Top all-time · #3036
Alok Menghrajani
Personal blog · quaxio.com · on HN as amenghrasecurityprogramming
Alok Menghrajani's personal blog at quaxio.com covers security and programming. Since 2013, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 68 times, most often “Hacker News' favorite Xkcd comics (2022)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Alok Menghrajani's site of technical write-ups and demos: a bootable CD with a retro game in one tweet, regex golf, a CSS-only clock, a QR quine, and an Ackermann steering demo. Commenters mostly link it as a source.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Previously: security engineer at Square/Block, co-author of HackLang, put the 's' in https at Facebook/Meta. Maker of CTFs.
Most-linked posts?
- /pure_css_digital_clock.css4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-12-31
- Hacker News' favorite Xkcd comics (2022)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-11-30
- Pure Digital CSS, Swiss Made, Clock – No JavaScript, almost no HTML3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-31
- Qrquine: A QR code based quine (2013)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-12-12
- Running a 40-plus-year-old piece of code in today's browser2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-10-27
- A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-31
- Legally hacking my manager's Facebook account2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-10-06
What Hacker News says?
Yes, they are copyrighted. The link to article points to this equivalent, free ECMA 119 standard: https://www.quaxio.com/files/2018/bootable_cd_retro_game_twe...
Comment linking /files/2018/bootable_cd_retro_game_tweet/ecma-119.pdf
on “A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet”Submitted A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet as a story · 1004 points
HN discussionMake sure you check out the floppy version from ~3 years ago. Fits in “old” tweets (ie 140 chars): https://www.quaxio.com/bootloader_retro_game_tweet/
Comment linking /bootloader_retro_game_tweet/
on “A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet”Submitted Show HN: I made a deceptively simple but hard sliding puzzle as a story · 281 points
HN discussionhttps://quaxio.com/ My personal site, been around since the mid 90s. Lots of posts about programming, code golfing, math, etc. For several years, I spent ~50h a month writing one (hopefully) high quality post. Haven’t been able to keep that commitment lately, so it’s more like a post a year at this point.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Pure Digital CSS, Swiss Made, Clock – No JavaScript, almost no HTML as a story · 145 points
HN discussionAn Artisanal QR Code [1] shows how to compute the checksum by hand using arithmetic similar to a long division. There are actually two slightly different codes (Reed-Solomon and BCH) for different pieces of information. [1] https://www.quaxio.com/an_artisanal_qr_code.html
Comment linking /an_artisanal_qr_code.html
on “Reading QR codes without a computer”Submitted Hacker News' favorite Xkcd comics (2022) as a story · 91 points
HN discussionIn a similar vain to the second link, I previously wrote about using css to truncate git hashes so that search functionality continues to work: https://www.quaxio.com/truncating_hashes.html
Comment linking /truncating_hashes.html
on “Don’t use “click here” as link text (2001)”Submitted Unicode superscript numeral rendering bugs as a story · 26 points
HN discussionYou can revive <blink> with a tiny bit of css: https://www.quaxio.com/blink.html
Comment linking /blink.html
on “Every HTML Element”Submitted Do you know your bitwise operators? as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI made a JavaScript port, that might be easier to decipher if you are more familiar with js than C: https://quaxio.com/pi.html
Comment linking /pi.html
on “Piet: Programming language in which programs look like abstract paintings (2002)”Submitted Hacker News' favorite Xkcd comics as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI don't consider myself a datascientist but I did some HN x XKCD analysis a while ago. The HN dataset is hosted on Google BigQuery and it is included in some TB per month of free tier processing you get. I.e. you can answer your question quite easily. See my stuff if you are interested: https://www.quaxio.com/hackernews_xkcd_citations/
Comment linking /hackernews_xkcd_citations/
on “Hold on there: WPA3 connections fail after 11 hours”Submitted Types of Circuit Boards as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSKS don’t implement any modern web security features (the whole thing does pre-date the web!) — as a result, you can (ab)use SKS as a free backend store for your JavaScript apps: https://www.quaxio.com/message_board_over_pgp_key_servers.ht...
Comment linking /message_board_over_pgp_key_servers.html
on “SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack”Submitted Running a 40-plus-year-old piece of code in today's browser as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAn artisanal QR code goes over the error correcting code by manually calculating the long division: https://www.quaxio.com/an_artisanal_qr_code.html
Comment linking /an_artisanal_qr_code.html
on “Creating a QR Code step by step”Submitted Qrquine: A QR code based quine (2013) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://www.quaxio.com/simple_auditable_anonymous_voting_sch... explains how to create a toy voting system which both preserves privacy and where everyone can tally the votes. If you were to actually build something like this, you would use blind signature. But having this toy example shows that the two concepts aren't exclusif.
Comment linking /simple_auditable_anonymous_voting_scheme/
on “Hacking Voting Machines at Defcon”Submitted Pure Digital CSS, Swiss Made, Clock. No JavaScript, No HTML as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA short collection of similar puzzles that have been shared with me over the years: https://quaxio.com/some_math_puzzles/
Comment linking /some_math_puzzles/
on “Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (2006) [pdf]”Submitted <blink> howto as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFrom: http://quaxio.com/triple/ ^([0369]|[258][0369]*[147]|[147]([0369]|[147][0369]*[258])*[258]|[258][0369]*[258]([0369]|[147][0369]*[258])*[258]|[147]([0369]|[147][0369]*[258])*[147][0369]*[147]|[258][0369]*[258]([0369]|[147][0369]*[258])*[147][0369]*[147])*$
Comment linking /triple/
on “Regex Golf”Submitted Spooky Fizz Buzz as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNice! You might enjoy my bootloader + retro game which fits in a tweet: https://www.quaxio.com/bootable_cd_retro_game_tweet/ It might also help you figure out how to put the pdf first. You'll increase the odds of various viewers being able to render the pdf.
Comment linking /bootable_cd_retro_game_tweet/
on “Show HN: My CV is also a bootloader”Submitted Show HN: Hacker's favorite XKCD comics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://www.quaxio.com/an_artisanal_qr_code.html and PagedOut! Issue #2 have a qrcode from scratch including the error code calculation using long division. Enjoy!
Comment linking /an_artisanal_qr_code.html
on “Creating a QR Code step by step”Submitted Running a 40-plus-year-old piece of code in today's browser as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
