🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #230

Monday's calling - let's answer with enthusiasm!

#Siri - So Apple's Siri team is having a major meltdown, and their boss Robby Walker is trying to calm them down, calling the delay "ugly" and "embarrassing". Apparently, they're behind schedule, and those promised AI features? Yeah, they're not happening anytime soon. 🕰️

#CopyrightLaw - OpenAI is trying to get the US government to give it free rein on data and copyright rules so it can train its AI models without worrying about getting sued, but experts are warning that this is a slippery slope that could have major consequences for the economy and legal system. 🧑🏾‍⚖️

#VSCode - So, Mattia Astorino's extensions were taken down from VSCode Marketplace due to security risks, but it turns out it was all a big misunderstanding. Microsoft apologized and reinstated the extensions, and it's all good now. 🙇‍♀️

Urban Company Launches 15-minute Insta Maid Service
Urban Company is a popular Indian gig economy startup that offers home services like cleaning, maintenance and repairs. They just launched a new service that promises to deliver a maid at your doorstep within 15 minutes of booking, sparking a mix of excitement and skepticism on the internet.

Rapido To Enter Food Delivery Market
Rapido is India's leading ride-hailing company that started as a bike-taxi platform in 2015. It's now planning to enter the food delivery business, challenging market leaders Zomato and Swiggy, by offering a different commission structure and leveraging its existing two-wheeler fleet.

Flipkart's Super[dot]Money Overtakes Cred To Become 5th Largest UPI Player
Flipkart's payment app Super[dot]money has just become the 5th largest UPI player in the country, pushing CRED to 6th place. UPI is a payment system that allows instant transactions between banks, and it's been growing rapidly. Flipkart is an e-commerce company, and Super[dot]money is their payment app.

India Orders Probe Into Uber, Ola's Alleged iPhone Price Hike
India's government is investigating if Uber and Ola charge iPhone users more due to "differential pricing", after complaints & a viral post. Companies deny, but the government is seeking further probe.

Apple And Google To Offer End-to-end Encryption For Cross-platform Text Messages
The GSMA published new specs for Rich Communication Services (RCS) that include support for E2EE, enabling secure messaging between iPhones and Android devices, a feature that's been available on iMessage since 2011, but only for iOS devices, and on WhatsApp since 2016, but only between WhatsApp users.

Steam Spring Sale 2025 Kicks Off
Valve launches its annual Steam Spring Sale. Seven days of discounts on everything from indie games to AAA blockbusters. Deep Discounts section also back in action.

Reddit - Introduced "Report Ad" feature, allowing users to report ads that violate platform policies and block the advertiser for a year.

Facebook - Earn money from public Facebook Stories through the Content Monetization program.

Alexa - Discontinues "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" feature, which means your voice could now be sent to Alexa’s servers for further data processing.

Google Assistant - Replaced by Gemini as the default digital assistant, with forced migration for all users later this year.

Notepad - Added AI-powered "Summarize" feature to condense selected text and "Recent Files" option to reopen closed documents.

Evolving Agents | Evolving agents is a production-grade environment for orchestrating, evolving, and managing AI agents

Spacetime Db | Multiplayer at the speed of light

Sidekick | A native macOS app that allows users to chat with a local LLM that can respond with information from files, folders and websites on your Mac without installing any other software.

Optimizing React Performance Without Memoization
In this article, you'll learn how to improve React performance by understanding its rendering model and composition patterns. Discover how moving state down and using children as props can simplify your code and reduce unnecessary re-renders, making your app more efficient and scalable.

Demystifying Web Extensions: A Beginner's Guide
Chen Hui Jing explains the basics of web extensions, including the manifest.json file, and discusses the controversy surrounding version 3 (v3) syntax, in the context of the Web Monetization standard and the Interledger Foundation.

Terminal Frustrations
A survey of 1600 terminal users, mostly experienced developers, reveals top frustrations: remembering syntax, switching terminals, color issues, keyboard shortcuts, and copy/paste problems.