gives it a poor reputation among search engines. The inner-workings of search engines are notoriously opaque*, making it difficult to know if you’re being affected. The author describes owning such a “haunted” domain and the steps they took to improve it’s reputation among search engines.

Caching For High Traffic Applications
Low latency is crucial for e-commerce applications, and caching can help address this issue by providing a faster response time. However, before implementing a cache, consider if your application really needs one, as server-to-server requests may not require caching. Traditional caching relies on multiple joins, but NoSQL solutions like CosmosDB and DynamoDB can provide low latency responses at scale.