I am still phreaking and active in the demoscene.
Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
31–40 of 316 posts
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#32I used to have entire Keygen Jukebox on my iPod. And speaking of iPods: iPodLinux and Rockbox. So satisfying when you are 14, just change colors of the blocks in "copter" and it compiles and runs on your nano.
Oh and I also loved to show off with Tiny C Compiler on my jailbroken Kindle 3rd gen
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#33Web scraping. I love figuring out how to reverse engineer websites and defeat systems designed against web scrapers. It's also super interesting (concerning?) how much data websites leak. 4 out of the 5 bug bounties I've discovered have been while poking around in my scraping efforts.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#34Browser extensions. Not quite a website, not quite a mobile app, and surprisingly pervasive. Most people don't realize how incredibly powerful they are, even with manifest v3. I almost fell out of my chair when I found out there were no books on how to build them, so I wrote one: https://www.buildingbrowserextensions.com/ It was incredibly enjoyable to go through the APIs and write about all the different crazy thing…
The book looks great.
I want to build an ad-blocker.
Could you recommend a good open source projects to learn from?
Previous extension I made: www.fuckoff.yt
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#35Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy. The warez scene in 90s and early 00s was fun to follow. I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art, not to mention the skills for unpacking and keygen-ing or cracking of the protected software. https://scenelist.org/
I wasn't aware of this at the time, but apparently INC "leaked" a game to The Humble Guys which was modified to search for a modem and dial 911, supposedly leading to some police visits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Network_of_Crack...
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#36Locksport!
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#37I watch silly review videos of old games ok the YouTube channel Accursed Farms
https://youtube.com/@chilledsanity
I used to be partnof the comment field on Joe Rogan videos. The comments were hilarious, great community.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#38The intersection of people who understand computer* puns and English Football League** team names:
Warning: gratuitous 16MB PDF which will not benefit you.
* Not strictly just computing
** Some international clubs too.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#39- Programming Language dev: I think compilers and VM runtimes are neat, and like talking to people in the space on twitter or reading new papers that come out about it. The /r/ProgrammingLanguage discord server is a great place to hang out, with lots of interesting and competent people working on sideprojects simply because they like the topic. - Urbit: I got into Urbit years ago, and still think it's really interest…
Meh. Urbit. That's not a weird technical scene, that's a lightning-rod for arguments about code of conduct at conferences and whether you're a fan of Bergson / Popper-esque Open Societies [cf. "The Open Society and Its Enemies" and "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion" vs. J. S. Mill "On Liberty"]
No, really, it’s not political. But haters love to make it about politics because they can’t rebut it technically.
Technically it’s a very interesting and valuable project. And there are many normal well adjusted humans beings working on it. It’s a shame people want it smeared out of existence because a Berkeley grad who no longer has anything to do with the project has weird political fantasies that some people don’t like. People really seem to struggle to separate the two. Makes it feel deliberate.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#40I recently got involved with a community which organizes table-top wargaming rules/profiles into machine readable form. Some of these games have hundreds-to-thousands of units and special rules, so it's quite impressive what emerges.