🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #96

Have a great Tuesday morning and an even better day ahead!

#Telegram - Did you hear who's trying to turn things around after getting arrested? CEO of Telegram. He's talking about removing some features, adding new ones, and trying to improve moderation. Sounds like he's trying to clean up his app's image after all the scandals!

#WhatsApp - Security researcher Tal Be’ery discovered a bug in WhatsApp’s “View Once” feature. The feature allows users to exchange pictures and videos that disappear soon after opening. Be'ery was able to capture and save a copy of a picture that TechCrunch sent as ‘View Once,’ while he was using WhatsApp on the web.

#PlayStation - Mark Cerny's going live on PlayStation tomorrow at 8am PT to give us a technical presentation about the PS5 Pro (Well, they did not say that was what it is for, but we have a strong hunch abou tit)! He was the one who revealed PS5 specs but, honestly, those teasers had me freaking out with the design, girl! It's gonna be a 9-minute show, can't wait to see what's inside that box!

#Duolingo - Apparently, the icon for the app (the owl) in Mobile devices has become very ugly and has snot dripping from its nose. “Duo is quite literally sick of reminding everyone to do their lessons,” a Duolingo spokesperson said in an email. “But don’t worry. His symptoms aren’t contagious, as long as learners keep their streaks going.”. What a “sick” way to do marketing!

Zepto Eyes IPO in 2025 Amidst Relocation to India and Strong Fundraising Momentum
Quick commerce unicorn Zepto is in talks with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Axis Capital for an IPO around August 2025. The plan involves relocating its HQ to India and aims to raise $450 million via fresh share issuance.

Pakistan's Internet Firewall Spurs Tech Industry Backlash Amid Economic Concerns
Pakistan's new internet firewall has slowed speeds by 40%, stifling the tech industry and deterring investors. Entrepreneurs fear it mimics China's approach but lacks the infrastructure, risking further isolation and economic loss.

Humanify | Deobfuscate Javascript code using ChatGPT

Jimp | An image processing library written entirely in JavaScript for Node, with zero external or native dependencies.

JavaScript Errors Demystified
In this article, you will learn about the six most common JavaScript errors, including SyntaxError, ReferenceError, TypeError, RangeError, URIError, and InternalError. Each error is explained, along with its causes, how to spot them, and most importantly, how to fix them. You will also get to learn about real-life scenarios, probable solutions, and best practices to avoid these common errors in coding.

Influencing Without Authority
You must influence teams of engineers if you want to grow to Staff. As you scale yourself past smaller collaborations, your tactics must change. Backchannel alignment is a repeatable way to get buy-in from larger groups without authority. It involves shoping your idea around to stakeholders in smaller groups first, gathering feedback, and addressing it until they are onboard. This tactic has many advantages, including a warmer cold start, a feedback loop, and leveraging social proof.

AI-Powered Web Scraper
OpenAI’s new structured outputs feature in the API allowed this author to try out an AI-assisted web scraper. They used GPT-4o to extract data from an HTML string. The model is able to retrieve individual columns (as instructed by the system prompt) but they don’t have the same size, hence, they’re unable to represent the data as a table.