π Check out this awesome post from Hacker News π π Category: π‘ Main takeaway: Supercookie uses favicons to assign a unique identifier to website visitors.Unlike traditional tracking methods, this ID can be stored almost persistently and cannot be easily cleared by the user. The tracking method works even in the browser's incognito mode and is not cleared by flushing the cache, closing the browser or restarting the operating system, using a VPN or installing AdBlockers. πΏ Live demo. This repository is for educational and demonstration purposes only! The demo of "supercookie" as well as the publication of the source…
π Check out this insightful post from Hacker News π π Category: π‘ Hereβs what youβll learn: Linux provides the KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) API to let applications query and configure display settings. It's used by Wayland compositors and other programs that need to configure the hardware directly. I found the C API a little verbose and hard to follow so I made libdrm-ocaml, which lets us run commands interactively in a REPL. We'll start by discovering what hardware is available and how it's currently configured, then configure a monitor to display a simple bitmap, and then finally render a…
π₯ Discover this insightful post from Hacker News π π Category: β
Key idea: Posted: 2025-11-16A friend cleaned up and gave me a copy of a game I've not heard about before: Castrol Honda Superbike World Champions, a motorbike racing game for PC, released 1998 by Interactive Entertainment Ltd. and Midas Interactive Entertainment. Given the age of the game (and looking at the system requirements) it's clear that the game comes from the tricky era of early 3D-accelerated PC gaming. For context, my copy of the game helpfully asks to install DirectX 5.Before Windows was known for cramming AI and…
π₯ Check out this awesome post from Hacker News π π Category: π Main takeaway: In the past, when summer nights grew cold, the lake released the dayβs accumulated heat, causing surface water to become denser and sink. This phenomenon drives the shallow mixing that occurs in summer. As nights have warmed, however, this process has weakened, and mixing has slowed. Counterintuitively, as the layer of surface water has become warmer, it has also become thinner. βIn the summer, there is half as much warm water floating on the surface now, on average, than there was in 1971,β Girdner said.…
π Read this must-read post from Hacker News π π Category: π‘ Key idea: Why Build Your Own? Look, I know what you're thinking. "Why not just use Elasticsearch?" or "What about Algolia?" Those are valid options, but they come with complexity. You need to learn their APIs, manage their infrastructure, and deal with their quirks. Sometimes you just want something that: Works with your existing database Doesn't require external services Is easy to understand and debug Actually finds relevant results That's what I built. A search engine that uses your existing database, respects your current architecture, and gives you…
π Explore this must-read post from Hacker News π π Category: π Main takeaway: Call Me Maybe: Eavesdropping Encrypted LTE Calls With ReVoLTE | Montsecure Call Me Maybe: Eavesdropping Encrypted LTE Calls With ReVoLTE | Montsecure David Rupprecht, Katharina Kohls, Thorsten Holz, and Christina PΓΆpper Ruhr-UniversitΓ€t Bochum & New York University Abu Dhabi Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is a packet-based telephony service seamlessly integrated into the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. By now all major telecommunication operators use VoLTE. To secure the phone calls, VoLTE encrypts the voice data between the phone and the network with a stream cipher. The…
π₯ Read this must-read post from Hacker News π π Category: π Key idea: The Administration, for its part, has denied causing widespread harm, even as it has made the scale of the damage harder to measureβhalting data monitoring and dismissing the inspectors general who might have documented it. This is common in cases of public man-made death. During Mao Zedongβs disastrous Great Leap Forward, from 1958 to 1961, the Chinese government released no accurate mortality data. Observers abroad understood that a hunger crisis was under way when China began importing grain, but the scale of the catastrophe was not…
π₯ Check out this awesome post from Hacker News π π Category: π‘ Hereβs what youβll learn: A few days after the initial experiment, the team tested participantsβ memory by having them look at more Mooney images online, including some they had seen before. Participants were better able to remember prior images that they had rated highly on the three aspects of insight. This suggested that the insight-memory advantage was real, but the team wanted to see what was going on under the hood. Did brain activity during insight predict better memory five days later? The researchers found that the…
β¨ Explore this insightful post from Hacker News π π Category: β
Key idea: Sunday 16 November 2025An overly aggressive mock can work fine, but then break much later. Why?In Why your mock doesnβt work I explained this rule of mocking:Mock where the object is used, not where itβs defined.That blog post explained why that rule was important: often a mock doesnβt work at all if you do it wrong. But in some cases, the mock will work even if you donβt follow this rule, and then it can break much later. Why?Letβs say you have code like this:#Β user.pydefΒ get_user_settings()Β ->Β str:Β Β Β Β withΒ open(Path("~/settings.json").expanduser())Β asΒ f:Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β returnΒ json.load(f)defΒ add_two_settings()Β ->Β int:Β Β Β Β settingsΒ =Β get_user_settings()Β Β Β Β returnΒ settings["opt1"]Β +Β settings["opt2"]You write…
π₯ Read this insightful post from Hacker News π π Category: β
Key idea: The expiry of key patents for LFP battery chemistry in 2022 transformed the EV industry. With technology now freely accessible, global battery strategies are shifting as former IP barriers fall. An LFP battery is a type of lithium-ion battery that uses lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) as the cathode material. LFPβs appeal in the EV sector is clear: lower cost compared to batteries based on nickel and cobalt chemistries, low toxicity and good safety due to their superior thermal stability. Teslaβs use of LFP in some of…
