Alfred's Weekly Insights

In-depth articles on web development, AI integration, cyber security, software engineering, and computer science — from the trenches of real client work.

RAG vs Fine-Tuning: I Built Both — Here's What I Learned
Artificial Intelligence

RAG vs Fine-Tuning: I Built Both — Here's What I Learned

I built both RAG and fine-tuning for the same internal-docs assistant and compared cost, accuracy, and maintenance. RAG won on accuracy and cost-of-ownership.

August 29, 20265 min read
airagfine-tuning
Auditing a Next.js App for the Latest RCE Vulnerability
Cyber Security

Auditing a Next.js App for the Latest RCE Vulnerability

A step-by-step audit process for the August 2026 Next.js RCE patches: version checks, Windows path-traversal, AVIF RCE, log review, and upgrades.

August 29, 20265 min read
nextjssecurityrce
How I Fixed a Client's Sluggish API (Without Touching Infrastructure)
Full Stack Web Development

How I Fixed a Client's Sluggish API (Without Touching Infrastructure)

A SaaS dashboard API was taking seconds per request. After auditing the code, response times dropped dramatically — without adding a single server.

August 29, 20265 min read
performanceapidatabase
GLM-5.3 Open Weights Released: What It Means for AI Developers
Artificial Intelligence

GLM-5.3 Open Weights Released: What It Means for AI Developers

GLM-5.3 open weights dropped with a 1M context window and agentic coding focus. Here's what it means for your product.

August 29, 20265 min read
aiopen-weightsllm
Upgrading to Next.js 16.3: Dev Memory Cut by 62% in This App
Full Stack Web Development

Upgrading to Next.js 16.3: Dev Memory Cut by 62% in This App

A production upgrade to Next.js 16.3 cut dev memory from 4GB to 1.5GB, sped up builds, and deprecated the Edge Runtime. Here's everything I changed.

August 29, 20265 min read
nextjsreactperformance
Why 100% Test Coverage Lies to You
Software Engineering

Why 100% Test Coverage Lies to You

100% test coverage is a vanity metric. It measures which lines ran, not whether tests verify behavior. Here's what to check instead.

August 29, 20267 min read
testingqualityci
Hash Tables Under the Hood: Collisions, Resizing, and O(1)
Computer Science

Hash Tables Under the Hood: Collisions, Resizing, and O(1)

How hash tables actually work: hash functions, collisions, chaining vs open addressing, resizing, and why O(1) lookup is amortized.

August 29, 20265 min read
hash-tablesdata-structuresperformance
Critical Next.js RCE: Is Your App Vulnerable?
Cyber Security

Critical Next.js RCE: Is Your App Vulnerable?

Two unauthenticated RCE vulnerabilities in Next.js patched Aug 25, 2026. Check your version and upgrade now.

August 29, 20265 min read
nextjssecurityrce