pea bee (@prstb) / X

pea bee

2,494 posts

pea bee

@prstb

I make cathartic little internet things and write slightly longer-form text for a small no of people here peabee.substack.com

Joined July 2008

pea bee
@prstb
Oct 23, 2024
Someone bought the JioHotstar domain (before the merger) and wants Reliance to fund their higher studies from domain sale. Really hope they can get a good payout from this!
pea bee
@prstb
Mar 28, 2025
Did you know that until 2022 any installed app on Android could see all other apps on your phone without permission? Now, devs need to declare which apps they need visibility to in AndroidManifest.xml I was curious to see which Indian apps were spying on my installed apps 👇
pea bee
@prstb
May 1, 2025
Compelled by those atrocious Parle Marie ads, I wrote a tiny browser extension to auto mute certain IPL ads on Hotstar. It actually works really well and also mutes Vimal, Kamla Pasand, My11, Pokerbaazi etc ads out of the box. (link below)
pea bee
@prstb
Jul 21, 2022
#TIL that Shammi Kapoor was one of the first users of the Internet in India He was the founder & chairman of the Internet Users Club of India. I can't wrap my head around how someone like Shammi Kapoor was in the thick of the internet movement in India? I did some digging 👇
pea bee
@prstb
Aug 7, 2022
I was on the IMDb page for an upcoming Ranbir Kapoor movie Animal. In the cast details, I found a name I didn’t recognize. Finding out about this guy led me to the world of how young Indian men from small towns are gaming the system to manufacture their fake online clout 👇
pea bee
@prstb
Sep 23, 2024
Sorry guys - have taken the post down due to a legal notice from Dotpe. I could fight them because I didn't access anything that wasn't already public. But it's not worth the hassle. The legal process in this country is in itself a punishment. 🙏
Deedy
@deedydas
Sep 23, 2024
Indian startup Dotpe, that raised ~$100M to build point of sale systems for restaurants left their entire API fully public. A clever hacker found out the most ordered thing at every Social in India. And did a prank to order what he wanted for a person next to him! Zero auth.
pea bee
@prstb
Aug 27, 2022
I wrote about a mad rabbit hole that led me to a guy who is running 200 different (fake) restaurant brands from one single drab cloud kitchen in Bangalore! In the end, I was left slightly distressed by just how easy it is to game Swiggy and Zomato.
#17: One kitchen, hundreds of internet restaurants
From peabee.substack.com
pea bee
@prstb
Oct 24, 2024
Replying to @prstb
Update. Booo Reliance 👎
pea bee
@prstb
Mar 28, 2025
Replying to @prstb
Let’s start with Swiggy. It has a staggering 154 package names listed in its manifest file, allowing it to query those apps on my phone. Here’s the full list. How is knowing whether I have the Xbox or the Playstation app help them deliver groceries to my doorstep?
pea bee
@prstb
Jul 21, 2022
Replying to @prstb
I'm still fascinated by how Shammi Kapoor, of all people, was at the helm of all of this. He had a cute personal website too. According to him, he learnt all the coding and designing himself. Tbh, this has more character and creativity than some of the personal websites of today
pea bee
@prstb
Mar 28, 2025
Replying to @prstb
The breadth of categories of apps suggests Swiggy is collecting installed apps data for user profiling and to build a behavioural profile of their customers. This is against Play Store's policies which considers the list of installed apps as personal and sensitive user data.
pea bee
@prstb
Jul 21, 2022
Replying to @prstb
Fin. The boys from the "Bombay Computer Club". The pioneers of our internet. When are we getting an OTT series on them?
pea bee
@prstb
Jul 21, 2022
Replying to @prstb
This is how one of India's first independent and private websites looked like. It couldn't have a more 90s internet aesthetic if it tried. Love it!
pea bee
@prstb
Sep 23, 2024
Replying to @prstb
Only wrote about open APIs that anyone scanning their QR codes can view. Sales numbers were literally calculated from looking at their public menu webpage API calls. I didn't access any backend APIs or internal documents.