🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #273

Good morning! Let's take on Thursday with confidence!

#LofiGirl - Do you listen to the LoFi girl on YouTube? Chances are that you have at least come across them. Well, Apple has teamed up with Universal Music Group to make the Sound Therapy collection of tracks for Apple Music. The tracks are “designed to help listeners attain clearer focus, deeper relaxation, and better sleep,” Apple says. It appears they may be creating their own version of the LoFi Girl.

#AmazonPrimeVideo - A Reddit user claims to have taken a screenshot of a new warning banner on Amazon Prime Video. The banner purportedly states that "attempting to take screenshots can result in account termination" It is unclear if the screenshot is indeed real or fake as there appear to be no other reports of this.

India Sets Up First 3 Nanometer Chip Design Centres
India's first chip design centres dedicated to developing end-to-end 3 nanometer chips will be built in Noida and Bengaluru. The facilities are set up by the India unit of Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Electronics.

Google Unveils Material Three Expressive, A Bold New Design For Android
Google, a multinational tech giant, just announced a major update to its Android operating system, introducing Material Three Expressive, a fresh and youthful design language that takes the colorful, customizable Material You to the next level with springy animations, bold fonts, and vibrant colors everywhere.

Databricks Acquires Serverless Postgres Provider Neon For $1 Billion
Databricks has announced its plan to acquire Neon, a leading serverless Postgres provider. Neon’s offering is designed to support AI agents, a key element in modern development workflows. The acquisition will help Databricks to provide developers with a serverless, scalable Postgres platform suited for AI applications.

Proton Drive - Introduced Albums for organizing and sharing photos, with features like custom collections, real-time collaboration, and end-to-end encryption.

Google Sheets - Added ability to use Gemini to directly modify spreadsheet data and layout with advanced actions, including creating dropdowns, applying conditional formatting, generating pivot tables, applying filters, and sorting data using natural language prompts.

Android - Enhanced safety and security features, including improved AI-powered Scam Detection, in-call protections, Key Verifier, and revamped Find My Device (now Find Hub) experience.

The Zen of Programming. A personal journey toward writing beautiful code - Sander shares 40+ years of wisdom on writing effective code. Learn to simplify, adapt, and test smarter. Perfect for developers at any level looking to refine their approach. Click to watch and code smarter!

Startup Dev Productivity: Forget Big Tech Best Practices! - Learn how startups and large tech companies approach developer productivity differently. Rachel Potvin shares insights on team structures, planning, and experimentation. Discover how to build a culture that boosts productivity in any environment. Click to watch and level up your team!

Maximizing Productivity With AI
AI is transforming performance expectations, and engineers can use it to automate common tasks, research, and sharpen system design decision-making, as explained by Sophie Novati, CEO at Formation.