I write code for Humans & text for Robots
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Around 2013, my team and I finally embarked in upgrading our company's internal software to version 2.0. We had a large backlog of user complaints that we were finally addressing, with security at the top of the list. The very top of the list was moving away from plain text passwords.
Do you have any friends? Not LinkedIn connections, not Instagram followers, not the people you smile at in the office kitchen. I mean friends. The kind you can call at 2 a.m. because your world is falling apart. The kind you will sacrifice your own time and money for. I'm asking because that's not what you get when you purchase one of these new AI pendants called "Friend."
Yes, I loved Andor. It was such a breath of fresh air in the Star Wars universe. The kind of storytelling that made me feel like a kid again, waiting impatiently for my father to bring home VHS tapes of Episodes 5 and 6. I wouldn't call myself a die-hard fan, but I've always appreciated the original trilogy. After binging both seasons of Andor, I immediately rewatched Rogue One, which of course meant I had to revisit A New Hope again.
I'd like to believe that RSS is still relevant and remains one of the most important technologies we've created. The moment I built this blog, I made sure my feed was working properly. Back in 2013, the web was already starting to move away from RSS. Every few months, an article would go viral declaring that RSS was dying or dead. Fast forward to 2025, those articles are nonexistent, and most people don't even know what RSS is.
I hate to say it, but when I wake up in the morning, the very first thing I do is check my phone. First I turn off my alarm, I've made it a habit to wake up before it goes off. Then I scroll through a handful of websites. Yahoo Finance first, because the market is crazy. Hacker News, where I skim titles to see if AWS suffered an outage while I was sleeping. And then I put my phone down before I'm tempted to check my Twitter feed. I've managed to stay away from TikTok, but the TikTok model is finding its way to every user's phone whether we like it or not.
I use Apple products mostly for work. When it comes to iPhone vs Android, I need access to my file system, so I choose Android any day. But the last thing I'll say is that Apple products suck. Whether it's the UI, screen quality, laptops, or tablets, Apple has done an amazing job. Yet every time there's a new iteration, someone will write about how much Apple sucks right now. The same happens with new Android phones too. There's no way of satisfying all users. No matter what you do, someone will complain that your product is now worse than ever.
Imagine this. You walk up to your driveway where your car is parked. You reach for the handle that automatically senses your presence, confirms your identity, and opens to welcome you in. You sit down, the controls appear in front of you, and your seatbelt secures itself around your waist. Instead of driving forward onto the pavement, you take off. You soar into the skies like an eagle and fly to your destination. This is what technology promises: freedom, power, and something undeniably cool.
AGI has been "5 years away" for the past decade. The Tesla Roadster? Five years away since 2014. Tesla's Level 5 self-driving? Promised by 2017, then quietly pushed into the perpetual five-year window. If you've been paying attention, you've probably noticed this pattern extends far beyond Silicon Valley.
I was too young to lose money in the Dot-Com crash of 2000. I didn't own any tech stock. In fact, I didn't even know there was a bubble to pop. My interaction with the "Internet" was a dial-up modem sputtering to life and the simple, joyful ritual of visiting a handful of websites I had discovered.
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It was 7am when my phone rang. Instead of an alarm, it was my recruiter disturbing me from a pleasant dream. It was too early for a phone call or to be caught off guard, so I did not answer. I went to take a shower and get ready for the day. On my way to work, I listened to the voice mail she had left.
As a Linux user, I can't help but spend most of my time on the command line. Not that the GUI is not efficient, but there are things that are simply faster to do with the keyboard.
The majority of the traffic on the web is from bots. For the most part, these bots are used to discover new content. These are RSS Feed readers, search engines crawling your content, or nowadays AI bots crawling content to power LLMs. But then there are the malicious bots. These are from spammers, content scrapers or hackers. At my old employer, a bot discovered a wordpress vulnerability and inserted a malicious script into our server. It then turned the machine into a botnet used for DDOS. One of my first websites was yanked off of Google search entirely due to bots generating spam. At some point, I had to find a way to protect myself from these bots. That's when I started using zip bombs.
a book by Ibrahim Diallo
After the explosive reception of my story, The Machine Fired Me, I set out to write a book to tell the before and after.
I started as a minimum wage laborer in Los Angeles and I set out to reach the top of the echelon in Silicon Valley. Every time I made a step forward, I was greeted with the harsh changing reality of the modern work space.
Getting fired is no longer reserved to those who mess up. Instead, it's a popular company strategy to decrease expenses and increase productivity.
Every little corner has a story. Sometimes a camera tells the story and a picture is worth a thousand words.
There are professional photographers and then there is me who happens to have a camera on my phone. Here's to what came out.
