Article URL: https://www.jefftk.com/p/verizon-is-about-to-break-our-watches Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787329 Points: 14 # Comments: 3
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A developer building a new UI for Isovalent Labs encountered a transparency problem while creating animated isometric tiles for a learning platform. The tiles begin as static PNGs and animate via short looping videos generated with AI, but standard formats struggled to preserve clean edges. The solution involved extracting the alpha channel from the original PNG and applying it as a mask to each video frame using FFmpeg and ImageMagick before encoding to animated WebP. WebP was chosen over GIF because GIF only supports binary transparency, producing jagged edges, while WebP and APNG support full alpha with smooth anti-aliasing. The developer published a reusable shell script to automate the entire pipeline, from frame extraction to final WebP output.
A developer has built and open-sourced a Product Hunt scraper that extracts structured data from new product launches, including names, taglines, upvotes, topics, makers, and media. The tool supports multiple data-collection strategies such as Atom feed parsing, topic page browsing, keyword search, and direct URL scraping. Built in Python using httpx and BeautifulSoup4, it uses concurrent fetching to efficiently handle large volumes of products. The scraper is deployed on Apify and also powers a REST API available on RapidAPI, making it accessible without self-hosting. The creator, who maintains a broader portfolio of content extraction tools, says use cases include lead generation, market research, trend analysis, and automated newsletter creation.
RFC 10008, published in June 2026, introduces a new HTTP method called QUERY designed to address limitations developers face when handling complex data-retrieval requests. Unlike GET, QUERY allows a structured request body, eliminating issues with URL length limits, sensitive data exposure in query strings, and awkward parameter encoding. Unlike POST, QUERY is defined as safe and idempotent, meaning clients can retry failed requests without risking duplicate side effects, and responses can be cached by browsers and CDNs. Cache implementations key responses on a combination of the request path and a hash of the request body, with major providers like Cloudflare, Akamai, and Fastly already offering support or workarounds. The method also introduces features such as server-side query discovery via the Accept-Query header and optional URI assignment for reusable query definitions.
A developer has documented the process of combining two personal learning projects: a web server built from raw sockets and a custom TLS-like secure channel constructed from scratch. The exercise focused on identifying exactly what changes when a web server shifts from receiving plaintext HTTP bytes to receiving encrypted TCP bytes. The key finding was that the HTTP parser, router, and file-serving logic required virtually no modification, as the only meaningful change occurred at the layer between TCP and HTTP. The integration works by inserting a TLS handshake and record-decryption step between the raw socket and the HTTP parser, so the rest of the server continues to handle plaintext as before. The author notes this is strictly a learning project and does not implement the real TLS 1.3 wire format, meaning standard browsers cannot connect to it.
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