mwheelz

7 ms·

1.
Show HN: A page that hides a sentence for AI and lets you check if it came back(sinceyouarrived.world)
3 points by mwheelz 4mo ago|0 comments
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
This is a real version of the critique and I've been thinking about it. The page leans on an IP-to-geo lookup that's known to be approximate (city-level on a good day, region-level often, wrong-city sometimes); accuracy isn't
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Fair point, and you're right. On iOS the stock font set is essentially uniform across devices in the same OS version, so the "nearly unique" claim doesn't hold there. Just pushed a hedge: prose now distinguishes between
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Thanks for that. The page isn't trying to tell anyone something they don't already know, it's trying to put it in front of the people who haven't been told. The bug reports today have been gold and the volume is meaningf
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Yeah, the bottom counter on the page is meant to make exactly that point. Mouse movements, scroll velocity, tab switches, reading pauses are all features in modern fraud / "trust" scoring systems alongside the static fingerpr
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Confirmed. Firefox's privacy hardening returns "Mozilla, or similar" or just "Mozilla" as the renderer string. Chrome doesn't (yet). My parser was treating the Firefox string as if it were ANGLE format and grab
7.
by mwheelz 4mo ago
Right, IP-to-geo is approximate and gets a lot of cases wrong (yours among them). Most ad networks use it as a region/DMA hint, and not precise positioning. The point of including it isn't precision. It's that any location is
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Pedantic but right. The JS queries them; the browser returns them without prompting the user. "Volunteered" is the editorial verb for that round-trip but it does paper over a layer.
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
The 100% charging readout is the desktop-with-no-battery phantom. I pushed a stricter filter for that earlier, you may be on a cached copy (try a hard refresh). On the light-mode call: the page detects your preference but doesn't honor
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
The Referer header is the one that's hardest to opt out of cleanly, strip it at the network level and too many things break. Referrer-Policy lets the origin set the rule, but the visitor doesn't get to choose. There's a quiet
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Correct on rigor. Proving a fingerprint requires the two-visit protocol you describe. The page doesn't actually compute a stable fingerprint or attempt to track returning visitors, it shows you the signals that go into one. The barcode
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Right that most of these aren't surprises individually, and right that nobody wants a permission prompt for Accept-Language. The argument isn't that you should, it's that the combination is enough to identify you across sites
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Fair pushback, and partially right. Most of these data points are individually defensible. Accept-Language helps with localization, Referer is just how links work, timezone is universally useful. The page's argument isn't that any
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Update: I pushed two rounds of fixes for things people caught. 1. GPU "or similar" stranded prose. Firefox returns "Mozilla, or similar" as the masked renderer string and my parser was grabbing the second half. Masked-GP
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
The 39 GB number is a bug. I was reading quota (browser allow-up-to ceiling) and calling it "allocated." Fixed; pushing now. Contrast is intentional but I hear you. not changing it but noted, and a cleaner reading mode is on the t
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Both linked in the Sources & Confessions modal at the bottom. Cover Your Tracks is the spiritual ancestor of this whole piece. amiunique is more rigorous; this is the editorial cousin.
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
Real bug. Firefox returns "Mozilla, or similar" for the renderer string and my parser was grabbing the second half. Fixed; pushing in a minute. Your GPU is fine. Your browser is doing the right thing.
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by mwheelz 4mo ago
The GPU string really is the spicy one combined with screen + fonts it's enough to single you out across most of the open web. The card itself is a tank.
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A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking(sinceyouarrived.world)
625 points by mwheelz 4mo ago|294 comments
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What Color Was The Sky – yesterday's sky above your city, from real data(sinceyouarrived.world)
2 points by mwheelz 5mo ago|0 comments
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by mwheelz 5mo ago
It sits on the "Verso · Of What Was Taken" side, so the framing is tilted. But I didn't want to argue it explicitly on the page. Some might see a loss (a human conversation that would have or could have happened otherwise). S
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Since You Arrived(sinceyouarrived.world)
1 points by mwheelz 5mo ago|2 comments