iDiallo

I write code for Humans & text for Robots

Ibrahim Diallo

Are you Human?

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How We're Trying to Solve Vibe-Coded PRs

How We're Trying to Solve Vibe-Coded PRs

When companies start embracing AI, it's only a matter of time before it reaches the engineering teams. For competent developers, AI makes their lives easier. The benefits of tools like Cursor or Copilot are often invisible because developers use them as tools to accelerate their workflow, not replace it. It's confusing when companies claim a specific percentage of their code is "AI-generated," since these tools function as assistants. With that logic in mind, could we say a certain percentage of code was "StackOverflow copy-pasted"?

The NEO Robot

The NEO Robot

You've probably seen the NEO home robot by now, from the company 1X. It's a friendly humanoid with a plush-toy face that can work around your house. Cleaning, making beds, folding laundry, even picking up after meals. Most importantly, there's the way it looks. Unlike Tesla's "Optimus," which resembles an industrial robot, NEO looks friendly. It has a cute, plush face with round eyes. Something you could let your children play with.

Why I Remain a Skeptic Despite Working in Tech

Why I Remain a Skeptic Despite Working in Tech

One thing that often surprises my friends and family is how tech-avoidant I am. I don't have the latest gadget, I talk about dumb TVs, and Siri isn't activated on my iPhone. The only thing left is to go to the kitchen, take a sheet of tin foil, and mold it into a hat.

None of us Read the specs

None of us Read the specs

After using Large Language Models extensively, the same questions keep resurfacing. Why didn't the lawyer who used ChatGPT to draft legal briefs verify the case citations before presenting them to a judge? Why are developers raising issues on projects like cURL using LLMs, but not verifying the generated code before pushing a Pull Request? Why are students using AI to write their essays, yet submitting the result without a single read-through?

Why should I accept all cookies?

Why should I accept all cookies?

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.

Hello Friend

Hello Friend

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."

Keeping Time across 120,000 light years

Keeping Time across 120,000 light years

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.

Is RSS Still Relevant?

Is RSS Still Relevant?

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.

The TikTok Model is the Future of the Web

The TikTok Model is the Future of the Web

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.

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The Machine Fired Me

The Machine Fired Me

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.

Download a file from the command line in Windows

Download a file from the command line in Windows

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.

I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server

I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server

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.

Just Fired

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.

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JavaScript Collection

Learn tips and tricks that will turn you into an Awesome® Javascript Dev.

JavaScript Tips and tricks

Tip of the day

Using a progress bar to load assets

It's inevitable. Images take a longer time to load then anything else on your page. If you are trying to load an image gallery for example, you have to give the…

Are you new to JavaScript?

JavaScript can be a little bit challenging at first. There are a few things that once mastered will make your journey smoother. These are the little things that I want to explain to you here. I make the frustrating things as friendly as possible so you don't have to stress over it.

Photography

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.