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tim1994

88 karma · joined February 24, 2018

https://github.com/tim-we/ timw-public@outlook.com
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tim1994··on Steal My Bitcoin CTF PoC
It took 2-3 hours, not 19. The first version was a static index.HTML file and was not exploitable. People found out and contacted the challenge author. After the fix was public it has been exploited in a couple of hours.
tim1994··on Bug Blindness
Padding is typically part of the hitbox, margin is not. What you are describing sounds like margin to me. Especially for Firefox since their UI is made with web tech.

But besides being overly pedantic I agree with your general point. If their is a small gap between hitbox and edge of the screen it is very annoying.

But the worst thing IMO is Windows 11 windows which you can grab by the titlebar but not the content area. However often there is no visual indication of where the titlebar starts/stops.

tim1994··on Modern CSS Code Snippets: Stop writing CSS like it's 2015
With signals you can avoid the prop drilling. I think signals can help a lot with this approach
tim1994··on Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
Well, someone has to start. It's ok if you use the alternative with a subset of your contacts.
tim1994··on Consent-O-Matic
True, but considering that the extension was bought in 2022 by Avast, maybe it has its own tracking built in by now or will have something concerning done to it in the future. So even if the user does not care about cookies that much I would still recommend this new extension over "I don't care about cookies"
tim1994··on Apple releases open-source model that instantly turns 2D photos into 3D views
For panning you don't need a 3D view/reconstruction. This also allows translational camera movements, but only for nearby views. Maybe I am overly pedantic here, but for HN I guess thats appropriate :D
tim1994··on Incomplete list of mistakes in the design of CSS
Should you optimize for resize performance? I guess that depends on the app. Use the tool that fits the requirements.
tim1994··on Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
The problem is content exclusivity. It would be great if all the content or at least most would be available on all platforms. At least eventually. That would be great for consumers. Mergers like this typically not.
tim1994··on How good engineers write bad code at big companies
Another reason I can think of is the requirement not to introduce a breaking change. It is very frustrating if the codebase has a lot of hacky/bad code in it but a lot of it can't be changed...
tim1994··on Shai-Hulud Returns: Over 300 NPM Packages Infected
Because updates don't just include new features but also bug and security fixes. As always, it probably depends on the context how relevant this is to you. I agree that cooldown is a good idea though.
tim1994··on Montana becomes first state to enshrine 'right to compute' into law
> The government is.

Companies too.

tim1994··on Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts
I think the problem is that they cannot communicate that they don't know something and instead make up some BS that sounds somewhat reasonable. Probably due to how they are built. I notice this regularly when asking questions about new web platform features and there is not enough information in the training data.
tim1994··on FreeDroidWarn
Ain't gonna happen (unfortunately). Somehow people (outside of HN) seem to like to use apps for everything. EVERYTHING.
tim1994··on AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks
I also get this. Firefox on Android in Germany.
tim1994··on Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy
A couple of years ago I played PUBG which crashed occasionally. I rarely submitted bugs, even if it was as simple as pressing a button in the crash reporter. This is because sending the bug report took a while and blocked you from restarting and rejoining the ongoing game. This applies mostly to multiplayer games but if your app has a crash reporter, give the user a chance to restart the app and report the bug later.
tim1994··on A privilege escalation from Chrome extensions (2023)
Interesting read for sure! This is about ChromeOS though, Chrome on other platforms was not affected.
tim1994··on Show HN: Zero-codegen, no-compile TypeScript type inference from Protobufs
It's always impressive how far people can take TypeScript and even build parsers with it. But this is limited to inlined string literals and cannot read files (a TS limitation).

I wonder if the author has a use case in mind for this that I don't see. Like if you are only using TS, what's the point of protobuf? If you are exchanging data with programs written in other languages why avoid the protobuf tooling that you need anyway?

Maybe this is just a fun toy project to write a parser in TS?

tim1994··on Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia
In Germany LRAD systems have been used to deliver Covid 19 information, not against protesters. Used by the fire brigade. I haven't checked uses in other countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#G...

tim1994··on Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” feature
Why do we need tracking for advertising though? I wouldn't mind ads based on the page content (as much). Social media websites know their users anyways, no need IMO to track users across other websites.
tim1994··on Don’t try to sanitize input, escape output (2020)
I don't think this is sufficient. Scripts could still do bad things, for example mining crypto.
tim1994··on LineageOS is the perfect minimal smartphone for non-tech savvy folk
You can use Google Play services on Lineage os. IIRC they are installed by default though there are ways to use it without them (doing that right now). About banking apps idk.
tim1994··on Spotify says its iPhone app updates in the EU are getting held up by Apple
The Android App as well. I have a slightly older phone (Fairphone 3+) and it takes 10-15s for a song to start playing after tapping on it. Even if it's offline available. Didn't use to be that way. Also the app is basically the opposite of offline-first. Terrible UX.
tim1994··on Ask HN: Interest in a Rust-Inspired Language Compiling to JavaScript?
Sounds like an interesting project, but I think it's important to find a good way to interact with browser APIs. They all work differently, like rAF, geolocation, pointer lock, camera access and so on. I think relying on the unsafe mode for all that could lead to a frustrating experience but also implementing those APIs in a different way would be weird and you have to keep up with new APIs and changes browsers introduce. I suggest having an idea on how to solve this before spending a lot of time developing the actual language. If it limits what I can do with JS I would not use this and just stick with Typescript.
tim1994··on Show HN: Little Rat – Chrome extension monitors network calls of all extensions
IIRC extensions cannot access any URL that hasn't been specified in the manifests permission section. I think Firefox shows those URLs in the permission prompt. Those URLs can contain wildcards though and I even think there is a special value for all URLs but only few extensions should require that permission.
tim1994··on Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)
I don't know how Chrome handles this but Firefox won't install the update without the user confirming it.
tim1994··on Ask HN: Looking for a Firefox compatible extension for voice controlled actions
It's not quite that simple. For example the button doesn't necessarily have to have an aria label. Could be the (nested!) content. There could be multiple candidates (buttons). The speech recognition thing is also not trivial. Yes there are WebAssembly based solutions but those have to be properly integrated and tested (not sure how good they actually are)
tim1994··on Ask HN: Looking for a Firefox compatible extension for voice controlled actions
Perhaps a caching or timing issue? I updated my profile shortly after posting this (and noticing it myself).
tim1994··on Ask HN: Looking for a Firefox compatible extension for voice controlled actions
Assuming this does not yet exist: If anyone is interested in building something like this (that works offline) please let me know, I'd like to join. I have some experience building web extensions but unfortunately not the time to develop & maintain this on my own right now.
tim1994··on Ask HN: Looking for a Firefox compatible extension for voice controlled actions
I assume you are referring to the SpeechRecognition interface of the Web Speech API. Unfortunately this is not supported by Firefox and even for Chrome it doesn't work offline.

Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechRecog...

tim1994··on WebGPU – All of the cores, none of the canvas
I'd also be interested in details on this but I assume the gl.enable() API changes fundamental things about the rendering pipeline. It allows enabling things like depth testing and stencil (both involve an extra buffer) and face culling (additional tests after vertex shader). For blending in particular I think it requires the fragment shader to first read the previous value from the frame buffer. Changes this stuff is probably not a trivial operation and requires a lot of communication with the GPU which is slow (just a guess).

If you want to change blending for each draw call you can change the blending function or just return suitable alpha values from the fragment shader.

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