Top all-time · #3437
JonLuca DeCaro
Personal blog · blog.jonlu.caprogrammingsecurity
JonLuca DeCaro writes JonLuca's Blog, a personal blog at blog.jonlu.ca about programming and security. Since 2018, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 93 times, most often “Speeding up Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link these posts as hands-on tech projects: an illegal-streams project, a TypeScript license plate checker, and a write-up on making high-fidelity audio sound like it came through a phone.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Essays by JonLuca DeCaro about programming, reverse engineering, product systems, travel, and technology.
Most-linked posts?
- Speeding up Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-05-19
- Illegal streams, decrypting m3u8's, building a better stream experience (2018)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-09-22
- Reverse engineering a flight spotting app2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-12
- Finding cool CA license plates2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-08-28
- Writing fast async HTTP requests in Python2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-16
- Experiments, Growth Engineering, and Exposing Company Secrets Through Your API2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-26
What Hacker News says?
based upon some of the work you've shown on your blog https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/illegal-streams I'm glad they are compensating you fairly. Most people could not do this type of mental work.
Comment linking /posts/illegal-streams
on “Compensation in 2019 – new grad tech offers”Submitted Nintendo Switch prevents downgrades by irreparably blowing its own fuses (2020) as a story · 533 points
HN discussionI did something similar with CA a few months back - https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/ca-plate-checker Next steps would be to make it LLM assisted and to generate common number/letter replacement combos
Comment linking /posts/ca-plate-checker
on “Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates”Submitted Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights as a story · 466 points
HN discussionVery similar to this post from a few months ago - https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/ca-plate-checker
Comment linking /posts/ca-plate-checker
on “Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates”Submitted Reversing Safeway's private APIs to automate coupon collection as a story · 308 points
HN discussionThis is a pretty common thread with a lot of my blog posts - with the rise of SPA's and the ubiquity of REST APIs, all the difficulties of "scraping" are gone - these services will often open up a route that lets you pull everything in an easy to digest JSON format. https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/ryan-air and https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/uber-stats are two blog posts of mine that follow a very similar path.
Comment linking /posts/uber-stats
on “Experiments and leaking company secrets through your testing infrastructure”Submitted Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights (2018) as a story · 207 points
HN discussionThat's the TLS key. It's trivial to read the "plain text" contents of the HTTP request - this is for when the contents are actually encrypted at Layer 7, the application layer, not the transport layer. I did write up how to do it for Blind, though, here https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/decrypting-blind
Comment linking /posts/decrypting-blind
on “Snapshotting memory to scrape encrypted network requests”Submitted Compensation in 2019 – new grad tech offers as a story · 204 points
HN discussionFrom the console: > Media resource https://blog.jonlu.ca/assets/eightkhz_resampled.wav could not be decoded, error: Error Code: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_METADATA_ERR (0x806e0006) You can download and play those audios directly: https://blog.jonlu.ca/assets/eightkhz_resampled_unfrequencie... and https://blog.jonlu.ca/assets/eightkhz_resampled_unfrequencie...
Comment linking /assets/eightkhz_resampled_unfrequencied.wav
on “Making high-fidelity audio sound like it came through the phone (2018)”Submitted The Federalist Papers: Author Identification Through K-Means Clustering as a story · 178 points
HN discussionThis is a weird coincedence - I just published a blog post on this two days ago https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/snappy-internet
Comment linking /posts/snappy-internet
on “We raised a bunch of money”Submitted How the Nintendo Switch prevents downgrades by irreparably blowing its own fuses as a story · 136 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.jonlu.ca/ Mostly reverse engineering and security write ups
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Flight stats, entertainment, and trying to crack Widevine as a story · 109 points
HN discussionSubmitted Getting a vanity phone number with four consecutive digits as a story · 105 points
HN discussionSubmitted Obfuscated JavaScript, scam emails, and American Express as a story · 102 points
HN discussionSubmitted Experiments and leaking company secrets through your testing infrastructure as a story · 92 points
HN discussionSubmitted Snapshotting memory to scrape encrypted network requests as a story · 78 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making high-fidelity audio sound like it came through the phone (2018) as a story · 62 points
HN discussionSubmitted JavaScript Promise.all vs. Promise.allSettled as a story · 58 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building an OpenTable Bot as a story · 55 points
HN discussionSubmitted Illegal streams, decrypting m3u8's, building a better stream experience (2018) as a story · 42 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making 1000 HTTP requests per second in Python as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on user growth and product as a story · 23 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dr. Carvers Shave Butter, Ember, and Disappearing Products as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Class schedules, a cease and desist from Viacom, and accidental monetization as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Finding cool CA license plates as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Getting a vanity phone number with 4 consecutive digits as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
