🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #204

Friday's here - let's make the most of the day!

#QuickCommerce - Now, you can get a car delivered to you within minutes of ordering it? Well, it does seem like it - Zepto has teased a reel partnering with Skoda showing a car being delivered in a short time…

#NewAlexa - Amazon sent out five different invites to its upcoming product event. When pieced together, they spell out a familiar word: Alexa, the name of the company’s digital voice assistant. The event is being held on February 26th in New York City. Get ready for what we think will be another LLM wrapper…

#DeepSeek - DeepSeek has taken the world by storm, rising to the top of the App Store. A new report from Feroot Security reveals that if you've signed up for DeepSeek, obfuscated code in the account creation and login process may be sending your information to China Mobile, a Chinese-owned telecommunications company.

Swiggy's Q3 Losses Soar 39% Amid Rapid Expansion
Swiggy just released their Q3 results and their losses went up by 39% due to expanding too fast in the quick commerce space. Their revenue grew by 30%, but their expenses also went up, mostly because of more employees and delivery costs. The company's core food delivery business is doing okay, but its quick commerce segment is taking a hit on profitability due to rapid expansion.

Zomato To Rename Itself As Eternal
Zomato plans to rename itself as Eternal in an effort to make a strategic shift as its quick-commerce unit, Blinkit, becomes a significant driver of growth. Analyst estimate that Blinkit will grow to account for as much as 70% of the group’s value in the coming year.

Google Abandons Diversity Hiring Targets
Google will no longer have diversity hiring targets and will review its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Amazon and Meta have also rolled back DEI measures in the past few months.

ChatGPT Search - No longer requires an OpenAI account to use.

LinkedIn - Enhanced video features, including full-screen video display on desktop, larger video displays in the mobile app, video upload showcases on profiles, more prominent follow options, increased video discovery in search results, and new video analytics.

Gemini - Introduced "Flash Thinking" feature, allowing the app to explain its reasoning when answering complex questions.

Chrome - Added automatic picture-in-picture mode that switches on when switching tabs from a playing audio or video.

Windows Terminal - Introduces a rewritten console host implementation with Sixels support, emoji with zero-width joiners, command snippets, and more, including a new color scheme "Ottosson" and improved settings UI.

Fortune Sheet | A drop-in javascript spreadsheet library that provides rich features like Excel and Google Sheets

Lightpanda | The headless browser designed for AI and automation

Requestly | Intercepting and modifying HTTP Requests. Works directly in browsers without VPN and proxy Issues.

Why Did You Render | Monkey patches React to notify you about potentially avoidable re-renders. (Works with React Native as well.)

Overcoming Disability: Coding By Voice
After experiencing debilitating hand pain, a software engineer turned to voice control tools like Talon and Cursorless to continue coding. They found success with a stripped-down approach, using only a few tools to navigate and interact with code in VSCode, and share their story and advice for others facing similar challenges.

Changed Opinions On Software Development
AWS Engineer reflects on 4-year shift in views on software development, citing simplicity, typed languages, Java, and DynamoDB; opinion changes include importance of management, front-end development woes, and functional programming limitations.

Native Accordions With A Twist
A developer recently discovered a nuance with the native accordion component in HTML, where you can selectively open only one detail at a time.