Top all-time · #5083
iter.ca
Personal blog · iter.ca/post · on HN as smitopsecurityprogrammingai
iter.ca is a personal blog at iter.ca about security, programming and ai. Since 2022, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting (2020)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link iter.ca to debunk the claim that COBOL missing dates default to 1875, and to explain Reddit's browser fingerprinting via DRM and JavaScript JIT behaviour.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I'm interested in programming and technology. This is my website.
Most-linked posts?
- Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting (2020)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-02-19
- There is no 1875 epoch3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-02-16
- Forging signed commits on GitHub3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-12
- GPT-3.5 crashes when it thinks about useRalativeImagePath too much2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-21
- Jailbreaking language models with user roleplay2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-07-24
What Hacker News says?
This is the best debunk I could find: https://iter.ca/post/1875-epoch/
Comment linking /post/1875-epoch/
on “Did missing/corrupt dates in COBOL default to 1875-05-20?”Submitted YouTube's new anti-adblock measures as a story · 991 points
HN discussion> I also had wrote some code for my former employer containing the magic string "haha jit go brrr" https://iter.ca/post/reddit-whiteops/
Comment linking /post/reddit-whiteops/
on “Finding a random seed that solves a LeetCode problem (2023)”Submitted GPT-3.5 crashes when it thinks about useRalativeImagePath too much as a story · 465 points
HN discussionThis page I found ( https://iter.ca/post/1875-epoch/ ) had a link to some data from SSA: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v71n4/v71n4p33.html , and the "Individuals by YOB" section does indeed not show anything special about 1875 (and has people from before then).
Comment linking /post/1875-epoch/
on “DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL”Submitted Forging signed commits on GitHub as a story · 308 points
HN discussionThat whole thing was debunked AFAIK. Well, it kind of self-debunked since the original tweet that was posted as a reply to said "over 150 years old", not "exactly slightly under 150 years old", and "a number in ISO8601 format", but see e.g.: https://iter.ca/post/1875-epoch/ DOGE has plenty of ways to demonstrate ineptitude without us making some new ones up.
Comment linking /post/1875-epoch/
on “DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL”Submitted Turning off Rust's borrow checker completely (2022) as a story · 59 points
HN discussionReddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting - https://iter.ca/post/reddit-whiteops/
Comment linking /post/reddit-whiteops/
on “New headless Chrome has been released and has a near-perfect browser fingerprint”Submitted Each step of decoding a PNG (2022) as a story · 42 points
HN discussionBrowser fingerprinting can get creative at times, to say the least. eBay's WebSocket port scanner [1] and Reddit's abuse of DRM and JavaScript JIT exploits [2] from years ago are two examples of the kind of in-depth introspection you can perform completely in the background using nothing more than simple non-permission-gated APIs. [1] https://blog.nem.ec/2020/05/24/ebay-port-scanning/ [2] https://iter.ca/post/reddit…
Comment linking /post/reddit-whiteops/
on “AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint”Submitted How to average hues as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI don't think this is really a problem; I wrote about my thoughts at https://iter.ca/post/git-malleate/
Comment linking /post/git-malleate/
on “Git Hash Chain Malleability”Submitted How the Claude Mythos leak happened as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted There is no 1875 epoch as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't run your own mailserver as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Polymarket isn't trustless as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Jailbreaking language models with user roleplay as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted HTML comments (kind of) work in JavaScript (2022) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Forging Signed Commits on GitHub as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted GPT-3.5 crashes when it thinks about useRalativeImagePath too much as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Malleating Git commit signatures as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Loans Are Bets on Doom as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted LLMs are pretty good at making slideshows now as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Getting chat-tuned models to act kinda like base models as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Getting chat-tuned models to act kinda like base models as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Judge prediction markets by depth, not volume as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Jailbreaking language models with user roleplay as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Forging Signed Commits on GitHub as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
