Dev Digest 124 - None like it hot

Today, we learn about the environmental impact of AI, how SafeTix isn't safe and why CSS can get you into jail whilst ECMAScript moves on.

News and Articles

It is official, the AI summer is here. However, generative AI is also a climate disaster and Google and Microsoft are getting dirtier, missing their goals towards carbon neutrality. You may not know it, but creating an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone. Things aren't peachy when it comes to financing the AI boom. A Sequoia report claims that hardware costs alone are $600b / year. There is research to improve matters though. Google reports a 13x faster and 10x more power efficient AI training tech and rolls out an LLM running on-device, in the browser with a dedicated Prompt API. This, however, poses some issues: It is an interoperability worry - different LLMs have different prompt styles. Chrome already has deep insight of your computer and a prompt-injection prone LLM might become a security issue.

Talking of security matters, Ticketmaster's SafeTix technology has been reverse engineered which is is a massive concern with quite some reach. The RockYou2024 leak is a text file with 10 billion passwords, which now can be used in attacks, and Rust has a supply chain security problem.

Lastly, 60% of Google searches end with zero clicks. I am not surprised, given that it returns ads or "things I might like" instead of web sites these days.

Let's start with JavaScript/Typescript. ECMAScript 2024 is signed off. Meanwhile, people wonder how fast JS can get by simulating 20m particles. One million particles look cool enough, don't you think? Using booleans is considered bad style and we should go with enums instead. On the App side of things, Betterstack explains how to profile Node.js applications and Trigger show h ow to tame event loop lag. Raymond Camden explains how to work with pasted content. Google has an interesting research on Smart Paste, context-aware adjustments to pasted code. GitHub explains the troubles of creating a accessible sortable list with drag-and-drop. You can check how to morph arbitrary paths in SVG and how to parse HTML in JavaScript. Chris Coyier looks at why YouTube embeds are heavy and how to fix them, Julia Evans analyses why is is tough to enter text in the terminal and a bug in counter on ordered list means that CSS can get you in jail.

Some tools for you:

Tim Ruscica from Tech with Tim fame is coming to WeAreDevelopers World Congress to present every hour at the Bright Data booth on different ways to scrape the web. Check out how he approaches learning and teaching and what to expect. If you use his invitation code, you can get your ticket 25% off.

Other videos of note:

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Maybe you're not sick of programming states the obvious that it is other factors that frustrate developers. Leaving the web industry describes how the role of "web designer" seems to be extinct. DevRel's Death ruminates about the decline in roles and its relation to profits and Lea Verou tells us to forget “show, don’t tell” but engage people instead. Lastly, research on how good ChatGPT is at coding and why Zig coders get paid so much. So taking off every Zig is still a bad plan.