🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #164

It's Friday - time to celebrate your progress this week!

#PhoneLink - Microsoft has started testing improvements to its Phone Link app for iPhone users. Windows Insiders can now try out a new way to share a file from an iPhone to a PC and vice versa. The sharing works by using the share sheet on iOS to send files to the “Link to Windows” app.

Tesla Eyes India Re-entry, In Talks With DLF For New Delhi Showroom
Tesla is an American electric vehicle company founded by Elon Musk. Tesla had previously put its investment plans on hold in India, but is now in talks with DLF to secure space in New Delhi for a consumer experience centre and delivery/service operations.

Solarsquare Raises $40 Million In Largest Venture Round In India's Solar Sector
SolarSquare is a Mumbai-based startup that's been making waves in the solar sector. They were bootstrapped for 5 years, but just raised $40 million from investors like Lightspeed. They're the largest operator of distributed solar assets in India, and they're making solar energy more accessible to homeowners with guaranteed returns on investments. It's a big deal because India wants to hit 500 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030,

Zomato Slapped With $94.5 Million Tax Bill
Zomato is an Indian food delivery giant. Today, it was ordered to pay $94.5M in unpaid taxes & penalties by the Indian tax authority for not paying GST on delivery charges between 2019-2022. Zomato plans to appeal the order, stating it has a "strong case".

Google Unveils Android XR: A Unified Platform For Extended Reality
Google announces Android XR, a new operating system built for extended reality (XR) devices. Google is partnering with Samsung to create a device code-named Project Moohan.

Epic Games Store To Be Preinstalled On Millions Of Android Phones
Telefónica, one of the world's largest carriers, partners with Epic Games to preinstall the Epic Games Store on all compatible Android phones, a major blow to Google's app store monopoly, marking the first time the store will be preinstalled on consumer phones, and a significant step in Epic's ongoing antitrust battle with Google.

Malaysia's Fallout: Creators Feel The Pinch Of New Online Regulations
Malaysian officials have blocked dozens of sites this year, and ordered social media sites to tighten their moderation policies. A new Online Safety Bill will give authorities even more power to access information, and use a “kill switch” to shut down sites deemed harmful. Proposed changes to a 25-year-old communication law would compel service providers to disclose user data.

Zomato - Introduced "Recommendations from Friends" feature, allowing users to view personalized restaurant and food recommendations from their friends with full control over shared recommendations.

Google Project Mariner - Introduces an AI agent that can take actions on the web, navigating and interacting with websites on behalf of the user, while providing a new paradigm shift in user experience and interaction with the web.

Snapchat - Expanded chat options, new app themes, and exclusive Bitmoji reactions for Snapchat+ subscribers.

Steam - Introduced granular automatic update controls, allowing users to set custom update preferences for individual games or globally.

Google Find My Device - Option to temporarily stop sending location updates to the network when an unknown tracker is detected, and ability to locate the tracker using "Find Nearby" feature for easier removal.

Bing - Removed cache links from search results.

Kinesis Js | A library that offers a suite of components to create engaging animations and transformations based on user interactions like mouse movements, scroll events, and even audio input.

M Plug Doc Owl | Modularized Multimodal Large Language Model for Document Understanding

Enhancing Link Usability With Custom Cursors
This article teaches how to improve the user experience by displaying a favicon as a custom cursor when hovering over a link, using CSS and favicons. You will learn about CSS cursor styles, favicons, and how to combine them to create a unique link hover effect.

Platform Engineer Skills In High Demand
As demand for platform engineers grows with top companies like AWS and Warner Bros. hiring, experts weigh in on required skills, revealing key responsibilities and competencies needed for the role, including improving developer excellence and deep technical knowledge.

Healthcheck Pitfalls
Google Cloud expert shares 6 mistakes to avoid with healthcheck tweaks, including aggregating services, setting timeouts, and configuring consecutive successes/failures, to prevent production outages and ensure seamless scalability.