🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #298

Thursday is your day to make big moves - let's do it!

#VideoGeneration - ByteDance just dropped a new video generation model that's giving Google's Veo 3 a run for its money, and honestly, it's kind of crushing it - better performance, faster inference, and more consistent visuals, all without a fancy launch event.

#OpenAI - One Hundred Million Dollars. That’s apparently how much Meta tried to lure (poach?) OpenAI’s best talent with! OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree. He says Meta has offered employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind compensation packages worth upwards of $100 million. Altman said he believes Meta’s focus on high compensation packages for employees, rather than the mission of delivering AGI, would likely not create a great culture.

TCS Introduces New Deployment Policy
TCS has introduced a new policy - all employees now need to work on billable projects for at least 225 days a year, with only 35 days of "bench time" allowed. If they don't meet this target, they might face problems with their career advancement and even their job security.

Facebook Reels Update: A New Era For Video Sharing
Facebook announced on Tuesday that all videos on its platform will soon be shared as reels, regardless of their length or orientation. Up until now, users have been able to share both video posts and reels. The company says it will gradually roll out the changes globally over the coming months.

Google - Added support for voice conversations with AI Mode, allowing users to have a back-and-forth dialogue and explore links from across the web.

Meta - Introduces AI-powered video ad creation tool that transforms up to 20 product images into multi-scene video ads with music and text overlays.

From Blind Spots to Insights | Shikha Gurjar | Conf42 O11y 2025 - Turn security blind spots into actionable insights! This talk dives into observable identity systems, showing how they leverage AI, biometrics, and distributed tracing to revolutionize cloud security. Learn to detect sophisticated fraud like deepfakes with 99.99% accuracy, resolve issues 87% faster, and gain real-time insights into your entire verification process. Essential for building secure, modern systems.

Krishnan, Liu, Puri, & Rojas - Build Your Own Data Science AI Agents | PyData Virginia 2025 - Ready to automate your entire data science workflow? This hands-on tutorial guides you through building a team of AI agents using LangChain and LangGraph. Watch as they collaborate to perform data analysis, build predictive models, and even generate a final PowerPoint presentation. Go beyond simple scripts and learn how to orchestrate intelligent agents for end-to-end automation!

Dead Torrent Trackers Revived: A Look Into The World Of Bittorrent
A developer's experiment with reviving dead BitTorrent trackers reveals a surprising number of clients attempting to connect, highlighting the protocol's centralization issue and the importance of decentralized alternatives like Mainline DHT.

JPEG's Rise To Dominance
The JPEG format became the web's primary image format due to its ability to degrade more gracefully than GIFs, retaining image quality. Developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group with input from dozens of stakeholders, JPEG's documented standard and committee-led roots contributed to its ubiquity, unlike the de facto standard GIF.