🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #338

Thursday is here - let's finish the week with purpose!

#BrowserBattle - Perplexity, itself valuated at around $16-18 billion, made a formal offer to Google’s Chrome browser. (it wasn’t on sale) - for twice their own evaluation - around $34 billion!!

Paytm Gets RBI Approval
Paytm, a leading Indian fintech company, has received approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to sign up new online merchants, a move that will boost its growth and revenue. This approval comes after nearly two years of restrictions, and it means Paytm can now expand its payment services across India and attract new customers and merchants.

India Approves 4 New Semiconductor Projects
The Indian government, through the India Semiconductor Mission, has approved four new semiconductor projects worth around Rs 4,600 crore, expected to create 2,034 skilled jobs. These projects aim to boost India's semiconductor industry, which has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential to drive innovation and growth in the country.

Threads Surpasses 400 Million Monthly Active Users
Meta's Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that Threads has reached 400 million monthly active users, just two years after its launch as a competitor to Twitter, with a significant increase of 50 million users in the past quarter.

Kodak Files For Bankruptcy
Kodak is a 133-year-old photography company that revolutionized the industry. Kodak has warned investors that it may cease operations due to a $500 million loan it can't pay off.

Perplexity Finance - Perplexity has now expanded their finance offerings to India

Anthropic - Increased context window for Claude AI model to 1 million tokens, allowing for longer and more complex prompts.

LinkedIn - Introduces 16 new animated celebration animations for professional announcements.

GitHub Copilot - Now supports GPT-5, OpenAI's latest frontier model, with faster responses and improved code writing and understanding capabilities.

ChatGPT - Added support for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts Connectors, allowing for seamless integration and reference of these services in conversations.

Tanmai Gopal | Automation that actually works: $100M, messy data, zero surprises - Here’s an interesting video from Hasura - the GraphQL engine’s CEO about PromptQL - They start off by talking about a healthcare company that saved $100 million - By empowering non-technical staff to build their own AI. Discover PromptQL, the revolutionary platform that turns natural language into powerful automation.

Naga Murali Krishna Koneru | Seeing Through the Chaos of Modern Systems - An observability expert demystifies OpenTelemetry, the open-source framework that's revolutionizing how we monitor modern applications. Learn how to tame the chaos of microservices and gain true visibility into your system's health.

Effective Code Reviews
Good reviews focus on maintainability, extensibility, and the bigger picture, not just syntax and style. Experienced developers must consider the entire system, including documentation, tests, and data types.

State Of CSS 2025 Survey Results Are Out
Don’t want to read the entire thing? A summary - Many developers remain hesitant to adopt new CSS features, but growing browser support and user satisfaction make them increasingly viable.

Git Celebrates 20 Years
Linus Torvalds' open-source VCS revolutionized software development, replacing painful SCM systems like CVS and SVN.