DEV Community: Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🕵️‍♂️ Social Media First Post Finder

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:46:46 +0000

Intro

Finding a user’s first post on social media can be surprisingly difficult — but it’s valuable for digital history, research, or even just for fun. These tools aim to solve that problem by finding the first post on Instagram and Facebook.

📌 What is it?

InstaFirst and FBookFirst are lightweight tools designed to help you discover the very first post made by a user on Instagram or Facebook, simply by entering their username or profile link.

🧰 Technologies Used

Python (Scraping logic)
Flask (Web server)
HTML/CSS (User interface)
JavaScript (Interactive UI components)
Facebook & Instagram query parameter parsing

📚 What Can You Learn?

How social media URL structures work
Basic scraping limitations and techniques
Building minimal web apps with Flask
Simple UI/UX development
Awareness of ethical considerations in public data usage

❓ Why I Built It

Scrolling endlessly to find a first post is tedious and inefficient. I built these tools to automate that process, making it easier for content creators, digital historians, or curious users. Plus, it was a great way to deepen my understanding of scraping logic and platform constraints.

🔗 GitHub Repositories

InstaFirst

FBookFirst

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🎭 Solivagus

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:44:02 +0000

Introduction

Solivagus is a digital guide for those embarking on a journey of self-discovery. This interactive application helps users track and make sense of their thoughts, goals, and emotions, enhancing personal awareness.

🙋‍♂️ What is it?

Solivagus is a personal growth and journaling app that enables individuals to explore their inner world and make their life journey more conscious. Users record their experiences digitally and monitor their progress over time.

🤖 Technologies Used

React
Node.js
MongoDB
Express.js
What You Can Learn
Personal data management and privacy
User experience (UX) design
CRUD operations and backend development
Interactive frontend applications

🔨 Why I Built It

In the chaos of modern life, people struggle to hear and interpret their inner voice. Solivagus was designed as a digital companion to help individuals better understand themselves and make conscious decisions.

GitHub Repo
🔗 github.com/akbak/Solivagus

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🧬 WebCell

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:40:56 +0000

🚲 Introduction

WebCell is a browser-based artificial life simulation living under the digital microscope. Cells compete with limited resources, mutate randomly, and evolve influenced by environmental factors. The project offers a performant, interactive, real-time simulation experience.
Like the 'Thronglets' in the TV series 'Black Mirror' 😈

🧲 What is it?

WebCell simulates microorganisms dividing under resource constraints, undergoing random mutations, and evolving due to environmental pressures. It is built with an Entity-Component System (ECS) and WebGL for scalability and performance.

🤖 Technologies Used

WebGL
React
Entity-Component System (ECS)
JavaScript / TypeScript
What You Can Learn
Modeling complex systems with simple components
Efficient graphics processing with WebGL
Real-time simulation architecture
Mutation and evolution algorithms

🔨 Why I Built It

Artificial life is a powerful tool to understand complex systems and evolution. WebCell brings this concept into modern web technologies, creating an environment that encourages both learning and creativity.

GitHub Repo
🔗 github.com/akbak/WebCell

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🖼️ PixelSink: Hunt Hidden Data Inside Images

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:36:07 +0000

Upload an image. Could it be quietly leaking GPS location, device fingerprints, or even hidden payloads?

PixelSink is a lightweight web app that inspects uploaded images for potential data exposure. It performs layered analysis across EXIF metadata, LSB steganography signals, and file integrity / similarity hashes to produce a risk score.

🎯 What It Does

For each uploaded image, PixelSink runs:

EXIF Metadata Extraction — Surface GPS, timestamps, camera model, and more.
LSB Steganography Check — Sample least-significant bits for hidden-message patterns.
Image Hashing — SHA256 for exact-file integrity; pHash for perceptual similarity.
A consolidated Suspicion Score based on metadata presence (esp. GPS) and LSB anomalies.

🧰 Tech Stack

Flask backend
Pillow for image operations & sampling
exifread for metadata extraction
imagehash for perceptual hashing
hashlib for SHA256
Minimal HTML/CSS/JS front-end UI.

⚙️ How It Works (Flow)

Accepts PNG / JPG / JPEG uploads (max ~5 MB).
Saves the file with a timestamped safe filename.
Generates SHA256 + pHash; parses EXIF; runs LSB distribution sampling.
Scores risk: metadata found (+GPS weighted), plus High LSB anomalies raise score.
Renders a report view with all results.

💡 Extension Ideas

Visual map pin for GPS metadata.
Batch upload + CSV export.
Compare incoming hashes to a known “safe” or “tainted” corpus.
Flag overly large EXIF blobs as potential staging for covert data. (Forward-looking suggestions based on current architecture — inference.)

📦 GitHub Repo:
🔗 https://github.com/akbak/PixelSink

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

👁️ Obscurify: Reveal What’s Meant to Be Hidden

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:33:18 +0000

What if a page isn’t showing you something — but it’s still there?

Obscurify is a browser-based analysis tool that reveals hidden content in web pages.
It detects DOM elements that are technically present, but invisible due to CSS tricks like:

Transparent fonts
Off-screen positioning
Font-size: 0
Hidden overflow or opacity hacks
Keyword stuffing / cloaked SEO

🎯 What Is It?

Obscurify inspects the structure and styling of any webpage to uncover hidden elements that may be used for manipulation, SEO cheating, or cloaked content strategies.
The tool flags and visually highlights such elements for further inspection.

