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Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

Had a lot of fun trying to break this. Turns out you can screenshot real easily by zooming out. Maybe there are other ways but I stopped trying :)

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yeah - I actually was initially confused since I wasn't having any issues screenshotting it but had forgotten that I have the default site zoom set to ~65%.

Not sure what you mean - I can screenshot it freely that's not the point the point is if you look then at the screenshot you cant discern the text because its a single frame now

Zooming out before taking screenshot and the text is no longer obfuscated. I tried and confirmed it works. In fact, the text is perhaps even more readable than the original.

It depends how fast or slow your GPU is. I tried it and saw the effect you described, but within a second or two it started moving and was obscured again. Obviously you could automate the problem away.

Mine freezes the animation on zoom change. Not sure you could automate against that

What I meant was that even if it only freezes for a second, you could automate the screenshots to be captured during that time instead of trying to beat the clock manually

He's right. This is zoomed out: https://imgur.com/a/G7CKZ94

This is on MacOS 15.6, Chromium (BrowserOS), captured with the OS' native screenshot utility. Since I was asked about the zoom factor, I now tried simply capturing it at 100% and it was still perfectly readable...

I guess the trick doesn't work on this browser.

I zoomed out to 90% and could make out something was there but wasn't easy to read. Zooming out further went back to just being noise. I also tried zooming in but with no success. What zoom level did you use and I guess we have to ask the standard what browser/version/OS/etc?? My FFv142 on macOS never took a screen grab like you did

This is really interesting - because it means the "randomness" is different between the text and the background, and when you zoom out enough, the eye can distinguish it?

hmmm I think it's probably just an aliasing / canvas drawing issue. When I bring a screenshot in heavily zoomed out 33% - the pixels comprising the "HELLO" shape have a significantly higher luminance than the rest of the background.

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