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Taking 'Telega' apart: the only free cheese is in a mousetrap

Reading time5 min
Reach and readers1.3K

Hack Time, Habr!

The other day, I came across a high-profile investigation by Dmytro Tarasenko (aka iTaysonLab).

He was the one who decompiled the APK of the new 'Telega' app, identified links to the VK and Catogram infrastructure, and published the details on the BruhCollective Telegram channel.

My colleagues uncovered many alarming facts, but as someone who loves to dig into the guts of applications, I wanted to go further, confirm their findings, and find what dynamic analysis missed.

I decided to conduct a full static analysis of the APK, deobfuscating the code to create the most complete and technically supported picture possible.
What is really hiding behind the promises of an 'improved' Telegram?

Let's take a look.

Spoiler: it's not secure, not private, but it's damn interesting. Let's go!

Let's look under the hood

Top 10 Free Neural Networks for Photo Generation

Reading time4 min
Reach and readers928

Hi, I'm Dima and, like many, I've been using neural networks to create images for many years. But over the last year and a half, the market for generative models has changed so much and become so huge that it's impossible to try all the models. However, the question of which neural network is the best still remains. Benchmarks are poorly suited for a real assessment of creativity and cost, so I've gathered 10 models in one place, what they are best suited for, and what the price is (or rather, the free limit). I hope this helps you choose the most optimal neural network for your tasks.

Below is an honest rating based on quality, realism, convenience, and price.

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How to Not Lose Access to Telegram and Protect Yourself from Hacking

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time8 min
Reach and readers726

It's been two years since I posted a video and a post about how I recovered my friend's Telegram account using JavaScript. Since then, I've helped over a hundred people regain access to their accounts. Then the method stopped working

I decided to gather the important security aspects of your Telegram account in one place.

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Ollama from A to Z: How to Choose a Model, Configure, and Integrate

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time9 min
Reach and readers1.4K

In this article, we take a detailed look at Ollama — a tool for running large language models (LLMs) locally. You will learn how to install the program, choose a suitable model, understand formats and quantization, configure the system for your hardware, and work both via the CLI, and via the API. Practical tips, configuration examples, and VRAM recommendations will help you use Ollama as effectively as possible for dialogues, text generation, code, and other tasks.

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Bypassing YouTube throttling on Android TV without a VPN

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time3 min
Reach and readers769

Hello everyone, today we'll talk about Android TV. Bypassing the throttling on a TV seemed to be the most problematic and difficult for me. Since I have several TVs at home deprived of YouTube, and even more are waiting to be set up for friends and acquaintances, I decided to collect all the bypass methods I could find.

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Local Chatbot Without Limits: A Guide to LM Studio and Open LLMs

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time11 min
Reach and readers1.6K

In this article, we will not only install a local (and free) alternative to ChatGPT, but also review several open LLMs, delve into the advanced settings of LM Studio, connect the chatbot to Visual Studio Code, and teach it to assist us with programming. We will also look at how to fine-tune the model's behavior using system prompts.

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An economic crisis awaits us in 2026. And this isn't the traditional pre-New Year whining

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time15 min
Reach and readers454

What do we have at the end of 2025?

Mass layoffs, tightening of the screws by the state and marketplaces. An increase in VAT, which means a rise in store prices. The SMO continues, leading to high government spending, a high Central Bank rate, and consequently, a business freeze.

I spoke with the owners of manufacturing companies, an IT company, and an analytical agency who have already been through crises, and I asked:

'What are you going to do in 2026 to survive?'.

In short: in the year of the horse, you'll have to work like a horse.

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SQL Window Functions in Simple Terms with Examples

Reading time4 min
Reach and readers459

Hello everyone!

I want to note right away that this article is written exclusively for people who are just starting their journey in learning SQL and window functions. It may not cover complex applications of functions or use complicated definitions—everything is written in the simplest language possible for a basic understanding.

P.S. If the author didn't cover or write about something, it means they considered it non-essential for this article)))

For the examples, we will use a small table that shows student grades in different subjects. In the database, the table looks like this:

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Installing macOS or How to Turn Your PC into a Hackintosh

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time24 min
Reach and readers870

Hello, Habr!

I've been putting off writing this article for a long time, but the time has come.

There are quite a few materials on the internet about how to run macOS on regular, IBM-compatible PCs. Their problem is exactly the same as with Wine, which I also wrote my own article about - they are too... vague on the details of how to create an installation media and what to do after installation.

In this article, I will be following the guide from Dortania. There is a Russian version, but it's always older than the most current one, so I will use the original. I will also be taking some screenshots and links from there.

Before we begin, I'd like to enlighten those who are not aware of what a Hackintosh is.

A Hackintosh is the process of installing macOS on regular PCs. What's the difficulty?

