🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #58

Happy Thursday morning! It's a perfect day to reach your goals.

#NewSchoolInTown - Andrej Karpathy, the brains behind OpenAI, is starting an AI+Education company called Eureka Labs. The company is building a new kind of school that is AI native. The teacher still designs the course materials, but they are supported, leveraged and scaled with an AI Teaching Assistant.

#RegulatoryRuckus - Meta says it won't release its next multimodal AI model in the European Union. The move sets up a showdown between Meta and EU regulators. It highlights a growing willingness among U.S. tech giants to withhold products from European customers due to European Unions strict regulations.

#TheEyeIsAlwaysWatching - Amazon's on a mission to stop its staff from pulling a Houdini act! They're cracking down on 'coffee badging'—you know, those quick badge-in, grab-a-coffee, and vanish routines. Employees need to clock in real hours or risk a not-so-friendly chat with HR. Just in time for Prime Day!

#MetaAtItAgain - Meta’s latest effort on this front is new Meta AI summaries in post comment streams on Facebook. The summaries provide an overview of what people are saying about that update. But they are not likely to add a heap to the Facebook experience.

#NoteWorthyFail - We’ll forgive you for not knowing about a new Google feature that allowed you to attach “notes” to your search results. Even we did not know about it - and now, nobody will know about it - because Google decided to axe this experiment!

NASA Cancels VIPER Rover Project
The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) was a NASA project aimed at exploring the surface of the Moon and searching for water on the lunar surface. Cost increase and several delays have been provided as the reason for abandoning the project

Google Maps Announces India-Specific Pricing Cuts and AI-Focused Efforts
Google Maps announced that it has lowered India-specific pricing reductions for Google Maps Platform API. The move comes days after Ola replaced Google Maps with its in-house Ola Maps.

GitLab Reportedly Seeks Acquisition
GitLab is reportedly looking for a company to acquire it. The company currently has a market value of about $8 billion. No sale has been confirmed yet and any deal is still several weeks away.

Google Enhances Markdown Support in Google Docs
Google introduced support for composing with Markdown in Google Docs on the web in 2022. Today, they're adding new features to make Docs more interoperable with other Markdown tools. You can now convert Markdown to Docs content, copy Docs as Markdown, export Docs as Markdown, and import Markdown as a Doc. This is a game-changer for technical content writers, allowing them to collaborate on software documentation in Docs and export it as Markdown for other tools.

Apple Trains AI Models on YouTube Videos Without Consent
Apple has sourced data for their AI from several companies. One of them scraped tons of data/transcripts from YouTube videos. Apple technically avoids "fault" here because they're not the ones scraping. But this is going to be an evolving problem for a long time.

Flowchart Fun | Easily generate flowcharts and diagrams from text

Awesome Hackathon Projects | A curated list of amazing hackathon projects

Projects Based Learning | Another curated list, this time for tutorials that teach using projects

How to Hack Your Google Lighthouse Scores
This article will help you understand how Google Lighthouse calculates its performance scores, beyond just speed and single metrics. By examining how Lighthouse scores are calculated, we will gain a deeper understanding of web performance and learn how to "hack" scores in their favor.

How to Respond When Stakeholders Question Your Decisions or Misunderstand You
When stakeholders question your decisions or misunderstand you, it's normal to feel frustrated or defensive. However, it's crucial to remember that responding thoughtfully can either diminish or build your credibility. As a high-performing leader, you want to learn how to explain your ideas better and stay calm, sharing your thought process in an objective way.

GitHub Protips
Discover browser extensions, URL hacks, keyboard shortcuts, and more from a seasoned GitHubber. Check out fuzzy file finder, octotree, notifier for github, mention highlighter and more to increase productivity and fun on GitHub.

New Node.js Toolbox
Discover popular and actively maintained libraries in the Node.js ecosystem, categorized by task. Explore categories such as authentication, authorization, benchmarking, and more.

Ghost Jobs on the Rise
The recent surge in ghost jobs, where companies post listings for roles they have no immediate intention of filling, has left many job seekers feeling frustrated and confused. The practice, attributed to factors such as economic uncertainty and hiring freezes, has raised concerns about the accuracy of job market statistics and the impact on candidate morale.