🧰 Technologies Used:

Playwright + JavaScript — For live browser page parsing
DOM/CSS Analysis — Position, size, visibility, opacity checks
Flask Interface — For uploading URLs or HTML
Element Highlighter — To render invisible elements in context

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

How invisible content is implemented on web pages
DOM and CSS inspection at scale
Detecting manipulation tactics using automation
Real-world use of browser scripting to expose content abuse

🔧 Why I Built It:

The web is full of tricks.
Some sites bury keywords to fool search engines. Others hide pricing, terms, or links from the user.
Obscurify is designed to bring all of that into the light — making the invisible, visible.

📦 GitHub Repo:
🔗 github.com/akbak/Obscurify

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🔎 CloakDetect: Revealing the Hidden Side of the Web

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:30:10 +0000

*Can you trust what a web page shows you? What if it shows something else to Google? *

CloakDetect is an automated content comparison tool that detects cloaking by accessing the same URL using different IPs, devices, or user agents — and then comparing the returned content.

🎯 What Is It?

Cloaking is a technique where a website shows different content to search engines and users to manipulate rankings.
CloakDetect simulates this by visiting the same site under different identities and flags any major differences in the content.

🧰 Technologies Used:

Python + Playwright — Automated browser sessions with custom headers
BeautifulSoup — HTML parsing and DOM diffing
Flask — Web interface for easy access
Chart.js — Visual analytics of content differences
Session randomization & delay tricks — To bypass bot detection

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

How to detect cloaking techniques
Advanced web scraping and browser automation
DOM and content comparison logic
Anti-bot evasion strategies

🔧 Why I Built It:

Most scrapers or crawlers naively assume they see the “real” page.
But with geo-targeting, device-specific rendering, and bot filtering, content can be manipulated.
CloakDetect provides a repeatable and automated way to spot such manipulation — valuable for security researchers, SEO analysts, and ethical hackers alike.

📦 GitHub Repo:
🔗 github.com/akbak/CloakDetect

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🎲 RandomiX: Is It Truly Random?

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:27:17 +0000

Whether you’re building games, simulations, or statistical tools — randomness matters.
But is the random number generator you’re using truly random?
RandomiX helps you answer that with a simple visual test interface.

🎯 What Is It?

RandomiX is a lightweight tool that visualizes sequences of random numbers generated from any source (e.g. Math.random(), custom RNG algorithms) and shows whether they display any patterns or clustering.
It’s a visual way to test and evaluate the quality of randomness.

🧰 Technologies Used:

HTML + CSS + Vanilla JavaScript
Canvas API to plot 2D point distributions
Built-in RNGs and room for custom generators
Lightweight, mobile-friendly UI

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

How to visualize randomness
Canvas plotting and rendering basics
Pattern detection and statistical intuition
Debugging RNG implementations

🔧 Why I Built It:

Randomness is often invisible, but its flaws can affect real outcomes — from game mechanics to simulations.
RandomiX offers a simple way to see what randomness looks like, making it easier to trust (or doubt) your RNGs.

📦 GitHub Repo:
🔗 github.com/akbak/RandomiX

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🎤 cv-talk: An AI-Powered Interview Simulation Based on Your Resume

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:22:11 +0000

*Have you ever had a conversation with your own resume?
*

cv-talk is an AI-powered mock interview system that reads your uploaded CV and generates personalized interview questions based on it — all in a real-time chat interface.

🎯 What Is It?

You upload your CV (.pdf or .docx).
The backend extracts and analyzes its content using an LLM, and then starts a conversation — asking you realistic questions that a human recruiter might ask based on your experience.

🧰 Technologies Used:

Flask (Python) — API and server-side logic
LangChain / OpenAI API — To process and query CV content
Chat UI — To create a smooth and interactive interface
Document Parsing — For reading text from CVs
Session Management — Keeps chat state and flow intact

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

How to build an interactive app using LLMs
How to extract structured data from resumes
How to use AI to simulate interviews
Real-time chatbot architecture

🔧 Why I Built It:

Interviewing is stressful — especially when you’re unsure what questions you’ll face.

This project helps users practice interview scenarios using their own resume, providing targeted, context-aware questions.

It also served as a hands-on experiment in blending NLP and practical UX.

📦 GitHub Repo:
🔗 github.com/akbak/cv-talk

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK

🎮 dvd-pong: Retro Physics in the Browser!

Muhammet Ali AKBAK — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:08:26 +0000

If you remember the old-school DVD screensaver that used to bounce around and change color when it hit the corner of the screen, you’ll love this little nostalgic yet technically clean web project: dvd-pong

🎯 What is it?

A simple yet captivating physics simulation: A DVD logo bounces around the edges of the screen, changing color when it hits a corner. Fully runs in the browser with no external dependencies.

🧰 Technologies Used:

HTML5
Vanilla JavaScript
requestAnimationFrame & basic collision physics
Responsive layout (works on all screen sizes)

🧠 What Can You Learn?

How to build a basic 2D physics loop
Creating smooth animations with Canvas
Generating random colors and interacting with the DOM

dvd-pong
🔧 Code Style:

The code is written to be clean and readable, with comments for clarity. Ideal as a reference for beginner-level developers looking to understand canvas-based animation.

🪄 Why I Built It:

It was part nostalgia, part learning exercise. I believe small, focused projects like this can open big doors. It’s a playful way to explore canvas rendering and animation logic from scratch.

📦 GitHub Repository:
🔗 github.com/akbak/dvd-pong

by Muhammet Ali AKBAK