All MacBooks use their own hardware (at least now, in 2025). They used to use different processors - in classic Macintoshes they used processors from Motorola. Later models featured processors from IBM PowerPC (during this period they were called PowerMacs). And in the early 2000s, Apple switched to Intel processors. It was during this period that the system we are most interested in appeared - OSX, later renamed to macOS.

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C4 Architecture Modeling Notation — Diagram Examples and Tools

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time18 min
Reach and readers744

When the question of describing a system's architecture arises, there are several main solutions for where and how to do it. Among the popular notations for visualizing architecture diagrams, one can choose C4, developed by Simon Brown.

In this article, I want to show an example of applying the C4 notation, which you can use as a guide in your work, as well as tools for creating it. In particular, I highlight Structurizr.

This article is useful for system analysts, architects, developers, project managers, and anyone involved in creating and making decisions about project architecture.

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Using Xray as a VPN

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Reach and readers4K

Since I'm a fan of self-hosting, I have a home infrastructure:

Orange Pi - a media server;

Synology - a file dump;

Neptune 4 - a 3D printer with a web interface and a camera feed. And I'd like to have secure access to it externally via my phone and PC, while also having internet access outside the RF. I used to use OpenVPN for these needs, but it's no longer reliable. So I started studying the documentation for an excellent tool from our Chinese comrades - Xray!

What you'll need:

A server with an external IP for the infrastructure. In my case, it's an Orange Pi, hereinafter - Bridge

The server you want to access - Server

A server outside the RF for internet access. Hereinafter - Proxy

A client of your choice. Hereinafter - Client

Client and server on Linux - Xray-core, which can be installed via the official Xray installation script

Client for Android - v2rayNG

More clients can be found in the Xray-core repository

Let's take the VLESS-TCP-XTLS-Vision-REALITY configuration file as a base and start reading the Xray documentation

Routing is done on the client. For example, if the client accesses the xray.com domain, we route the traffic to the Bridge, and for all other connections - to the Proxy. Then the Bridge routes the traffic to the Server if the client accessed server.xray.com.
It looks like this:

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How I Made My Own VPN Service

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Reach and readers609

Under the cut: my story of how I decided not to pay for a VPN, but to deploy my own instead. Then I thought: why not make a full-fledged service? And then... well, the rest is business as usual.

I set up servers, hired a designer, launched ads, and tried not to get disappointed. Spoiler: I haven't gotten what I wanted yet. But the hope for ships sailing the vast expanses still warms my heart.

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SSH for beginners

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Reach and readers538

Programmers, sysadmins, DevOps engineers, and testers are often united by the use of some common technologies. For example, the ability to have remote access to a server would be useful to anyone in the aforementioned anecdotal company. Therefore, in this article, we will cover the basics of working with the SSH protocol at a fundamental level (without generating keys, signatures, moms, dads, and credits). We'll look at 'advanced' usage separately next time. This material was prepared by Max, the author of the YouTube channel PyLounge. Let's go!

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"Clumsy Hands" or a New Level of DPI? An Analysis of the Weekend's XRay and VLESS Blocks

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time5 min
Reach and readers1.8K

This weekend was all about 'Connection Reset.' While news channels vaguely reported that 'users are complaining about outages,' we were in chats and on test servers trying to understand the physics of the process.

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Google Antigravity and Gemini 3 Pro: What's Really Changing in Development and Why It's Not a Cursor Killer

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time11 min
Reach and readers840

On November 18, 2025, Google introduced a new combination: the Gemini 3 Pro model and the Google Antigravity IDE. The first is about controlled reasoning, long context, and multimodality. The second is about multi-agent development with artifacts and "transparent" steps. Headlines immediately flooded the feeds: "Cursor is dead.".

In this article, we break down what exactly Google has launched, why the words "the smartest model" are an exaggeration, how Antigravity differs from Cursor, which development scenarios are already changing, and where it's still too early to abandon your familiar stack.

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TorrServer: How to watch torrents online

Reading time3 min
Reach and readers769

Lately, articles have been coming out about how to watch torrents on a TV. I read them and realize that the topic is not fully covered; people suggest putting in maximum effort for the bare minimum.

What do you need for watching movies at home, and how does it work for me...

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Can Larisa Dolina sue everyone who jokes about her on the internet for 5,000,000 rubles each?

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time8 min
Reach and readers365

Jokes, memes, AI-generated images—even large companies have jumped on the Dolina bandwagon.

But here's a detail no one has mentioned yet: the name 'Larisa Dolina' is actually an officially registered trademark with Rospatent.

By law, you can claim compensation of up to 5,000,000 rubles for each trademark infringement. And from January 3, 2026, this limit will increase to 10,000,000 rubles.

It seems absurd to sue for money over internet jokes. But what do you think of the apartment ruling itself?

I am an intellectual property lawyer. Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are my profession.

How many more apartments do you think Dolina will be able to buy with the compensation money?

Let me show you what Dolina has registered with Rospatent, and using the best jokes as examples, we'll analyze the risks for everyone who has jumped on this topic.

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