WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest

Issue 161: GrandNaN shenAInigans

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

Hello fellow developer, one day after our Webdev and AI event we are once again here to give you some hot AI news, talk about the decline of web search and get you ready for the upcoming European Accessibility Act (EAA). But first, remember the virtual grandmother designed to snare phone scammers in pointless conversations? We talked to the creators and learned all about her! 

How do you keep phone scammers busy so they can't bother people? Give them an AI generated grandmother to talk to that seems to be an easy target but is specifically created to waste their time. Ben Hopkins and Morten Legarth built this virtual nan and told us how it was done. Check out the episode about that new kind of honeypot. 

What's happening in AI

• Goole Gemini 2.5 is out and people call it an absolute beast with great vibes.
• OpenAI brings native image generation to ChatGPT - lots of details on their blog.
• Traffic from Generative AI sources jumps 1,200 percent which means AI search is starting to kill Google’s ‘ten blue links’
• Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries
• AI is the future of accessibility

Security and Privacy

• What is a Data Poisoning Attack?
• CVE-2025-29927: Authorization Bypass in Next.js
• Training AI to uncover malicious JavaScript intent and make web surfing safer
• How Hackers Can Weaponize Code Agents

Software Development

• Reflecting on WikiTok
• Were multiple return values Go's biggest mistake?
• String Concatenation is code smell!
• Relative colours
• Is the TypeScript migration to go really a 10x performance improvement?
• Minding the gaps: A new way to draw separators in CSS

Tips, Tricks and Tools

• fd to find entries in your filesystem
• Can i email- a list of the capabilities of various email clients
• Notes with automatic timestamps for developers
• Lightpanda - a new browser built for machines
• Accessibility Support - what can each browser/screen reader understand?

Procrastination corner and Wonderful Weird Web

• The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem
• rust-stakeholder - a way to impress your boss like hackertyper.
• A Perplexing Javascript Parsing Puzzle

• Devs: draw your line - when you should say "no" to a project
• Seven behaviours that separate juniors from seniors
• Understanding the European Accessibility Act (EAA)
• 4-day work-week pilot due in tech land by early summer
• Recruiter secrets

Companies to check:

• (Senior/Lead) Data Platform Engineer at Hoffmann Group
• Senior Software Engineer at HiQ
• Backend Developer Drupal at Hubert Burda Media
• Data/ML Engineer at SMG Swiss Marketplace Group
• Senior SAP ABAP Developer at MIC

More jobs here: Remote positions - Germany - Austria