This time we give you a collection of links about the XZ backdoor, solve the last CODE100 puzzle, announce the next round of it, let you play with colours and explain why Lava lamps are great to keep the web secure.

News and Articles

The big piece of news last week was the wild security issue that could have taken down thousands of servers. We created list of articles and tools around the XZ backdoor that we will keep updating. We also have a Coffee with Developers special in the making - so look out for that one.

In other security news Google might add Encryption Keys to Chrome to prevent Cookie hijacking and will destroy browsing data collected in Incognito mode. You probably didn't know that incognito mode collects data, as well as Facebook's Project "Ghostbusters" secretly looking at Snapchat, Amazon, and YouTube user data. Then again, we don't need evil corporate sniffing when developers download AI hallucinated software packages with malware nilly-willy.

Other news is that Bun 1.1 is out and is available on Windows and did you know that it's partial prerendering is powerful? Other JavaScript news is that there is a proposal to add Signals. If you still wonder about Promises, Lydia Hallie has a great visualisation of Promise Execution that might clear things up.

Code and Tools

CODE100 puzzle: #BuntStattBraun

Did you manage to solve the puzzle? We wrote up an explanation how to approach this and here's a codepen showing how the hearts were created in the first place.

• Atlassian released a Flexible and fast drag and drop solution
• Mismerge is a merge editor for the Web
• Marker.io- send feedback and bug reports without leaving your website.

Join our hackathon

Rethink Retail, Austria's first REWE retail hackathon in cooperation with WeAreDevelopers, is coming to Vienna. 15 development teams, 2 days and the unique opportunity to shape the future of retail. That is RETHINK RETAIL. Join our coding challenge and create innovative ideas and developments.

Score amazing prizes at Rethink Retail:

• 1st prize: €5k, half of it in cash and half of it in REWE Group vouchers
• 2nd and 3rd prize: €3k and €1k, half of it in cash and half of it in vouchers
• Sustainability Prize: €1k cash
• Tickets for the WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2024 in Berlin

Join us for a groundbreaking event where tech meets retail excellence

Work and Jobs

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There can't be any doubt that the internet has changed education and work forever. So there is a question if university professors need to rethink lesson plans for a generation that grew up with web search. We also need to ask what the difference is when learning to code with and without AI and whether or not AI produces lazy humans. Maybe it is time focus on being more human and develop essential soft skills. Last but not least, what is the state of engineering productivity and does it need improving?

Procrastination Corner / Wonderful Weird Web

• The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining is an interesting problem to have…
• Cloudflare protects the internet with lava lamps (and here's one in CSS).
• Let's play with colours: the AI Color Combination Generator generates colour themes from a prompt, Colormatch asks you to pick a colour against the clock and Guess My RGB asks you to do the same with sliders.

CODE100 is coming to the UK!

The next edition of CODE100 will be in Manchester on the 22nd of May as part of DTX Manchester! We are looking for participants and challengers.

Head on over to the official CODE100 web site to learn all about it.