🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #171

Happy Tuesday! Let's make today even better than yesterday!

#Ola - Bhavish Aggarwal is cracking down on Ola employees slacking off on work-from-home, says company's being fleeced by poor attendance - Apparently staff have said facial recognition data is wrong on attendance but the CEO thinks otherwise.

#AIControversy - High school age gossip alert: So, apparently Google's trying to improve its AI, Gemini, but they're making their contractors rate responses on super technical stuff even if they don't know what they're talking about, and it's raising concerns about accuracy, especially on sensitive topics like healthcare, and now people are freaking out about how reliable Gemini's info will be...

#FakeStars - GitHub's credibility is taking a hit with 4.5 million fake stars inflating repo popularity, and it's like, totally misleading developers and putting them at risk of malware, and it's only getting worse, like, did they really think no one would notice?

#CrimeSolving - Apparently, a Google Street View image caught someone stuffing a large object into a trunk, and that helped solve a missing person's case in Spain!

Rapido Fixes Security Flaw Exposing User And Driver Data
Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India, has fixed a security issue that exposed personal information associated with its users and drivers. The flaw, discovered by security researcher Renganathan P, was related to a website form meant to collect feedback from Rapido users. The form exposed the full names, email addresses, and phone numbers of individuals.

Netflix To Air FIFA Women's World Cup From 2027-2031
FIFA announced a deal with Netflix to stream the 2027 and 2031 Women's World Cups. The tournaments will be aired in English and Spanish. Netflix will also release a documentary series about the biggest players.

Nissan And Honda Confirm Merger Talks
Honda and Nissan have officially confirmed rumors that they're pursuing a merger. Each would continue to operate under its own brand, but with a new joint holding company as parent. If Nissan-controlled Mitsubishi also came on board, the combined group would become the world's third largest automaker.

Russia Backs Nasa's Plan To Retire The International Space Station
Russia's space programme, Roscosmos, has confirmed its support for NASA's plans to retire and deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) beginning in 2030. This marks a notable shift in Russia’s stance, as Ros cosmos leadership has previously wavered on its commitment to the ageing orbital facility.

Google Chrome Launches AI-powered Scam Protection
Google is using artificial intelligence to power a new Chrome scam protection feature. The feature analyzes brands and the intent of pages as you browse the web. It could issue warnings when you visit an obvious scam website.

Threads - Introduces "Use media" feature, allowing users to reshare photos and videos directly with attribution to the original poster.

Bluesky - Introduced a settings button in post threads to quickly change how replies are displayed.

Krutrim - Offers free credits to all IIT students and faculty.

ChatGPT - ChatGPT now available via phone call at 1-800-CHATGPT with free 15-minute conversations (US Only).

Another ChatGPT - Now integrated with WhatsApp, allowing users to chat with the official AI chatbot for free, without requiring a third-party chatbot or account connection.

Google DeepMind - Introduces Inference Time Computation boost for improved reasoning capabilities.

Openauth | Universal, standards-based auth provider.

Barba | Create badass, fluid and smooth transitions between your website’s pages

Clever Algorithms: Nature-invested Heuristics And A Little Theory
Learn about nature-inspired algorithms, heuristics and their applications in computer science through interactive examples and code. The resource includes a book, online content and downloadable code making it a handy resource for understanding complex concepts.

A Decade Of Engineering: Lessons Learned
A seasoned software engineer shares his career progression over 13 years, highlighting key milestones and lessons learned in coding, teamwork, complexity, and continuous learning, providing a benchmark for junior and mid-level engineers.

Letting Go Of Heroism: Embracing Controlled Failure
Engineering manager shares story of allowing a platform migration project to "fail" to illustrate the importance of controlled failure, back pressure, and avoiding heroism in favor of process resilience and scalability in a tech startup.