WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest

Issue 151 - How to tell machines where to look…

WeAreDevelopers World Congress 9-11/7/25 - get 15% off using code devdigest

Hello fellow developer, lots of turmoil this week with social media platforms opening the quality floodgates, an uncertain future for TikTok and the relationship of Europe and the US when it comes to privacy and content moderation. The other avalanche is all the announcements of CES and people pretending to be able to see what 2025 can bring. So let's dig into some technical bits until the dust settled and we can go on with our jobs. First of all, how can we make sure our content is still found in the future?

We met with seasoned SEO expert Eric Enge to discuss his analysis of the quality of research results in Google vs. ChatGPT. We also talked about what the rise of AI crawlers means to content creators. Check the recording here or on our podcast.

What's happening in AI

Recipes for thought - get better at talking to LLMs.
Stop treating your LLM like a database - stop working in batches.
Why AI progress Is increasingly invisible - could it be that we peaked?
Why AI language models choke on too much text - it's an exponential growth thing.
Codestral 25.01 - new model for code completion.
Awesome Open (Source) Language Models - grab them while they're hot.

Security and Privacy

Microsoft starts 2025 by releasing 161 Windows security updates.
Network latency triangulation based geolocation - so much for blocking geo access.
Millions of accounts vulnerable due to Google’s OAuth flaw.
Learning and perform Bug-Bounty hunting with this example repository.
FBI hacked computers to make malware uninstall itself - is this like vaccinating?
A day in the life of a voice phishing crew - subcultures I did not know exist.

Software Development

Everything you need to know about Node.js type stripping
Apple is Killing Swift - a great language strangled by governance?
Five years of React Native at Shopify
TypeScript without build tools
Sharing a variable across HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Tips, Tricks and Tools

FFmpeg By Example - use cases explainded.
GitHub Pets - treat your repo like a Tamagotchi, if it isn't annoying enough yet.
TOS explained - terms of service agreements and what they mean.
DeepFace - facial attribute analysis (age, gender, emotion and race)

Procrastination corner and Wonderful Weird Web

PDFs can run JavaScript, so there is Doom in PDF and Tetris in PDF.
3D pedestrian crossings in Iceland
Updates to Public Domain in 2025 to celebrate. Especially the Skeleton Dance.

Career and Culture:

Lots of cuts: 5% at Meta with plans to hire for impacted roles. Microsoft lays off based on performance, Meta ends its DEI programs as does Amazon and Salesforce won't hire software engineers in 2025.
AI could create 78 million more jobs than it eliminates by 2030
1 in 5 job postings are fake or never filled.
New side Hustle: employee referrals for tech jobs.
Parkinson's Law: It's Real, So Use It - setting deadlines works.

Are you looking for opportunities or fancy a change?

Companies to check:

More jobs here: Remote positions - Germany - Austria