The Death Of Ad Blocking (2025, Colorized)

Discord recently rolled out a new age verification system requiring users to upload government-issued IDs to access certain servers and features. The platform claims it's for "protecting children" and "privacy," but the irony is thick enough to deploy to production. Nothing says "we care about your privacy" quite like asking users to hand over the most sensitive form of identification to a company that's had its share of data breaches and security incidents. The desperation in the repeated "bro please" perfectly captures how Discord is basically begging users to trust them with documents that could enable identity theft if leaked. It's like asking someone to give you the keys to their house so you can protect them from burglars. The cognitive dissonance is real: upload your most private document so we can ensure your privacy. Classic tech company logic right there.

Oh no, the classic "junior dev learns about security the hard way" moment! Nothing says "career-limiting move" quite like accidentally pasting database credentials into ChatGPT while asking for MongoDB help. That innocent "hehe" quickly turns to "not hehe" when you realize you've just handed over root access with the world's most predictable password (hunter2) to an AI that remembers everything . Security team's gonna love this one... right after they finish having simultaneous heart attacks.

When your code review buddy asks if buffer size 500 is enough and you respond with the confidence of someone who has absolutely no idea what they're doing. Will it handle the data? Probably. Will it cause a buffer overflow and crash production at 2 PM on a Friday? Also probably. But hey, 500 sounds like a nice round number, right? It's bigger than 100 but not as scary as 1000. The scientific method at its finest.

OH SWEET MOTHER OF LEGACY CODE! On one side, IBM is using AI to translate ancient COBOL spells into modern Java incantations. On the other, some government agency named DOGE (not the meme, sadly) wants to rewrite MILLIONS of lines of Social Security code in MONTHS?! 😱 This is like watching two different approaches to defusing a nuclear bomb - one careful robot surgeon vs. a toddler with safety scissors and a "can-do" attitude. The entire financial future of American retirees hanging in the balance because someone thought "Hey, let's just YOLO this 60-year-old codebase real quick!" I'm having heart palpitations just thinking about it! For the uninitiated: COBOL is that programming language your grandpa used that refuses to die because it runs basically EVERYTHING important - banks, airlines, and yes, your social security checks. It's the digital equivalent of those load-bearing walls you definitely shouldn't knock down during your weekend renovation project.

Oh look, it's the classic SQL injection vulnerability that would make Bobby Tables proud, but with extra steps and worse syntax. The "AI-generated" query is literally concatenating user input directly into a SELECT statement, then somehow trying to GET values from variables that don't exist, AND mixing up assignment operators like it's having an identity crisis. But sure, "vibe coders" who learned from ChatGPT think this is perfectly fine production code. If those kids actually understood parameterized queries, prepared statements, or literally any basic security principle from the last 20 years, they'd realize this is a hacker's wet dream. One simple '; DROP TABLE users;-- and your entire database is toast. The real tragedy? AI code generators will confidently spit out garbage like this, and junior devs who don't know better will ship it straight to prod. Then they'll be shocked when their company makes headlines for a data breach. But hey, at least the code "works" in their local environment! 🎉

The grumpy tech veteran's manifesto has arrived! This is basically what happens when someone who's written actual production code for a decade watches the latest batch of "I built a startup with no-code tools and vibes" TikToks. The screenshots are pure gold - one poor soul storing passwords in a CSV file (security professionals just felt a disturbance in the force), while another "SaaS founder" is shocked that people are actually using their API in ways they didn't anticipate. Revolutionary! And that emoji-based developer bio at the bottom? Chef's kiss. Nothing says "I definitely know what I'm doing" like introducing yourself with three random tech logos instead of, you know, actual skills. Ten years ago we called these people "script kiddies." Now they're "founders" with 50K Twitter followers explaining why your engineering team is doing it wrong.