It's just as good in 2026 - 2d. Imagine Santa delivering his goods and hearing a mysterious UDP stream and wondering, "Is my supply chain being disrupted?", only to then realize that it was just the owners' TV spying on him after it was left on standby instead being completely turned off.
This is the kind of curiosity that leads to the most interesting findings. Hotels are a perfect storm of shared networks, opaque vendor integrations, and “it just works” assumptions. A mysterious UDP stream could be anything from Chromecast-style discovery to IPTV control or some half-documented vendor heartbeat. What’s usually more revealing than the payload is the pattern: broadcast vs unicast, frequency, and who responds. Also a good reminder of how much ambient network noise we’re all swimming in without noticing.
This is the shortest, yet still fully complete example of an article that scratches that itch. Awakening the "intellectual curiosity", documenting the steps, and finding the actual end of the matter. The mundanity of the revelation is like the icing on the cake.
I love how tiny and to the point the Python scripts are. I bet if you asked AI to make these today the comments would be longer than these entire scripts. But I’m too bored by the idea to try it :-)
I've read this one before, but this time it really hit home in how unlike most of the modern AI-emoji-filled-cringy-heading-20-page blog slop, it is. Very refreshing.
Reverse engineering a mysterious UDP stream in my hotel (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34912300 - Feb 2023 (179 comments)
Reverse engineering a mysterious UDP stream in my hotel (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26633792 - March 2021 (86 comments)
Reverse Engineering a Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16197436 - Jan 2018 (15 comments)
Reverse Engineering a Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11744518 - May 2016 (181 comments)
I love a good Kuymak [1] though, I think that's not too well known.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuymak
Aside from the article, I only found these scripts on my disk related to this project.
listen_2046.py and send_2046.py
https://gist.github.com/gkbrk/445929a854051203ee31afc7495c5a...
(My guess is probably not, but you might DoS the other stream while you're sending your own.)
I appreciate people posting negative results, too. The journey is the interesting part, and I like the humanity of saying "welp, at least now I know".
But yes, absolutely!