🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #363

One more day until the weekend - happy Thursday!

#CommutingStruggles - An IT logistics company located on Bangalore’s notorious Outer Ring Road (Bellandur) - heart of the IT hub, has decided to move out after 9 years - due to a crumbling infrastructure with potholed roads and over 90 minute of travel time (one way).

#Reddit - Moderators can no longer moderate more than 5 subreddits with more than 100,000 visitors. This will impact a small number of users but these have been behind the popularity of the subreddits and its leading to some controversy about their treatment.

#TouchscreenMac - Apple execs have long said touchscreen Macs would be a silly idea. But a supply chain analyst says the company is testing the idea. The company is also expected to use OLED display panels instead of Mini LED panels.

#Google - What happens when Google is not so sure that you are NOT a bot? A re-captcha? Nah - a creepy request instead to turn on your webcam and - wait for it - show your hands to Google for them to verify!

Groww Aims For Multi-billion-dollar Ipo In Indian Public Markets
Groww, India's largest retail brokerage firm, is set to test the country's public markets with a multi-billion-dollar IPO. The listing comes comes just over a year after the company restructured its corporate headquarters back to India. Groww’s listing — expected later this year — is set. to double as a major exit opportunity for global venture funds.

Rolls-Royce Inaugurates 700-seat GCC
Rolls-Royce is a British luxury car manufacturer that's also a major player in the aerospace industry. They're investing big in India, just opened a massive 700-seat facility in Bengaluru, their largest in the country. The facility will support their global operations and create more jobs in the aerospace sector.

Google Launches New Experimental Search App
Google launched a new app in their experimental Labs section that lets you search for things on your computer without switching windows or interrupting what you're doing. You can use Alt + Space to search for files, apps, Google Drive files, and the web, and even use Google Lens to scan and translate images or text.

Nvidia's AI Chips Banned In China
Chinese tech companies are barred from purchasing Nvidia’s latest AI chips custom-made for China. The Cyberspace Administration of China banned buying and testing the RTX Pro 6000D chips, despite companies having ordered thousands of the chips in the months since their introduction in July.

Google Unveils Ap2 Protocol To Secure Autonomous Agent Transactions
AP2 is an open protocol that enables secure, compliant transactions between agents and merchants, addressing authorization, authenticity, and accountability concerns. It uses tamper-proof digital contracts called Mandates, signed by verifiable credentials, to ensure user intent is accurately reflected in transactions. This protocol will support a wide range of payment types, including credit, debit, stablecoins, and real-time bank transfers, providing a consistent, secure, and scalable experience for users and merchants.

Zoom - Generates photorealistic AI avatars of users for video meetings.

Google - Follow your favorite publishers and creators directly in Discover to see more of their content.

Microsoft Paint - Microsoft is rolling out several new AI-powered features to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad for Windows Insiders.

ChatGPT - Introduces advanced security features to protect user data from internal access and escalates critical risks for human review; implements age-prediction system to separate teens from adults, with stricter rules and parental controls for minors.

Instagram Edits - Convert clips into overlays for new creative options, enhanced transition editing with adjustable speed, and saved sound effects for easy access.

Google Meet - Ask Gemini in Meet feature available for select Google Workspace customers, allowing users to summarize discussions, key takeaways, and decisions in meetings.

Microsoft Learn MCP Server - Connects AI agents directly to trusted, real-time Microsoft product knowledge for faster, more accurate results.

Arati Rana, a Grafana Labs engineer shares her rollercoaster journey of contributing to the Go language for the first time. From getting her work "scooped" to intense code reviews and a reverted PR, it's an honest look at the real challenges and triumphs of becoming an open-source contributor.

It's all about combining different types of AI—like text, vision, and speech—to get a richer, more accurate understanding of the world. By using multiple "senses," these AI models can move beyond simple labels and provide more descriptive, human-like analysis. The video explains how engineers are optimizing these complex models to be more efficient using techniques like Mixture of Experts and quantization, paving the way for smarter applications in areas like generative AI and augmented reality.

Is your digital transformation failing to deliver? Discover how platform engineering can be the "digital backbone" your company needs to finally bridge the gap between ambition and reality. Learn how to break down silos, eliminate duplication, and build a reusable foundation that accelerates innovation and unlocks your true potential.

Creating Effective Onboarding And Reconnection Flows For Smart Devices
Learn how to design user-friendly onboarding and reconnection flows for smart devices, focusing on five key principles: making instructions visual, supporting visuals with text, presenting one task at a time, indicating device responses, giving progress indicators, offering help at every step, and ending with personalization.

Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape
A disposable vape's ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller is repurposed as a web server, leveraging semihosting and a custom IP stack to serve HTTP requests via a USB serial connection.

Liquid Glass Support In Webviews
Apple's WebKit developers are working on iOS 26, which includes support for Liquid Glass. Apple has a custom CSS property named -apple-visual-effect that lets it use Liquid Glass in iOS 26. The feature doesn't work on the web, but it's available in the iOS 26 developer preview.