🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #243

Thursday is here - let's finish the week with purpose!

#Wikimedia - Wikimedia's Site Reliability team is having a meltdown, constantly fighting off rogue AI crawlers that ignore the rules, and it's taking a toll on their resources, meanwhile developer Xe Iaso is getting creative with code protection, and Wikimedia's warning is clear: free access doesn't mean free ride.

Bajaj Auto Reclaims Top Spot In Electric Two-wheeler Market
Bajaj Auto makes the Chetak scooter, Ola Electric is an EV-maker led by Bhavish Aggarwal, and TVS Motor is another key player in the electric two-wheeler segment. Bajaj Auto has regained the top spot in the E2W market with 34,868 units sold in March, while Ola Electric fell to third place due to regulatory inquiries and sales data discrepancies.

Thunderbird Expands Beyond Email
Mozilla's open-source email client Thunderbird is expanding into a comprehensive communications platform to counter Google's Gmail and Microsoft Office 365. The team is developing adjacent services, including a scheduling tool, file sharing, and AI-powered assistance, to create a 100% open-source alternative ecosystem.

Amazon Makes Surprise Bid For Tiktok
Amazon has submitted a bid to acquire all of TikTok, according to a new report. The last-minute bid comes as TikTok faces an April 5 deadline to shed its Chinese ownership.

China Enters "Flying Taxi" Era
Authorities in China have issued the first permits for autonomous passenger drones. This marks the country’s push for pilotless air travel, revolutionising short-distance urban transportation.

Netflix - More languages now available for a title when watching on TV.

Open AI Academy - Expands library of on-demand content and introduces in-person AI literacy workshops in partnership with higher education institutions and workforce organizations.

Microsoft Word - Document summarization capabilities upgraded to support files up to 3,000 pages, with new summary size options

Claude - Introduces Learning mode, a new interactive feature that guides users to solutions and employs the Socratic method to foster deeper understanding.

How Deep Research Works | Mukund Sridhar & Aarush Selvan | Google DeepMind - Google's Gemini Deep Research aims to revolutionize personal research by streamlining time-consuming tasks like investment analysis or trip planning. This talk explores its development, key insights, and future vision for AI-powered research assistants, enhancing productivity and reducing reliance on endless Chrome tabs.

Demystifying Privacy Preserving Computing | Tejas Chopra - The host delves into the importance of safeguarding personal data in today's digital landscape. He explores various techniques, such as differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and federated learning, that enable data analysis without compromising individual privacy.

Leveraging LLMs in DevOps | Ajay Krishnan Prabhakaran | Conf42 DevOps 2025 - The host discusses integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into DevOps workflows. He outlines the benefits of LLMs in automating tasks, enhancing code quality, and streamlining operations. Prabhakaran also addresses challenges and best practices for effectively implementing LLMs in DevOps environments

Implementing A Simple Undo/redo Stack
Learn how to create a simple undo/redo stack for UIs, understanding the concepts of undo stacks and version histories, and implementing a JavaScript solution using two stacks (undoStack and redoStack) to avoid indexing issues and ensure idempotent doFn and undoFn functions.

Github Actions For Open Source
Automate tedious tasks with GitHub Actions. Free up time for community building and coding. Examples include Stale for cleaning up backlogs, Super-Linter for code reviews, and Release Drafter for generating release notes. Here are 5 Github Actions that every maintainer needs to know.

13 Essential Laws For Software Engineers
Learn about Parkinson's Law, Hofstadter's Law, Brooks' Law, and more, and how they impact software development, project management, and team productivity.