Issue 164

🚂 ⚡️ Why this startup ditched React for Rails magic. AI engineer stumbles with an 85% failure rate. Silicon Valley bets big on lab-created human eggs.

Hey there Bizarro readers!

We’ve got another exciting lineup of stories for you today. The devs among you will probably enjoy this one a lot, as many of the stories are developer-focused, including two of our top three headliners. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other interesting topics covered from our usual range - AI, science, cybercrime, and so on. So grab a cup of ☕️ or 🍵 and enjoy the read.

• 🚂 ⚡️ Why This Startup Ditched React for Rails Magic

• 🤖 💻 AI Engineer Stumbles with an 85% Failure Rate

• 🔬 🧬 Silicon Valley Bets Big on Lab-Created Human Eggs

Let’s get into it.

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📰 From the Newsroom

🚂 ⚡️ Why This Startup Ditched React for Rails Magic

Last month, Kelly Sutton, the CTO of Scholarly (an education software startup) reflected on his company’s decision to shift away from React in favor of Rails. In his blog post, he shared some candid insights and surprising metrics. Here are some highlights:

• When comparing development speed, the Scholarly development team found they could ship two Ruby features in the time it took to carefully implement one JavaScript change. A 200% efficiency increase is a win in my book.

• Their pages now load incredibly fast - from December 2024 through January 2025 when Kelly published the post, users only had to wait 86ms between clicks to see new content (for context, it takes about 300-400ms just to blink your eye).

• They achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance with a simplified stack of Rails, Stimulus, and MySQL, which helped them to scale up to serve major universities. As Kelly wrote: "We haven't come across a scenario where we've had to create a worse experience because of these technologies."

With their platform now serving heavy hitters like Harvard and Duke, their choice to go "back to basics" with Rails has proven to be quite the success story. They recently got $3 million in fresh funding and everything seems to be moving ahead in the right direction. It’s an interesting case study that proves you don’t need a complex frontend to build powerful software.

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🤖 💻 AI Engineer Stumbles with an 85% Failure Rate

In early January, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman published a post on his blog where he voiced his confidence in being able to build AGI. Later in the month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that by 2027 AI systems will (probably) be better than humans at almost everything. Yet beneath these claims, we keep seeing AI tools falling short. Take for instance, Devin, an AI coding assistant from Cognition that was marketed as the "first AI software engineer." Answer.AI spent a month testing it and…

• Out of 20 coding assignments, Devin managed just three successes, with 14 outright failures and three inconclusive results. Even worse, the research team couldn't predict which tasks would work - similar projects would mysteriously fail in different ways.

• When faced with impossible tasks, Devin showed a stubborn streak. Rather than recognizing dead ends, it would spend days pursuing solutions that didn't exist, even making up fake ways to interact with development platforms. Not exactly the efficiency boost companies are hoping for.

• Tasks that should have taken hours dragged on for days, with Devin getting tangled in technical dead ends or churning out overly complex, unusable code. At $500 per month, that's a steep price for slower results.

The timing of this story couldn’t be more relevant. With Meta's Zuckerberg talking about replacing mid-level engineers with AI this year and OpenAI reportedly planning to release "PhD-level super-agents," you can’t help but wonder how realistic these goals are and how much of it is just wishful CEO ambition. If Devin's performance is any indication, human developers can breathe a sigh of relief because I don’t think we’re there yet.

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🔬 🧬 Silicon Valley Bets Big on Lab-Created Human Eggs

The UK's fertility regulator (HEFA) met last month to discuss a startling possibility. They said that scientists might be able to create human eggs and sperm in labs within a decade. Silicon Valley startups like Conception and Gameto have been pouring money into this technology and it’s bringing us closer to a future that feels like the opening scenes of Gattaca.

• Lab experiments already work in mice, but the human version presents bigger hurdles. Although several US companies say they're making rapid progress. HFEA medical experts think it could become standard practice in fertility clinics within 2-10 years and completely transform fertility treatment.

• If the experts are right, it will mean no more age limits for conception, same-sex couples will be able to have biological children, and patients with low sperm counts or limited egg reserves will still be able to have children. But the ethical questions run deep.

• HFEA has set firm limits already. "Solo parenting" - where one person provides both egg and sperm material - won't be allowed. A genetics professor explained why: it's essentially "the complete extreme of incest," making children vulnerable to inherited disorders.

British law currently bans using lab-grown reproductive cells, but at last month's meeting, HFEA outlined plans to update these regulations through new legislation. However, their recommendations included a crucial caveat - any changes must follow extensive public discussion and debate about the ethical implications. So what do we think about this?

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⛓️ Ten Must See Links of the Month

Sponsored by Optimole, the best image optimization tool on the internet.

• Beijing is set to host a groundbreaking half-marathon in April 2025 where 12,000 human runners will compete alongside bipedal robots from major tech companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics.

• Former Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," received a full presidential pardon from Donald Trump last month, after serving 10 years of his two life sentences plus 40 years for creating and operating the original “Amazon.com of the dark web.”

• Carnegie Mellon researchers have developed "Power-Over-Skin," a method that uses radio frequencies to transmit electricity through human tissue to power wearable devices without batteries - though impressive, it seems like something that might accidentally turn us into human microwaves while charging our Fitbits.

