🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #226

Tuesday - the day to power up and make things happen!

#Chromecast - Google’s Chromecast's having a major meltdown, with old devices displaying "Untrusted device" errors and people freaking out that they're being bricked, even though Google says they're still getting updates, but let's be real, it's probably just a matter of time before they're discontinued too. 📺

#ChinaCensorship - A former Facebook global policy director claims the company built a censorship system in hopes to be allowed to operate in China. Apparently they built a censorship system to try and get back in the country's good books, and even considered letting the government access user data, yikes! 👎

KITU Protests For Better Work-life Balance In IT Sector
KITU (Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union) is a labor union advocating for workers' rights in the Indian IT sector. Today, over 100 techies gathered in Bengaluru to protest for a healthy work-life balance, criticizing industry giants for exploiting workers and urging government intervention to enforce labor laws on working hours and overtime pay.

India Proposes Sweeping Powers For Tax Authorities
India's government has proposed a tax bill that would give tax authorities the power to access private email systems and applications, sparking concerns over warrantless surveillance.

Musk's X Suffers Widespread Outage
X seems to be having a bad start to the week. Across the world, users are reporting they are unable to post any tweets while others are unable to access the website itself.

Manus, A New AI Agent From China Is Going Viral—and Raising Big Questions
a new AI agent from China just launched and it's making huge waves in the tech community. The company, Manus, created an autonomous AI agent that can analyze, plan, and execute complex tasks on its own, and it's getting rave reviews from industry leaders. They're calling it the "AI agent we were promised" and saying it's like having weeks of work done in hours.

Government Vs Google: Battle Over Breakup Remedies
US Department of Justice has changed its ask of breaking up Google in the AI domain, but continues to insist that Google needs to sell of its Chrome product.

Google - Renames "Gemini Extensions" to "apps" and updates model picker on homescreen.

Probly | An AI-powered spreadsheet application that combines spreadsheet functionality with Python data analysis capabilities.

Justd | Justd is a chill set of React components, built on top of React Aria Components and Tailwind CSS. Easy to customize and just copy & paste into your React projects.

Agents Json | An open specification that formally describes contracts for API and agent interactions, built on top of the OpenAPI standard.

Mastering Advanced Git Techniques
This article will teach you lesser-known Git commands and configurations that can save you time and effort. You'll learn how to rapidly navigate between branches, find the exact piece of code that introduced a bug, and trace the history of a function or variable through time.

Succinct Data Structures 101
Meet succinct data structures, a field in computer science that emerged in the last 25 years, enabling compact data storage with useful properties, without needing decompression. A tour of bit vectors, rank/select bit vectors, and more, with a focus on Rust implementations.

Why VCs Ghost Founders
Venture capitalists share reasons for ghosting founders, citing scarce time, rapid industry growth, and prioritization of promising startups; tips for founders include showing self-awareness, realistic expectations, and a clear growth plan (Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hustle Fund).