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Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads
How I tracked myself down using leaked location data in the in-app ads, and what I found along the way.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 325 posts.
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How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
As it turns out they don't actually want you to do this (and have some interesting ways to stop you)
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Leaking the email of any YouTube user for $10k
What could've been the largest data breach in the world - an attack chain on Google services to leak the email address of any YouTube channel
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Someone at YouTube needs glasses
Opened YouTube and was greeted with this abomination:
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Do not download the app, use the website
The 2010s was the Wild West of the mobile world. You couldn't walk past a row of cubicles without hearing a manager cough "Mobile-first", much like "AI-first" is today. Every company, from the biggest
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CSS Minecraft
A Minecraft clone made with pure HTML & CSS – no JavaScript.
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Google is dead. Where do we go now?
It’s anecdotal, I know, but my main entertainment business revenue is down 50% over the past 3 months. Our main paid source of leads was Google Ads, which have served us well over the past 10 years or so – I think I know what I am doing in adwords by now. Once per month … Continue reading "Google is dead. Where do we…
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Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
Hello, I'm Derin!
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Next.js is infuriating
Hey, it's finally happened. I've decided to write a blog post. And if you're reading this, I've also finished one. I have wanted to do this for a long time,…
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Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled
In my recent analysis of YouTube’s information density I included the results from an advanced statistical analysis on the number of videos present on the home page, which projected that around May 2026 there would only be one lonely video on the home screen.
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Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords
where my words occasionally escape /dev/null
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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
How I wrote filter rules for YouTube
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Open Social
The protocol is the API.
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Just let me select text
Text is a universal medium. And yet we try to prevent users of our UIs from using it. Let’s not.
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Modern Node.js Patterns
Node.js has undergone a remarkable transformation since its early days. If you’ve been writing Node.js for several years, you’ve likely witnessed this evolution firsthand—from the callback-heavy, CommonJS-dominated landscape to today’s clean, standards-based development experience.
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Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help
I complained about this on the socials , but I didn’t get it all out of my system. So now I write a blog post. I’ve never liked the philosophy of “put an icon…
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The <output> Tag
Make your dynamic content accessible by default with the HTML tag that time forgot.
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How to Firefox
Chrome finally pulled the trigger on the web’s best ad-blocker, uBlock Origin. Now that Chrome has hobbled uBO, Firefox — my beloved —1 is surging again. I want to do my part to convince you to switch to Firefox and show you how I use it.
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ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
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The Frontend Treadmill
A lot of frontend teams are very convinced that rewriting their frontend will lead to the promised land. And I am the bearer of bad tidings. If you are building a product that you hope has longevity, your frontend framework is the least interesting technical decision for you to make. And all of the time you spend…
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The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting
If you were worried about tracking cookies, you really don’t want to know about browser fingerprinting.
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It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA
Native CSS transitions have quietly killed the strongest argument for client-side routing. Yet people keep building terrible apps instead of performant websites.
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Try Switching to Kagi
Paying for Kagi today feels a *lot* like paying for HBO back in the cable TV heyday.
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Magic/tragic email links: don't make them the only option
Subscription websites now like to use magic email links for login. They are extremely annoying.
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React is winning by default and slowing innovation
Exploring how React's dominance by default stifles frontend innovation, and why deliberate framework choices lead to better tools for performance, developer experience, and ecosystem diversity.
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A new PNG spec
After 20 years, PNG is back with renewed vigor! A new PNG spec was just released.
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Don't guess my language
If you’re still using IP geolocation to decide what language to show, stop screwing around. It’s a broken assumption dressed up as a feature.
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How to post when no one is reading
The path to creative mastery begins with years of silence. Publish anyway.