🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #202

Halfway through the week - happy Wednesday!

#NewAppAlert - Apple just dropped Apple Invites! It’s the chic new app to create custom invites, share RSVPs, photos, and even party playlists. Perfect for making events look effortlessly cool.

#AI-Spam - So, it turns out that AI is being used to submit fake issues to open source repos, and maintainers are freaking out! Jarek Potiuk, a big shot at Apache Airflow, spoke out about it and even called out Outlier AI for teaching people to do it. Apparently, some people thought it was a real exercise and went ahead and submitted fake issues, causing a lot of extra work for maintainers.

#Facebook - Apparently Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring back the old Facebook, trying to lure in some younger users who are obsessed with TikTok.

Ola Founder Unveils Krutrim AI Lab, Invests Rs 2,000 Crore
The Ride Hailing company’s founder announced a Rs 2,000-crore investment in Krutrim, an AI startup that has deployed Chinese startup DeepSeek's AI models on domestic servers to ensure data privacy. Krutrim AI Lab has open-sourced a series of AI models, including language and vision models.

Bengaluru AI Startup Presentations AI secures $3M In Funding
Presentations AI, an Indian AI-driven presentation platform, has secured $3 million in seed funding led by Accel Partners. The Bengaluru-based startup helps companies quickly generate presentation decks using AI and plans to use the funds to scale its software and expand operations.

El Salvador Partially Walks Back Bitcoin Legislation
El Salvador was the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. That was back in 2021. Anyway, they just passed a law that basically takes away bitcoin's status as a legal currency, but it's still considered "legal tender". It's a bit confusing, but basically businesses don't have to accept bitcoin anymore, and you can't use it to pay taxes either. But here's the thing, the government is still investing in bitcoin! They just bought more, and they're holding onto their reserves.

Spotify's First Year Of Profitability Since 2008
Spotify, a popular music streaming service founded in 2008, just reported its first full year of profitability since its launch, with a net profit of €1.14 billion in 2024, driven by an 11% increase in Premium subscribers and a 12% rise in monthly active users, despite two price hikes in the past year.

Gmail - Updated to Material 3 redesign with pill-shaped search bar, bottom tab indicators, and refreshed color scheme featuring blue as the primary accent color.

Snap - Introduction of in-house AI text-to-image model for mobile devices to power features like AI Snaps and AI Bitmoji Backgrounds.

Microsoft Defender - Removing Privacy Protection VPN feature, deprecating secure browsing through public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Firefox - Version 135 is out

Adobe Acrobat - Contract analysis and comparison feature added to AI Assistant.

Opera - New Browser introduced, with a set of mindfulness and focus features, including break reminders, breathing exercises, soundscapes, and binaural beats, along with a new lightweight design language and semi-transparent theming.

Pickle - The actual website is getpickle[dot]ai, but here’s a really cool presentation of it’s feature - using AI as a body double for video calls. The guy in the video is in a zoom call, but physically, not in front of their webcam!

Awesome ShadCN - A curated list of awesome things related to the front end library shadcn/ui

CSS Evolution: A Farewell To SASS?
Learn about the latest advancements in CSS, including native variables, CSS nesting, and container queries, and how they are making Sass increasingly obsolete. Discover how these features, along with cascade layers and pseudo-classes, are changing the face of web design and development.

Electron's Creator Addresses Common Misconceptions
Electron's creator Felix Rieseberg addresses common misconceptions about the platform, arguing it's not a "JavaScript vs Native" choice, but rather a flexible framework for mixing web and native code, citing examples from NASA, Bloomberg, and SpaceX.

Avoiding Feature Flag Faux Pas
Mismanaged feature flags can lead to huge outages, tech debt, and even bankrupt companies. PostHog shares best practices for using flags safely, including separating flag logic from business logic and testing all potential states.