Devika

Too literal to be funny. Tinkering @GoogleLabs.

[Google @Google]

At #GoogleIO, we shared a new experiment that's bringing better and more immersive group meetings to Google Beam, our true-to-life video communication platform. See what’s new:

🏢 Using HP Dimension's immersive display, Google Beam renders participants joining from non-Beam devices in their true size, positioned as if they were sitting around the table with you.
🔈 Spatial audio that anchors each voice directly to the person speaking, so everyone looks, sounds and feels like they are in the same room.
🤝 A deep network of partners, including @HP, @GoogleWorkspace and @Zoom.

[Dan Hockenmaier @danhockenmaier]

Four types of people at every company now

yes, people get 10x better when the go from bottom right to top right

but also, people get 10x worse when they go from bottom left to top left

[Devika @dev1ka]

A real challenge I'm facing as a product builder is preventing "Product Slop"

In the rush to ship AI, it’s easy to confuse velocity with quality. Just because you’re building fast doesn't mean you're building right.

Stay safe out there, builders.

[Devika @dev1ka]

Using Claude Code to build a simple app for a high context problem. It's been thinking for 40 min... I worry I may have wasted too many of Earth's precious resources. Feeding it a one pager would have been faster.

[Devika @dev1ka]

Friendly reminder for those tinkering with personalized bots 🦞 🤖

I recently did an audit and realized just how many "temporary" screenshots of passwords and plain-text credentials were still sitting in Photos/Drive from years ago.

If you're giving an AI agent access to your world, take 10 minutes today to scrub your notes and photos for sensitive data. Move that data to a secure vault and keep your shared context clean.

[Devika @dev1ka]

💯

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

the trick is to remember you’re alive at the exact moment the age of AI is turning on.

you're not watching it from the sidelines, you're not reading about it years later etc

you're actually here, with access, tools, and a blank canvas at the greatest shift in history to ship your ideas.

every big shift creates a new set of incumbents.
every big shifts creates a new set of legends
every big shifts creates winners and losers.

make money if you want. make art if you want. make impact if you want. ideally all three.

this is an ultra rare moment where the rules are loose, the map is unfinished, and the upside is wide open.

[Devika @dev1ka]

Have they not been to Bangalore?

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

Worst traffic congestion.

1. 🇺🇸 NY City
2. 🇲🇽 Mexico City
3. 🇬🇧 London
4. 🇫🇷 Paris
5. 🇺🇸 Chicago
6. 🇹🇷 Istanbul
7. 🇺🇸 Los Angeles
8. 🇺🇸 Boston
9. 🇿🇦 Cape Town
10. 🇮🇩 Jakarta
11. 🇺🇸 Miami
12. 🇦🇺 Brisbane
13. 🇺🇸 Philadelphia
14. 🇹🇭 Bangkok
15. 🇮🇹 Rome
16. 🇮🇪 Dublin

(INRIX)

[Devika @dev1ka]

Full article: https://t.co/nhnNVrGtXV

[Devika @dev1ka]

My mantra to not burning out after spending over a decade in the tech industry?

Balancing my energy by pairing a draining task with an energizing one.

[Josh Woodward @joshwoodward]

Meet our most beautiful update for Video Overviews yet, now helping people understand complex topics in 6 new styles

(My favorite style is Retro Print!)

[Devika @dev1ka]

Are robots finally learning to really think and act in our world? 🤔 My latest piece dives into Google's Gemini Robotics 1.5, exploring how this dual-model architecture is ushering in a new era for physical AI.
https://t.co/J2Odeo9xUW

[Devika @dev1ka]

I'm delighted by the Adventure Outlook Calendar on @AccuWeather - it basically tells you which days ideal for hiking, fishing, etc.

It's the kind of feature that ends up below the cut line because you don't know whether anyone will use it. Well, I just did.

The subtle ad integration in the background is also super sleek.

[Devika @dev1ka]

Honest work

Walking home from honest work,
Past the buildings, same old smirk.
Golden hour, a final flash,
The sky's a bruised and purple slash.

