Hacker News: css

New comment by css in "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"

css — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 06:57:34 +0000

What's wrong with `imessage-exporter`?

https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

New comment by css in "Getting syntax highlighting wrong"

css — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 20:24:33 +0000

I love the concept of lexical differential highlighting [0] (discussed here [1]). It makes reading math so much easier, especially in dense code. However I don't know of any editor that implements a feature like this.

If you paste the following code into the example block in [0] you can see how useful this can be:

    while (b - a).abs() > EPSILON {
        let c = a + (a - b) * f_a / (f_b - f_a);
        let f_c = J(c);
        if f_c * f_b == 0.0 {
            a = b;
            f_a = f_b;
        } else {
            f_a /= 2.0;
        }
        b = c;
        f_b = f_c;
    }

[0]: https://wordsandbuttons.online/lexical_differential_highligh...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20414528

New comment by css in "Too Many Open Files"

css — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 15:58:22 +0000

I ran into this issue recently [0]. Apparently the integrated VSCode terminal sets its own (very high) cap by default, but other shells don't, so all of my testing in the VSCode shell "hid" the bug that other shells exposed.

[0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter/issues/314#iss...

New comment by css in "Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format"

css — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:16:13 +0000

Semi-related, one of the `imessage-exporter` contributors provided a great write-up on reverse engineering the handwritten and digital touch message protobufs [0]. The reconstructed proto files are [1] [2].

[0]: https://github.com/trymoose/handwriting2svg/blob/0eb56cf4582...

[1]: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter/blob/beeb853b2...

[2]: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter/blob/beeb853b2...

New comment by css in "Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format"

css — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 21:44:55 +0000

The plist is probably a binary plist (header bytes `bplist00`) generated by NSKeyedArchiver, and then the specific data you need is encoded inside. Edited iMessages are stored in the exact same way. Luckily the plist itself is not that complex–but typedstream is pesky to work with.

New comment by css in "Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format"

css — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:19:23 +0000

iMessage uses a very strange amalgamation of typedstream (message content), keyed archives (app messages, sticker data), and protobufs (Digital Touch, handwriting) for different features. I wonder what motivated all of those design decisions.

New comment by css in "Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format"

css — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 16:26:35 +0000

Apple provides Messages for Business [0], but if you have a machine that can read the iMessages as they come in, you could use the library [1] that powers `imessage-exporter` as a bridge.

[0]: https://register.apple.com/messages

[1]: https://docs.rs/imessage-database/latest/

Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format

css — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 15:36:52 +0000

Article URL: https://chrissardegna.com/blog/reverse-engineering-apples-typedstream-format/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42919221

Points: 127

# Comments: 25

New comment by css in "Four limitations of Rust's borrow checker"

css — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 20:01:25 +0000

Yes, or use the entry api: https://doc.rust-lang.org/beta/std/collections/hash_map/enum...

New comment by css in "Show HN: Extract iMessage Attachments and Links into Organized Folders"

css — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 20:13:07 +0000

If you want something a bit more robust and cross-platform, including support for the undocumented TypedStream-stored text data, you can use my open source software: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

New comment by css in "USPS text scammers duped his wife, so he hacked their operation"

css — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 15:05:25 +0000

"666" is a slang term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Internet_slang

New comment by css in "Show HN: iMessage-exporter: a comprehensive CLI app and library"

css — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 17:46:23 +0000

You can probably do this using the library: https://docs.rs/imessage-database/latest/imessage_database/

New comment by css in "Show HN: iMessage-exporter: a comprehensive CLI app and library"

css — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:42:52 +0000

The California Poppy release [0] of `imessage-exporter` is the biggest update yet. Most notably, it implements a novel `typedstream` deserializer [1], allowing it to understand the data stored in `NSAttributedString` binary data that is stored in the iMessage database.

I've spent a long time reverse engineering nearly every aspect of Apple's iMessage SQLite tables to build this program. As far as I know, there are no other tools that support the full corpus of iMessage features [2], including edited messages, app messages, reactions, text range formatting, and threads.

[0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter/releases/tag/2...

[1]: https://docs.rs/imessage-database/latest/imessage_database/u...

[2]: https://docs.rs/imessage-database/2.0.1/imessage_database/me...

Show HN: iMessage-exporter: a comprehensive CLI app and library

css — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:42:31 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41181989

Points: 24

# Comments: 4

New comment by css in "Autogenerating a Book Series from Three Years of iMessages"

css — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:09:26 +0000

Awesome to see someone using my library [0] in the wild! Very cool use case.

[0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

New comment by css in "Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript"

css — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 17:09:54 +0000

Cheers! It was fun to build.

New comment by css in "Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript"

css — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:51:24 +0000

Hey, this sounds like an interesting problem. I am always looking for edge cases to test, if you have time would you mind checking if https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter works for you and if it crashes in that spot?

New comment by css in "Beeper – Moving Forward"

css — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 04:51:16 +0000

Thanks for sharing my work!

New comment by css in "Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android"

css — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 07:46:36 +0000

I wrote a tool for this: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

New comment by css in "Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds"

css — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 15:06:12 +0000

Maybe cartel is a strong word, but there are many states in the US where, in order to operate a medical facility or provide a service, you must get permission from all of the existing facilities in the locality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need

This extends to even purchasing medical equipment.