🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #195

Monday magic is in the air, let's grab it!

#UnskippableAds - Google's cracking down on ad blockers with ridiculously long, unskippable ads - we're talking up to an hour long! Some users are getting these crazy-long ads, possibly because their ad blockers are detected, and it's like Google's way of saying, "Hey, pay for Premium or put up with this!"

#DevinAI - Devin, the "AI software engineer" that's supposed to revolutionize the tech industry, is actually a total dud. It fails at its job 85% of the time and gets stuck in technical dead-ends. Its creators claim it can "build and deploy apps end to end", but it can't even deploy an app to a platform called Railway.

#WorkforceUpskilling - Indian companies are throwing money at tech but forgetting about the people using it, major imbalance in training and upskilling, guess that explains why only half of leaders are ready for AI disruptions.

#ThreadsAdvertising - Threads, a social network, is adding ads to its feed. The company is testing the feature in the U.S. and Japan. Many users are unhappy with the move.

Reliance Industries To Build World's Largest Data Centre In India With Nvidia's Help
Reliance Industries is planning to build the world’s largest data centre in India. The dream project will be located in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Reliance Industries and NVIDIA announced a joint attempt to build AI infrastructure in India during a chat session in October 2024.

Wingify Acquired By Everstone For $200 Million
Wingify, a Delhi-based SaaS software provider, has been acquired by Everstone. The private equity firm will acquire a majority stake in Wingify for about $200 million. Founder Paras Chopra, who owns a 71% stake in the company, says it is an impressive exit.

Samsung, Google Partner On AR Glasses
Samsung and Google are partnering up to build Augmented Reality glasses - basically like smart goggles that show you digital info in real life.

Brave Search - Rerank feature added, allowing users to define search results ordering preferences and set specific sites to rank higher.

Google Search - Mobile search results will now only display domain names in URLs, hiding breadcrumb trails.

OpenAI - Introduced Operator AI agent, a cloud-based AI assistant that can perform tasks on the web, currently available to ChatGPT Pro users in the US and rolling out to ChatGPT Plus users in more regions soon.

Snapchat - Introduces Challenge Tags rewards program for AR developers with cash prizes and introduces educational pricing for Spectacles.

Substack - Launches Creator Accelerator Fund, a $20 million funding guarantee to help creators transfer to the platform and grow their audience.

Google - Introduced Chrome Web Store for Enterprises, enabling organizations to create a curated list of extensions for employee browser installation.

Threads - Added scheduling feature to composer, allowing users to plan and schedule posts in advance, as well as expanded Insights metrics for tracking performance.

Instagram - Now allows users to send high-quality images in direct messages with an optional HD feature.

JetBrains - Introduced Junie, an AI coding agent that automates routine development tasks and integrates with JetBrains IDEs to improve code quality and speed up development.

React Nil | A react null renderer

AI Crash Course | AI Crash Course to help busy builders catch up to the public frontier of AI research in 2 weeks

VSCode Pets | Adds playful pets in your VS Code window

Food Startup Founder's Low Point
An Indian Food startup founder shares struggles from leaving a top job to starting a Salad company, now fearing for the first time in 6 years due to next month's projections in India's competitive food delivery landscape.

Job Hopping: A Double-edged Sword
Advice for new programmers: job hopping can boost early career growth, but may hinder progress at higher levels due to loss of credibility and domain-specific knowledge, slowing influence and impact.