🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #299

Happy Friday! The weekend is here - let's finish strong!

#Threads-Or-Twitter - Users of Threads found themselves in a familiar place - an echo chamber! Although their feed would contain posts from different users, the posts themselves would be the same! A bug in production that could have been caught in QA if you ask us.

Amazon Invests $233m In India Ops
Amazon announced a $233M investment in their India business to enhance delivery infrastructure, tools, and employee well-being, aiming to deliver to all pin-codes in the country.

Wix Acquires Base44, Expanding Into Vibe Coding With AI-powered Platform
Just another acquisition? Think again. Base44 started only 6 months ago! By a 31 yr old! Plain impressive!

Microsoft To Lay Off Thousands More Employees
Microsoft is reportedly planning to lay off thousands of workers next month. This reduction in workforce will primarily affect sales teams, but they won't be the only ones affected. It's currently unclear how many employees will be impacted by this change.

SpaceX Starship Explodes During Static Fire Test
SpaceX were about to do a static fire test, but there was a huge explosion at their test site in Texas. Luckily, everyone is safe, but the cause of the explosion is still unknown. This isn't the first time they've had an explosion during testing, but SpaceX says it's investigating and will make sure the area is safe.

Honda Conducts Successful Launch and Landing Test of Experimental Reusable Rocket
Honda successfully launched and landed its own reusable rocket. The rocket flew for almost a full minute and reached an altitude of 890 feet before landing within 14 inches of its target.

Microsoft Excel - Enhanced Copilot integration with smarter context awareness and visual highlighting for improved query accuracy.

YouTube - Integration with Google's Veo 3 AI video generator for creating short-form content in YouTube Shorts.

Facebook - Added support for passkeys, allowing users to log in using their device's authentication method for enhanced security.

S5cmd | Parallel S3 and local filesystem execution tool.

Markdown Ninja | Markdown-first CMS for bloggers, minimalists and startups. Open Source alternative to Substack, Mailchimp and Netlify

Chatterbox | SoTA open-source TTS

Expert Generalists In Software Development
Embracing a broader skillset, companies like Thoughtworks value "Expert Generalists" over specialists. These individuals possess a deep understanding of core concepts and patterns, with the ability to adapt to new languages and tools.

How Open Source Propelled Posthog's Success
PostHog credits its open-source model for its growth, citing benefits such as differentiation from competitors, successful launch, and attracting talent. The company shares its open-source credentials, including publicly available code on GitHub, and highlights the advantages of being open source, including transparency and community support.