🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #163

It's Thursday! Time to wrap up the week strong!

#TechRivalry - Sundar Pichai is throwing shade at Microsoft, saying they're using someone else's AI models and would love to do a comparison with Google's models, and it looks like a response to Satya Nadella's earlier claim that Google should've been the "default winner" of the AI race.

Airtel Flags 8 Billion Spam Calls And 0.8 Billion Spam SMSes In 2.5 Months
Bharti Airtel has flagged a staggering 8 billion spam calls and 0.8 billion spam SMSes within two and a half months of launching its AI-powered, spam-fighting solution. The company has alerted close to 252 million unique customers to these suspicious calls and has observed that there has been a 12% decline in the number of customers answering them.

Linux Foundation Launches LF India To Foster Innovation
The Linux Foundation has launched LF India, a strategic initiative aimed at fostering open collaboration and innovation in emerging technology markets. India is the fourth-largest contributor to Cloud Native Computing Foundation projects and the third- largest contributor to Kubernetes. Nearly 200,000 Indian developers already contribute to Linux Foundation projects.

India Demands Starlink Hand Over User Data Amid $4.2 Billion Narcotics Bust
Starlink, an internet constellation service run by Elon Musk's SpaceX, is at the center of India's largest narcotics seizure. Police are demanding customer details related to a device used by smugglers to navigate a boat carrying $4.2 billion worth of methamphetamine.

Judge Orders Automattic To Restore Wp Engine's Access To WordPress[dot]org
So you know how I've been telling you about the drama between Matt Mullenweg, the co-creator of WordPress, and WP Engine? Well, today a judge ruled that Mullenweg and his company Automattic have to restore WP Engine's access to WordPress[dot]org, a website that's like a library of themes and plugins for WordPress. This means WP Engine can update its plugins again and regain control of its popular Advanced Custom Field plugin. WP Engine is a popular website hosting company that uses WordPress.

Google Docs - Added 40 new visually modern templates with preset layouts and styles to help users create more engaging documents.

Firefox - Removing "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting, replacing with Global Privacy Control (GPC) recommendation.

YouTube - Expanded AI-powered auto-dubbing feature now available to hundreds of thousands of channels in the YouTube Partner Program.

Replit - Introduces AI Assistant to make code changes using natural language prompts and announces general availability of Replit Agent for end-to-end software product development.

YouTube Kids - Update brings vertical orientation support and a modern redesign with new navigation bar, video categories, and a revamped 'Your Stuff' page.

iOS 18.2 - Introduced Image Playground, Genmoji, and integration with ChatGPT for generating images, creating custom emoji, and enhanced writing tools.

Checkmate | Checkmate is an open-source, self-hosted tool designed to track and monitor server hardware, uptime, response times, and incidents in real-time with beautiful visualizations.

Mise | A versatile tool for managing development tools, environment variables, and build tasks across projects with ease and flexibility.

2025 Design Forecast: Trends To Watch In Tech
Pinterest reveals its 2025 trend forecast, highlighting emerging design directions in tech, including Rococo Revival, Primary Play, and Terra Futura aesthetics, offering insights for designers and developers to stay ahead.

Microsoft Study Unveils Top Cause Of Bad Days For Developers
A new paper by Microsoft identifies engineering system friction as the leading cause of bad days for developers, including unreliable tools and slow processes, leading to reduced productivity and increased stress, especially among junior engineers.

AI Adoption Impact
According to the 2024 DORA report, increasing AI adoption in engineering teams may lead to a 1.5% decrease in delivery throughput and a 7.2% reduction in delivery stability. Experts attribute this to faster but sloppier coding, highlighting the need for intentional approaches to code quality and maintainability.