In 2026, why hire a developer when AI can do it all?
Fair question. I code with AI every day: it's fast, and it often writes well. But it does what it's told. And nobody tells it what they don't know.
From October 5 to October 11, here's what came out.
Did you keep up?
Do you know what a dependency is? It's the code, written by other people, that your site is built on. It probably has dozens, often hundreds. They change every week, and some of them are traps.
Keeping up with this is my job. What I took from it this week:
- SMEs win 63% of local public contracts, but only 35% of the money. How buyers really score a technical proposal
- Asked Under Oath Whether They Would Be Liable When AI Goes Rogue, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Did Not Say Yes. Their Contracts Already Answer.
- Giorgia Meloni Filed Five Seconds of Her Voice as an EU Trade Mark. The Register Shows What It Can and Cannot Stop
Sources: NVD (NIST), CISA KEV catalog, GitHub Advisory Database, GitHub release pages. Collected automatically every Monday.
The traps nobody thinks to ask about
Legal
- 01Your site's fonts
Loaded from Google, they send every visitor's IP address to Google without consent. In January 2022, the Munich Regional Court ordered a website to pay a visitor €100 for exactly that. Self-hosting them fixes it, and nothing changes on screen.
- 02Trackers fired before your banner
Analytics, ad pixels, session recording: in the EU nothing should fire before the visitor says yes, and refusing must be as easy as accepting. That's the French regulator CNIL's rule; it fined Google €325M in September 2025, notably over cookies.
- 03The legal notice
In France, every business website must say who publishes it, who hosts it and how to reach them. Leaving it out is a criminal offence: up to one year in prison and a €75,000 fine for an individual.
- 04Your app's subscription
In France, since June 2023, a subscription taken out online must be cancellable online through a dedicated feature. And the pay button must say clearly that it commits you to pay. Fines run up to €75,000 for a company.
- 05Your users' photos
As soon as your app hosts what users post, the EU Digital Services Act requires an easy way to report illegal content. Small companies included.
- 06Your users' age
In France, when an online service relies on consent, a child under 15 cannot give it alone: a parent has to agree too.
Security
- 01Keys in the code
An API key pasted into code that runs in the browser can be read by any visitor. And used, on your bill.
- 02The open database
Without access rules, a database wired straight into the app lets anyone read everything, or even wipe it. A classic mistake in apps generated over a weekend.
- 03Poisoned dependencies
Malicious packages are published every week under names that look like the real ones. And researchers have shown that AI coding tools sometimes recommend packages that don't exist, which an attacker can then create.
- 04Updates
A site nobody updates is a door nobody closes: once a vulnerability is fixed, it's public, so attackers know about it.
Technical choices
- 01The right tool
WordPress, Webflow, Next.js, native or web app: the day-one choice sets your costs and your limits for years. AI picks whatever it's nudged toward.
- 02Where your data lives
If your customers' data leaves the European Union, the GDPR governs that transfer. Which means knowing where every service your site calls actually runs.
- 03The bill that climbs
AI APIs, pay-per-use hosting: one badly written loop or one bot hammering your site can blow up the bill overnight. You can cap it, if you think of it.
- 04What you own
The domain, the code, the accounts: all of it should be in your name. The day you switch providers, you leave with everything.
I'm not a lawyer. I spot the technical traps that have legal consequences, and I fix them. For a pure legal question, I'll say so and you'll see a lawyer.
You're not paying for a day of code. You're paying for 7 years of learning what breaks.
And a watch that never stops. Start by seeing what your site does behind your back.