Thursday is your day to make big moves - let's do it!
Geek Gossip
#MicrosoftCopilot - Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat has been summarizing emails labeled “confidential” Even when data loss prevention policies were configured to prevent it!
Latest Updates
Indian AI Lab Sarvam Unveils New Generation Of AI Models
Indian AI startup Sarvam, a relatively new player in the AI space, has just released a new lineup of large language models that are designed to be smaller, more efficient, and tailored to local languages and use cases, aiming to compete with bigger US and Chinese rivals.
Google Unveils The Pixel 10a
A mid-range smartphone from Google's A series lineup, competing with other Android devices in the same price segment, with a focus on camera features and battery life.
Changelog
Gemini - Added SynthID watermark to all AI-generated tracks and expanded verification capabilities to include audio, image, and video.
OpenAI Sora - Court has ordered OpenAI to stop using the "Cameo" name in its products and features due to user confusion and trademark infringement.
Google's AI Glasses - Introducing Jetpack Compose Glimmer, a new design system for Android extended reality (XR) experiences.
Tech Talk Thursdays
Rashi Agrawal outlines a playbook for shipping AI by focusing on solving business problems instead of chasing hype. She emphasizes securing executive buy-in through financial metrics, building "fusion teams" for velocity, and prioritizing security and governance.
Sameera Jayasoma discusses transforming the Ballerina programming language compiler from a traditional "black box" design into a modern, API-driven architecture. By adopting a "strangler fig" pattern to replace components incrementally, the team resolved performance issues in IDE plugins and enabled meta-programming, ultimately improving developer satisfaction and technical scalability.
Rahul Raja, a Staff Engineer at LinkedIn, details the transition from a legacy search system to a modern "hosted search" infrastructure. The new managed platform uses a "layer cake" machinery to load app-specific logic at runtime, effectively decoupling platform and application code. This shift reduced operational overhead, improved developer velocity, and enabled complex features like global secondary indexing for LinkedIn's Espresso database.
In Case You Missed It
🎁 We now have a dedicated page to list all events. We will be updating this page EVERY WEEK. We will of course be publishing new (and coming-soon) events in this section but for a comprehensive list of events, check the link(s) below:
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FigBuild 2026 is a student-focused online design-athon where university teams use Figma to create thoughtful user-experience projects over a weekend. It emphasizes intentional design, iteration, and clear communication of ideas. The total cash prize pool is USD 30,000, including a USD 10,000 grand prize. More details here.
Miscellaneous
Salary Negotiation Strategies For Software Programmers
When interviewing, delay discussing salary until the company reveals its budget, then provide a data-driven range based on industry standards, citing multiple sources to shift the focus from personal worth to market value.
Uber's Rate Limiting System
Uber develops a distributed rate limiter, GRL, to protect services from traffic overload, using a three-tier feedback loop with local proxies making enforcement decisions, achieving low latency and global scalability.
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