🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #18

Daily dispatches from the world of technology.

May 23, 2024

Sending you positive vibes this beautiful Thursday morning!

It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.

— Scott Belsky (Behance Co-founder)

🤫 Geek Goss 🤭

#GreenMess - Can you believe WhatsApp's latest drama? They ditched the blue for green, and people are losing it! Some users are practically begging, "BRING THE BLUE BACK!" Who knew a color change could cause such a meltdown?

#AndThenItSurface’d - Microsoft’s Surface Laptop is throwing serious shade at the MacBook Air! They’re flaunting more RAM, a touchscreen, and killer AI skills. But can it dethrone the sleek MacBook Air? We’ll see if the Surface can walk the talk!

⌛ The Past 24 hours

Instagram is testing a "Lately" feature that automatically generates a highlight feed of users' recent Stories, extending their visibility beyond 24 hours. This move aims to boost engagement by showcasing users' latest content directly on their profiles. While feed activity declines, Stories and DMs remain strong, with Instagram focusing on these areas to maintain user interaction. This feature aligns with Instagram's strategy to blend personal connections with entertainment, ensuring users stay engaged on the platform.

Spotify's new "Listening Party" feature, launched after the shutdown of Spotify Live, has not fully met expectations. While it allows superfans to join live sessions with artists, technical limitations and missed interactive opportunities have left users wanting more. Recent events, such as Billie Eilish's session, failed to leverage live audio capabilities effectively, offering minimal artist interaction. The feature, currently in early testing, aims to improve Spotify's live audio offerings but still has significant progress to make.

Microsoft Edge is set to enhance its browser capabilities by introducing real-time AI dubbing for videos from major sites like Reuters, Bloomberg, and YouTube. Announced at the Microsoft Build conference, this feature will translate audio into various languages, including Spanish, German, and Hindi. This development marks a significant step up from AI-generated captions, offering users dubbed audio in their native language.

Hugging Face is offering $10 million in shared GPUs to support developers, academics, and startups in creating new AI technologies through its ZeroGPU program. This initiative aims to counter the centralization of AI advancements by tech giants, making state-of-the-art AI accessible to a broader community.

👩🏾‍💻 Bit Boutique

Devon | An AI based pair programmer

Heat.js | A lightweight JavaScript library that generates customizable heat maps, charts, and statistics to visualize date-based activity and trends.

📢 In case you missed it

💼 Job Board

Title

Remote / On Site

Expected $$$

Go-To-Market Specialist
@ Shrine Development

Remote

$100,000 - $150,000 / yr

Full stack Game Developer
@ Cali and Kira

Remote

$10 / hr

🎲 Miscellaneous

Pinterest Engineering has developed a Text-to-SQL feature, leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to assist data users in writing SQL queries. Integrated into Querybook, Pinterest's open-source big data SQL query tool, this feature transforms analytical questions into SQL code.

A Hacker News user inquires about the economics behind YouTube's ability to offer free video streaming despite high costs. Comments highlight that while streaming is expensive, YouTube benefits from economies of scale, ownership of vast network infrastructure, and revenue from ads.

Keeping a "WTF Notebook" helps new team members identify and address inefficiencies. For two weeks, note all strange or problematic observations without immediate feedback. Evaluate issues to determine if they are known, easily fixable, or if the team is working on them. Discuss unresolved problems with the team and manager to build credibility as a problem solver. This method enhances team productivity, avoids premature complaints, and establishes a reputation for effective problem-solving.