Weekly #14-2025: Next.js Middleware Bypass, TikTok's Final Proposal, OpenAI, Software Engineers & More

Madhu Sudhan Subedi Tech Weekly Next.js Middleware Bypass: Postmortem Released Vercel has published a postmortem on CVE-2025-29927, a critical vulnerability in Next.js related to Middleware bypass. The timeline outlines the vulnerability's disclosure, investigation, patching, and public announcement. The vulnerability involved an internal x-middleware-subrequest header and impacted self-hosted Next.js applications, but not Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Workers. Read more Front-End & Full-Stack Job Market 2025 React and Next.js are highly sought after, along with Javascript and Typescript. AWS is the dominant cloud provider and PostgreSQL remains a popular database. Despite some technologies correlating with higher compensation, there are minimal salary increases with experience. Education beyond a bachelor's degree is rarely required. Read more The Manager I Hated—Who Made Me Better A manager whose harsh feedback initially frustrated this dev, Stephane, ultimately transformed his approach to software engineering. This manager prioritized clean, maintainable, and efficient code, pushing him to think beyond clever solutions and consider system resilience. Stephane improved and his pull requests were approved quicker by focusing on readability, failure scenarios, and the future maintainers of his code. Read more Final TikTok Proposal Incoming A final proposal for TikTok will be issued wednesday. Trump's administration is finalizing plans for potential investors. ByteDance has until Saturday to sell its stake in TikTok or potentially face a ban in the US market. Trump says there is a lot of interest in the deal and that the final decision will be his to make. Read more OpenAI Academy Launches Free AI Learning Platform OpenAI Academy offers free AI education globally, including workshops, courses, and interactive learning with AI models like GPT-5 to personalize feedback and learning experiences. The platform caters to diverse audiences—students, educators, developers, and professionals—providing foundational AI knowledge alongside advanced topics like deep learning and natural language processing. Partnerships with institutions such as Georgia Tech enhance the curriculum, while $1 million in API credits empower participants to build AI applications without financial barriers. OpenAI Academy emphasizes ethical considerations, addressing issues like data privacy and societal impact to foster responsible AI use across communities. With plans for multilingual content and global expansion, the Academy aims to democratize AI knowledge, bridging gaps in underserved regions and driving innovation worldwide. Read more Why Everyone’s Trying to Replace Software Engineers Software engineers are not in immediate danger of being replaced by AI despite the hype. The real issue lies in the lack of understanding between engineers and their non-technical colleagues. Engineers need to focus on communicating effectively and helping coworkers understand the complexities of software development. Read more

Apr 6, 2025 - 04:09

Weekly #14-2025: Next.js Middleware Bypass, TikTok's Final Proposal, OpenAI, Software Engineers & More

Next.js Middleware Bypass: Postmortem Released

Vercel has published a postmortem on CVE-2025-29927, a critical vulnerability in Next.js related to Middleware bypass. The timeline outlines the vulnerability's disclosure, investigation, patching, and public announcement. The vulnerability involved an internal x-middleware-subrequest header and impacted self-hosted Next.js applications, but not Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Workers.

Front-End & Full-Stack Job Market 2025

React and Next.js are highly sought after, along with Javascript and Typescript. AWS is the dominant cloud provider and PostgreSQL remains a popular database. Despite some technologies correlating with higher compensation, there are minimal salary increases with experience. Education beyond a bachelor's degree is rarely required.

The Manager I Hated—Who Made Me Better

A manager whose harsh feedback initially frustrated this dev, Stephane, ultimately transformed his approach to software engineering. This manager prioritized clean, maintainable, and efficient code, pushing him to think beyond clever solutions and consider system resilience. Stephane improved and his pull requests were approved quicker by focusing on readability, failure scenarios, and the future maintainers of his code.

Final TikTok Proposal Incoming

A final proposal for TikTok will be issued wednesday. Trump's administration is finalizing plans for potential investors. ByteDance has until Saturday to sell its stake in TikTok or potentially face a ban in the US market. Trump says there is a lot of interest in the deal and that the final decision will be his to make.

OpenAI Academy Launches Free AI Learning Platform

OpenAI Academy offers free AI education globally, including workshops, courses, and interactive learning with AI models like GPT-5 to personalize feedback and learning experiences. The platform caters to diverse audiences—students, educators, developers, and professionals—providing foundational AI knowledge alongside advanced topics like deep learning and natural language processing. Partnerships with institutions such as Georgia Tech enhance the curriculum, while $1 million in API credits empower participants to build AI applications without financial barriers. OpenAI Academy emphasizes ethical considerations, addressing issues like data privacy and societal impact to foster responsible AI use across communities. With plans for multilingual content and global expansion, the Academy aims to democratize AI knowledge, bridging gaps in underserved regions and driving innovation worldwide.

Why Everyone’s Trying to Replace Software Engineers

Software engineers are not in immediate danger of being replaced by AI despite the hype. The real issue lies in the lack of understanding between engineers and their non-technical colleagues. Engineers need to focus on communicating effectively and helping coworkers understand the complexities of software development.