🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #176

Tuesday - the day to power up and make things happen!

Oh - and yeah. Wishing all our subscribers a very happy new year!

#Dickipedia - Elon Musk still wants to rename Wikipedia to Dickipedia for $1 billion, and honestly, it's kinda lowkey embarrassing. He’s 53 years old, like who says that.

#YouTubedrama - YouTube user Neumayer was trolled by a fake Nintendo lawyer. He contacted Nintendo, which said the lawyer's email address was not legitimate. The fake lawyer eventually stood down, but not before sending a spoof email.

#SpotifyModeration - Spotify users have encountered a troubling issue and stumbled upon explicit videos appearing in search results and recommendations. A Reddit user named Milk_Steak_Jabroni shared a screenshot on the platform showing a porn video of an adult actress Mia Khalifa in a search suggestion for the rapper M.I.A.

#ApplePhotos - So, it turns out Apple's been secretly sending your photo data to their servers, and no one even knew! Jeff Johnson exposed this new "Enhanced Visual Search" feature that's on by default in iOS 18. It's like, you can search for landmarks in your pics, but at what cost to your privacy?

Blinkit Expands Services To Jammu
Blinkit is a quick commerce platform (think super-fast delivery service) that just launched in Jammu, India, with 3 stores, aiming to deliver essentials to local areas, amid growing competition in the sector.

India Decides On UPI Market Share Limits
At stake is the dominance of Walmart's PhonePe (47.8% market share) and Google Pay (37.1%) in India's massive mobile payments market. The regulator may enforce a 30% market share limit, affecting their growth, PhonePe's IPO plans, and the overall fintech landscape in India.

Indian Government To Probe Uber, Ola Over Allegations Of Unfair Pricing
The Indian government is investigating popular ride-hailing apps, including Ola, Uber and Rapido. The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) will scrutinize if these companies are charging different fares for the same journeys to Android and iOS users.

OpenAI To Transition To Public Benefit Corporation
OpenAI says it plans to turn its for-profit org into a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation. The PBC will run and control OpenAI’s operations and business, while the nonprofit will hire a leadership team and staff to pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care and education.

Japan Airlines Hit By Cyberattack, Disrupts Flights
Japan Airlines is Japan's second-largest carrier and one of the country's major airlines. A cyberattack hit JAL's network, causing delays to over 20 domestic flights, but the airline was able to contain the attack and restore systems. No flight safety or customer data was compromised.

Russia Explores Crypto Amid US Sanctions
Russia's started using bitcoin for international trade due to Western sanctions. They've legalised crypto use and are mining bitcoin as a way to bypass financial restrictions. Even President Putin's on board, and this move coincides with US President Biden's efforts to impose new sanctions on Russia's energy sector before he leaves office.

Malicious Chrome Extensions Hijacked
Cyberhaven is a cybersecurity company and they make a Chrome extension that helps people and businesses manage data. Anyway, hackers did a phishing campaign and stole admin account credentials, then they modified several Chrome extensions, including Cyberhaven's, with bad code. They tried to steal Facebook Ads users' info, but Cyberhaven caught it and fixed it within an hour.

Instagram - Introduces algorithm update to prioritize original content and smaller creators, removing aggregator accounts from recommendations and adding labels to reposted content.

Multimodal Live API Web Console | A react-based starter app for using the Multimodal Live API over websockets with Gemini

Shortest | QA via natural language AI tests

Mastering NotebookLM: 8 Tips To Boost Your Research And Productivity
Learn how to get the most out of NotebookLM, a tool that analyzes and connects information to help you dive deeper into a topic or project. With tips from Steven Johnson, a Googler and author, discover how to experiment with your recent documents, create main and topic-based notebooks, connect the dots from different materials, and more.

Amazon Leadership Insights
A senior leader at Amazon shares lessons learned from working with Principal Engineers, highlighting the importance of team dynamics, talent development, and role clarity in driving impact at scale, and introduces the Principal Engineer Roles framework.

India Lags In AI Research Funding
Funding remains one of the most significant challenges in accelerating AI research in India. Compounding this challenge is a lack of motivation among researchers to pursue revolutionary innovations. The biggest factor is the massive funding gap between Indian and Western universities.