• A sophisticated new PayPal phishing scam uses Microsoft 365's legitimate features and sender verification to bypass security filters, sending authentic-looking money requests (with valid URLs) that trick users into linking their accounts with scammers.

• Five popular JavaScript libraries might be ready for retirement in 2025 as native features and modern tools have caught up to their functionality. Find out which ones they are and what you should use instead.

• A paralyzed 69-year-old man has successfully piloted a virtual drone using only his thoughts, thanks to a brain implant that can distinguish between different finger movements with 98% accuracy.

• Gig economy couriers in the U.K. are struggling with opaque algorithmic systems that control their work assignments and pay, leading to unexplained account deactivations and income fluctuations, with limited human oversight or recourse for addressing issues.

• Over 200 trade union members and tech experts met in Sacramento, California last month to strategize their response to workplace automation and surveillance - marking a shift from AI concerns being primarily the domain of Silicon Valley to becoming a central battleground for workers' rights.

• Have you heard about "AI agents?" They are like smart personal assistants that browse the web and handle tasks for you - from researching vacation spots to comparing prices. Google and Microsoft are already modifying their sites to accommodate these agents - here’s why that matters for your website.

• MIT Technology Review has released their annual breakthrough technologies list for 2025, spotlighting various innovations, ranging from a powerful new telescope to robotaxis, faster-learning robots, and revolutionary HIV prevention medications.

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🎤 It’s How They Said It

“We will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor!”

– OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, responding on X to the release of the new DeepSeek R1 model that was released on a shoestring budget of (supposedly) $5.6 million USD

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🧮 The Numbers Game

• Around 3,100,000 American users joined the Chinese social media app RedNote in mid-January 2025, ahead of the U.S. TikTok ban (which has been temporarily lifted by President Trump). This dramatic surge represented a massive increase from RedNote's previous U.S. user base of just 300,000, with most of the growth occurring in a single day.

• 1,066 seconds is how long Chinese scientists maintained plasma at a blistering 104 million degrees Celsius in their "artificial sun" fusion reactor (EAST), setting a new world record in their quest to replicate stellar nuclear fusion on Earth. This breakthrough at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science represents significant progress toward developing commercially viable fusion reactors.

• 410 megapixels is how many Canon crammed into their newest 35mm full-frame sensor, setting a record that's equivalent to 24K resolution (or 198 times sharper than HD). Don’t get too excited though. It’s not going to be featured in any consumer cameras anytime soon. Canon built it for specialized industrial and medical applications.

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⚒️ Tools and Resources

Fastest WordPress Hosting with No Caching: Want the real story on WordPress hosting speed? Our in-house report checked 16 hosts with their caching turned off - exposing some surprising winners and losers in raw server performance.

https://wpshout.com/fastest-wordpress-hosting-with-no-caching/

PowerGlitch: This standalone library makes anything clickable look cooler by leveraging CSS animations to create a glitch effect. It has no external dependencies and it weights less than 2 KB minified and gzipped.

https://7ph.github.io/powerglitch/#/

React Scan: This tool automatically detects performance issues in your React app. It requires no code changes – just drop it in - and it highlights the exact components you need to optimize. It’s available via script tag, npm, and more. Oh, and did I mention it’s already being used by engineers at Perplexity and Shopify?

https://react-scan.com/

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🖼️ What Am I Looking At?

This one isn’t that mysterious. The screenshot, courtesy of Google, tells you exactly what it is. The significance of it is that massive dip. It occurred exactly one week after the release of the new DeepSeek R1 AI model and reflects how investors and analysts felt after getting a week to fully assess what this might mean for the U.S. tech industry.

Looks, uh, invigorating…

So does DeepSeek live up to the hype?

I tested it myself and let’s just say…

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💬 What’s the Word?

눈치 (Nunchi) is a Korean word that loosely translates into “eye-measure” but really references the subtle art of listening and gauging others' moods. If you work as part of a team, then you know how useful it can be.

Beyond mere observation, nunchi involves responding in a way that respects and uplifts the dynamics you’ve detected. This intuitive skill can help prevent misunderstandings, smooth out disagreements, and foster a supportive environment for everyone on your team. When practiced consistently, nunchi can build a shared sense of trust and connection that enhances collaboration and boosts overall productivity.

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🧑🏻‍💻👨🏽‍💻👩🏼‍💻 A Note on Pledges

You might have noticed that we turned on the pledges ask in Substack for this issue. You are by no means obligated to make a pledge, but here’s the backstory in case you are curious and you’d like to help:

Bizarro Devs has been a free publication for 164 issues now, but none of those issues have been free to produce. As a company, we have absorbed the cost because we wanted to give back to the developer community that we are also a part of.

Having said that, Google’s changes to the algorithm in the past year have put a significant dent into our revenue, which has made it more challenging to continue operating “as is.”

There is a significant possibility that we will no longer be able to sustain the publication of Bizarro Devs on our own for much longer. We turned on the pledges to see if our community here would be willing to help us keep the newsletter alive.

Regardless of the response, we don’t plan on immediately converting the newsletter into a paid publication, but the next two or three months will determine how we chart our course and the pledges will play a role in that.

Thanks for considering, and as always, thank you reading!

If this is the first time you're here at Bizarro Devs and you enjoyed the content, then sign up here to join us on the first Tuesday of every month.

Until we see each other again,
– Martin D.