WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest

Issue 153 - Regulatory fAIry tales

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

Hello fellow developer, of course DeepSeek is the big topic, but so is fighting against overzealous AI crawlers, unnecessary meetings and how to wrangle date and time in JavaScript. But first, here are some folk that built something very cool for kids: 

We met Matthias Neumayer and Dima Rubanov of OscarStories, a mobile app that lets parents created AI-powered personalised children's stories. We discuss using AI to create ethical content for kids, what one TV appearance can do for download numbers, and what it's like to navigate EU regulation as tech entrepreneurs. Check it out!

What's happening in AI

DeepSeek is eating the world. Check the DeepSeek FAQ, a list of things it censors and a workaround, what internal data leaked in an exposed database,  OpenAI's claims that DeepSeek stole from them and all the Deepseek security flaws. The model is now also available in GitHub Models  and on HuggingFace.

Other interesting AI reads:

• AI's generation of illiterate programmers - why know it when you can generate?
• Thoughts on a month with Devin who apparently is bad at its job.
• Announcing the Web AI Acceleration Fund - Google supports Web AI efforts.

Security and Privacy

• URL Regex Validation: what can go wrong?
• Cloudflare blocked the world’s largest DDoS attack - 5.6 Tbps, great Scott!
• Over 47m cyberthreats against Jewish and Holocaust educational websites.
• How Amazon integrates physical and logical security at re:Invent
• Windows BitLocker -- Screwed without a Screwdriver

Software Development

• Moving on from React, a year later

• JavaScript Temporal is coming, solving lots of date/time issues!
• The Pebble smartwatch code is now open source and it may come back.

• Taking a Look at Compression Algorithms

• Fractals to Forests – Creating realistic 3D trees with Three.js

Tips, Tricks and Tools

• Nepenthes is a "tar pit" to trap AI crawlers and iocaine a tool to poison them.

• garak is a vulnerability scanner for LLMs from NVIDIA and the best DS9 character.

• BrowserAI - run LLMs in the Browser

• Bunster - turn shell scripts into binaries

• React Scan automatically detect performance issues in your React app

Procrastination corner and Wonderful Weird Web

• Doom the gallery experience - sip wine, collect cheese, get sophisticated.
• Software Folklore - the digital spider in the yucca palm tree.
• Scientists snuck Bob Dylan Song titles into research papers for 17 years.

• Meeting cost calculator

• When "Job Hopping" doesn't make sense

• What I learned from software engineering at Google

• Does the tech industry really need so many workers on H-1B visas?

Companies to check:

• Senior Cloud Engineer & Team Lead at Dynatrace
• Data Engineer - Content & Accommodation at trivago
• Senior Backend Engineer (C#/.Net) at Riverty Group
• Software System Engineer / Architect at KRÜSS
• IT System Administrator at aedifion

More jobs here: Remote positions - Germany - Austria