🍔🧠 How A Single ZIP File Saved My Server From 1000s of Attacks (Code Inside)

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📚 Software Engineering Articles

• 200+ ideas to use AI for profit

• One line of code caused $8,000 loss; learn from this mistake

• Essential guide to DNS architecture and how it works

• Designing news feeds that scale to millions of users

• Engineer's guide to soft skills from Apple and Slack

• Best practices for building performant Expo applications

🗞️ Tech and AI Trends

• Amazon challenges SpaceX with first Kuiper satellite launch

• ChatGPT adds product browsing to its capabilities

• Claude expands reach with new enterprise integrations

👨🏻‍💻 Coding Tip

• Use Rust's derive macros for type-safe database schemas and validations

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Using Zip Bombs as a Creative Defense Against Malicious Bots 💣

In a web landscape dominated by bots, protecting your server from malicious actors requires creative solutions. Here's how a simple compression technique can be turned into an effective defense mechanism against harmful bots that spam, scrape, or attempt to hack your server.

The challenge: Defend against automated attacks while maintaining server performance and legitimate user access, without complex infrastructure changes.

Implementation highlights:

• Exploit gzip compression: Use web's native compression feature to serve specially crafted compressed files

• Strategic detection: Implement middleware to identify malicious patterns and blacklisted IPs

• Gradual response: Serve different-sized zip bombs (1MB -> 10MB) based on threat level

• Memory exhaustion: Force bots to decompress small files into massive ones (1MB -> 1GB)

• Simple integration: Add a few lines of code to your existing server middleware

Results and learnings:

• Highly effective: Most malicious bots never return after encountering the zip bomb

• Resource efficient: Only costs 1-10MB of bandwidth per blocked attack

• Low maintenance: Once implemented, runs automatically with minimal oversight

The beauty of this approach lies in its simplicity: using a standard web feature as a defensive weapon. While not foolproof, it's remarkably effective against unsophisticated attacks that plague most websites.

Remember: The best defense sometimes isn't a wall, but a trap door that leads to a memory overflow! 🧨

ARTICLE (AI won't steal your brain)
Avoiding Skill Atrophy in the Age of AI

ESSENTIAL (humans > robots)
Mastering The Human Side Of Engineering: Lessons From Apple, Palantir And Slack

GITHUB REPO (fast like lightning)
Lightning-fast and Powerful Code Editor written in Rust

GITHUB REPO (browser independence day)
Truly independent web browser

ARTICLE (no more laggy apps)
Best Practices for reducing lag in Expo apps

ARTICLE (Meta knows your data)
How Meta understands data at scale

ARTICLE (solo dev wins)
The One-Person Framework in practice

ARTICLE (oops, $8k gone)
One line of code that did cost $8,000

ARTICLE (CSS showdown)
Tailwind vs Linaria: Performance Investigation

ARTICLE (React Query magic)
Concurrent Optimistic Updates in React Query

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🔌 Claude Expands with App Integrations and Advanced Research (4 min)

Brief: Claude now connects to 10+ apps like Jira, Zapier, and Intercom via Integrations, while its Research mode can scour the web, Google Workspace, and linked tools for 45-minute deep dives with citations.

🛒 ChatGPT Adds Shopping Feature with Product Browsing (2 min)

Brief: OpenAI introduces a product-browsing feature in ChatGPT, allowing users to search and purchase items from external retailers—though no sponsored ads are included yet. The system uses user preferences and reviews to generate recommendations.

🤖 Meta Launches AI Chatbot to Rival ChatGPT (2 min)

Brief: Meta has unveiled its AI chatbot, built on the Llama 4 model, offering voice-first interactions and deep integration with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, though opting out of data collection remains difficult.

🔍 Meta’s AI App Features Personalized Discover Feed (1 min)

Brief: The new Meta AI app includes a discover feed showing how friends use the chatbot, with privacy controls, but default settings heavily favor data sharing for AI training.

🚀 Sam Altman Unveils Mobile Verification Device in Latest Tech Innovation (2 min)

Brief: Sam Altman introduces a new mobile verification device, aiming to enhance security and authentication in the tech space, though details remain scarce due to service disruptions.

This week’s coding challenge:

This week’s tip:

Use Rust's derive macros with custom attributes to generate flexible, type-safe database mappings that enforce compile-time schema validation. This pattern leverages Rust's trait system to automatically implement database serialization with custom field mappings and validations.

Wen?

• Complex schemas: When working with databases that have strict typing requirements or complex JSON/JSONB fields.

• Migration-heavy projects: Ensures schema changes are caught at compile-time rather than runtime.

• Multi-tenant systems: Enforce schema isolation and validation rules across different database contexts.

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.
Margaret Mead

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