🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #291

Happy Tuesday! You're halfway to the weekend! Well, almost halfway!

#FibreOpticsInTheWild - Scientists have observed something straight out of a dystopian movie - in the war torn regions of Ukraine. With drone warfare pushed to the limit, birds in the region seem to be building nests out of - fibre optic cables! These cables, intended to control drones but left in the fields after achieving their target or falling short of it, seem to have been picked up by nature for interior and exterior decoration!

WWDC 2025 - Day 1 Highlights
Apple’s WWDC 2025 conference kicked off yesterday and here’s a summary of all the announcements made - New Glass UI, New iOS 26 (version naming will now be year based) are some of the major updates.

Rip Bill Atkinson: Apple Engineer Behind Macintosh Dies
Bill Atkinson, an engineer who played a key role in the development of the Macintosh and other landmark Apple products, has died of pancreatic cancer. Atkinson, who was 74, eventually became passionate about nature photography and, when he was diagnosed with cancer last year, wrote on Facebook that he had “already led an amazing and wonderful life.”

Youtube Cracks Down On Ad Blockers Again
It’s back! The cat and mouse game between YouTube and Ad Blockers. YouTube has started showing page overlays instructing users to turn off their ad blockers - with annoying timers that restrict when these overlays can be closed - going so far as to give limited views per day to their users till they turn off their ad blockers!

YouTube - Relaxed moderation policies to allow content in the "public interest" to remain on the platform even if it violates rules.

Quarkdown | Markdown with superpowers — from ideas to presentations, articles and books.

Lingo Dev | Open-source, AI-powered i18n toolkit for instant localization with LLMs. Bring your own LLM or use its own engine.

Local Network Access | A proposal to restrict sites from accessing a users' local network without permission

How AWS Uses Formal Methods To Ensure Systems Correctness
This article discusses how Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses formal methods to ensure the correctness of its critical services. It highlights the use of formal specification languages like TLA+ and P, and how these methods have helped identify and eliminate bugs, improve performance, and increase confidence in systems correctness. The article also explores the evolution of AWS's correctness practices and how formal methods have become a key part of its development process.

Product Documentation Essentials
PostHog co-founder debunks common misconceptions about writing docs, emphasizing their importance for user adoption and providing practical tips on creating effective documentation, including starting with basic guides and iterating through feedback.

Search Params As State
Search param schemas are global, serializable, and shareable, but they're still hacked together with string parsing, loose conventions, and brittle utils. There’s no inference, no connection to the route itself, and it falls apart the moment you want to add more types, defaults, transformations, or structure. TanStack Router solves this holistically. Instead of spreading logic across your app, you define it inside the route.