This time, learn how to un-AI Google's search results, what's new on the web, avoid a new security hole and go back to BASICS with us.

News and Articles

What a week. Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and many others had their big flagship events announcing the future of computing. Not surprisingly, it means shoe-horning AI into everything. This could mean that the web as we know it will go away. Already 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible and some people predict a grim future of an AI-run web called the "dead internet theory".

Somehow, this already happens. Google now follows Bing's strategy to not return links to web sites as the first results, but AI summaries. This doesn't go down well with everybody, especially as even those already show ad content. There is a trick to un-AI Google, though, by adding a ‘?udm=14` to the URL. You can automate this by changing your browser settings, as explained at Ten Blue Links.

Maybe we don't need to use everything, just because it is new. After all, all the big players also had some slip-ups lately:

GitHub's Enterprise Server has a flaw that allows authentication bypass. A Microsoft outage meant that Bing, Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT internet search were offline. Google Cloud wiped out a customer account and its backups. An undetected SSH backdoor infected 400k Linux servers for two years and Apple's iOS 17 has a bug that resurfaced deleted photos.

So, let's wait and see what will really make a difference for us, and focus on things we can use today. Google released a great new dashboard showing the status of the web, telling us what can safely be used. They also have a good summary about what's new in the web. And the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey is still open to make your voice heard. Also, you can help define what the future of CSS will look like.

Code and Tools

Here are some things to be aware of and tools that make your life easier.

• Relative Path File Injection means you should not use relative paths in src and href unless they start with a / or you defined a meta BASE.
• You can animate the Popover element with a few lines of CSS.
• A guide to JavaScript performance analysis using Chrome DevTools
• The Compute Pressure API notifies us about bad device performance.

And some tools:

• mactop shows real-time metrics for Apple Silicon chips.
• Podly is an ad blocker for podcasts.
• Run C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript, Bash and more online

CODE100 challenge

Our friends at Chainlink not only worked with us on  CODE100 Manchester, but they also created an own challenge for you to try out!

Can you solve the chainlink star challenge?

Videos

Brian Morrison shares his inspirational journey from IT to successful full stack developer and content creator. Learn how investing in yourself and the community can help you achieve your dreams in tech.

Other videos of note:

• Anna Fritsch-Weninger - From Syntax to Singularity: AI’s Impact on Developer
• Talia Nassi - Building Applications with Infrastructure as Code
• Christian Strack - Platform Engineering vs. DevOps Why not both?
• Alex Olivier - Un-complicate authorization maintenance

Work and Jobs

A Cisco survey found out that developers spend close to 57% of their time firefighting than innovating, which doesn't surprise me, but is sad. Maybe we should say no more and ask for time to improve systems and learn things. Here are some Strategies, templates, and advice on how to stay focused while still being kind. Another interesting idea is to even go and interview even when you’re happy to stay sharp and learn what the market out there wants from developers.

Procrastination Corner / Wonderful Weird Web

• A bizarre 1989 word tutorial that has been called the most boring video ever.
• Graph Game is an engaging way to learn neural networks!
• Students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free
• Archie, the first search engine, has been resurrected
• BASIC turns 60 and its simplicity was its curse as well as its blessing

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