The birds are singing their last sound,
Before they hit the sleepy ground.
There stands the bridge I know so well,
The same view that I see from my working cell. 

It carries weight and souls of many,
Someone hustling to make a penny.
A parent running to their kid's embrace,
Another starting a midnight pace.

And I always thought I would walk this street,
A slow, familiar, daily beat.
But something shifted, soft and deep,
A promise the city could not keep.

The perfect sky of September's blush,
It is not the same, in this sudden hush.
Feels like it is the final mile,
Like my last, tired, goodbye smile.

Because a literal tariff is on my dreams,
Taking me apart at the seams.
And that is not a bill I am going to pay,
Not for all the honest work in the world today.

[Devika @dev1ka]

My plans for the weekend...

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

2) THINK BIG. Read about the universe. Nothing makes hatred seem more ridiculous than internalizing how vast time and space are. Doing so makes me want to turn to anyone who will listen and hug them and say, “We both exist! On the same tiny planet at the same exact time! Hi!”

[Devika @dev1ka]

@morganhousel Thank you for keeping us grounded. 🙏🏼

[Devika @dev1ka]

Go Chrome! 🎡

[Chrome @googlechrome]

ICYMI: We just announced some exciting AI features coming to Chrome 🦖 See all the highlights from Behind the Browser: AI Edition now.

Watch here: https://t.co/FX5i4gVi7e

[Devika @dev1ka]

Can't wait for this!

[Google AI @GoogleAI]

🧵5/5 In the coming months, we’ll be introducing agentic capabilities to Gemini in Chrome so it can handle those tedious tasks that take up so much of your time, like booking a haircut or ordering your weekly groceries. You tell Gemini what you want to get done, and it can take action on web pages on your behalf while you focus on other things. It can be stopped at any time so you’re in control.

[Raiza Martin @raizamrtn]

We did Google I/O back to back years with NotebookLM and both nights before the show I literally didn’t sleep.

The first year of I/O (2023) we were going to live demo Notebook (Project Tailwind) and announce it to the world. Google Labs was fairly unknown and this was our one of the first real apps we were putting out there.

The night before the big day, my sixteen-year-old dog had a stroke and he had to be put down and I spent all night simultaneously crying but I still kept testing the demo 1 million times because it was the first time anyone would see Notebook in public.

During the show, I was terrified that the app would crash, take too long, or output the wrong thing. The team had spent literal weeks thinking about the best query to use to showcase the capabilities while mitigating for the risks, on top of making sure the app actually worked despite being a team of only 5 people.

In real life idk who even watches these things except for tech people and journalists, but at the time it was so important to me that we give Notebook a real shot at existing that even though I was so devastated about my dog I somehow made it to Shoreline Amphitheater that morning. It felt so surreal to be there, no sleep, puffy and swollen gross face, but I needed to see this through.

It was, all in all, maybe 30 seconds of suspended animation when Josh came on stage to demo it. I watched him type the query, held my breath, and waited for the response.

In the end it ended up working out. We got some pretty good coverage that was positive and Notebook was officially born. But the most important part was that the team was just ELECTRIC after that - like wow a small team like us, we pulled it off! We really did it! And that momentum just snowballs. It’s easier to win when you feel like you’re winning.

I’m telling you this because it really sucks to do live demos. Lots of people pull together to make them real and it takes a real lot of guts to do it. To go up there and know that it can fail even though you stayed up several nights in a row to make sure it would work. So whenever someone does a live demo I actually don’t care all that much if they work or not, I just think about all those people that pulled together to make it real and I’m really proud of all of them and their hard work.

Good on Meta for doing live demos. That’s the way to go.

[Devika @dev1ka]

IPO kar lo yaar...

[jaivardhan @jaivardhan88]

NEW: Flipkart Internet, the B2B arm of Walmart-owned firm, reported a 14% YoY rise in revenue, crossing the Rs 20,000 Cr mark in the fiscal year ending March 2025. The Bengaluru-based firm also reduced its losses by 37%, bringing them below Rs 1,500 Cr.

1/2 via @entrackr