Top all-time · #17474
John Hobbs
Personal blog · velvetcache.org · on HN as jmhobbsprogrammingsecurityweb
John Hobbs writes jmhobbs Blog, a personal blog at velvetcache.org about programming, security and web. Since 2010, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “Custom Mailbox Betacoins”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link John Hobbs's write-up on how Mailbox's 'betacoin' beta invites worked, with activation codes hidden in GIF comments via steganography. It is cited as the source for those details.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The collected thoughts and experiments of John Hobbs
Most-linked posts?
- Custom Mailbox Betacoins2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-08-20
What Hacker News says?
I used mine to build an egg incubator this year, http://www.velvetcache.org/2018/03/04/chicken-cam-incubator-...
Comment linking /2018/03/04/chicken-cam-incubator-edition
on “Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?”Submitted Abine gets it right. Supports a product fork. as a story · 13 points
HN discussionOpen source Go one called QPID on the Raspberry Pi, https://github.com/bbqgophers/qpid Fairly easy to glue together sensors to roll your own, I made an egg incubator with basically the same pieces that had a webcam too, http://www.velvetcache.org/2018/03/04/chicken-cam-incubator-... I like the reuse of the phone though, I wonder if there is some sort of bluetooth board out there that can bridge the phone to the gpio…
Comment linking /2018/03/04/chicken-cam-incubator-edition
on “Making Pulled Pork with React Native, Expo, and Express”Submitted Custom Mailbox Betacoins as a story · 10 points
HN discussionIt's not always about "hiding" the code. We were fortunate enough to actually be able to use steganography at Mailbox - "betacoins" were our beta invite system on Mailbox for Mac. Super fun approach (cute GIFs really help) and people loved it. John Hobbs did a write-up at https://www.velvetcache.org/2014/08/20/custom-mailbox-betaco...
Comment linking /2014/08/20/custom-mailbox-betacoins
on “Hiding messages in images: steganography with Python and Repl.it”Submitted Homoglyph Substitution as a story · 3 points
HN discussionVery cool, I love my analog Holga (some snaps here: http://www.velvetcache.org/2010/07/14/more-lomo-photos ). Though I'm sure many in the community would rebel against digital.
Comment linking /2010/07/14/more-lomo-photos
on “A digital camera inspired by Holga”Submitted Pure CSS Seven-Segment Display Tutorial as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWrote a similar script a while back to vizualize any binary data. http://www.velvetcache.org/2010/03/15/bin2img-data-visualiza...
Comment linking /2010/03/15/bin2img-data-visualization-with-php
on “Random Numbers”Submitted Swiftmailer Transport for Amazon Simple Email Service as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMore specifically, the GIF contains the activation code in its comments section: http://www.velvetcache.org/2014/08/20/custom-mailbox-betacoi... I don't believe any hardware IDs are used. The codes are one-time use only, and your Dropbox/Mailbox account is activated with it. Once your account is enabled, you can use the beta on multiple computers.
Comment linking /2014/08/20/custom-mailbox-betacoins
on “Ask HN: How does Dropbox's Betacoin work?”Submitted R = 1 – sin(θ) (A Love Song) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building an Offline Backup for Authy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Party Gopher as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hashes Are Not *$&% Magic as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Twillip - PHP Twilio Development Tool as a story · 1 points
HN discussion