🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #187

Good morning! Let's smash this Wednesday!

Don’t forget - it’s Website Wednesday. Our new section below brings to you some amazing bookmark-worthy websites for your use.

#ToxicWorkplace - So Vishnu Prasad is spilling the tea about his terrible experience at StackWealth. Apparently, they abruptly terminated him without notice, withheld his salary, and basically treated him like dirt. And it's not just him - several other employees are sharing similar horror

#RedNote - So, RedNote is the new TikTok and Americans are flocking to it since TikTok's about to get banned. Ironically, while TikTok is getting banned (because it’s deemed a security issue being from China), RedNote is also an app from China! It's like a Chinese Instagram and has already got 300 million active users. Some users are calling themselves "TikTok refugees" and are trying to rebuild their community on RedNote.

#Pixelfed - Meta's getting shady, deleting posts that link to Pixelfed, a decentralized photo-sharing platform, on Facebook, claiming they were spam. But when called out, they're all like, "Oops, mistake!" Meanwhile, the company's just relaxed its moderation policies, making it seem like they're trying to shut down the competition, just like they say X did with Mastodon and Substack.

#Snyk - Snyk is a cyber security company. Security researcher claims Snyk used malicious packages to test Cursor code editor. Cursor is an AI code editor company. Apparently, if you installed any of those packages they would collect data about your system without informing the user

Google Search Market Share Dips Below 90%
Not by much, but still newsworthy, since it’s not happened since many many years. Google’s global search market share has fallen below 90% for the first time since 2015, according to Statcounter, with drops in Asia and the US contributing to the decline, sparking speculation about a possible trend of users moving to other search engines.

Indonesia Plans To Ban Social Media For Certain Age Groups
Indonesia, with its 280 million population and 79.5% internet penetration, is planning to ban social media for certain age groups, following in the footsteps of Australia and the UK, in an effort to protect children in the digital space, as announced by Communications Minister.

Threads - Community Notes feature now available in testing, allowing users to provide additional context to potentially inaccurate or confusing posts.

WhatsApp - New features include double-tap to react, easy access to favorite emojis, photo effects, and stickers, as well as personalized chat backgrounds and custom sticker creation.

New Section! Every Wednesday we will have this section (in place of Trending Code section). Please give us feedback on this. You can reply to any of our emails to reach out to us.

CSSBattle’s LEARN - The first ever gamified CSS course.

Kinesis - Easily create interactive animations for your web applications.

Rooms[dot]xyz - Made by ex-Googler’s, this app has 1 million users, and recently received funding from, well, Google itself! Have fun creating 3D rooms. Therapeutic if you ask us.

How To Set Boundaries And Stop People-Pleasing Work
Discover the four common people-pleasing archetypes, including validation seekers and invisible martyrs, and learn strategies to overcome them, such as setting clear boundaries, practicing assertive communication, and embracing failures as opportunities for growth.

Optimizing Your Brain For Coding
Learn techniques rooted in cognitive science to improve how you learn and think about code, including mastering new programming languages, speed reading, and writing readable code, as explained in "The Programmer's Brain" book.

Why Serverless Adoption Is Slower Than Expected
Serverless computing, pioneered by AWS Lambda, remains underwhelming in adoption rates despite its promise of scalability and cost-effectiveness, with only 3-7% growth among major cloud providers, as tech industry still grapples with post-microservices fatigue and concerns over tooling and infrastructure maturity.