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niconiconi's blog
Personal blog · niconiconi.neocities.orghardwareprogrammingsystems
niconiconi's blog is a personal blog at niconiconi.neocities.org about hardware, programming and systems. Since 2021, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “ChaCha20 Encryption Performance on DEC PDP-11”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-09-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Cited as a source on Ken Thompson's compiler backdoor, as evidence it happened, and on the limits of unlocking the ASRock BC-250 GPU, as support against another commenter's claim. Comments only cite it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
On programming, retrocomputing and electronics.
Most-linked posts?
- ChaCha20 Encryption Performance on DEC PDP-113 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-14
- All GB/S Without Flops – Nvidia CMP 170HX Review2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-29
- Ken Thompson really did launch his "trusting trust" trojan attack in real life2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-28
What Hacker News says?
At least strong evidence it happened once: https://niconiconi.neocities.org/posts/ken-thompson-really-d... With careful planning though, with the ability to rootkit any linux kernel it compiles that in turn hot-patches any gcc compilations and so on, with the ability to re-route system calls to hide itself... it could be very very hard to detect. Even moreso if such was deployed in a couple target CI/CD systems. boo…
Comment linking /posts/ken-thompson-really-did-launch-his-trusting-trust-trojan-attack-in-real-life/
on “Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler (2023)”Submitted Ken Thompson really did launch his "trusting trust" trojan attack in real life as a story · 634 points
HN discussionThat's not exactly true, they can be "unlocked" but not many people have tested and verified that the unlocked memory is stable and/or useful. But the cards themselves are extremely limited in function, necessitating either board level work to reconnect the electrically disconnected traces or transplanting the hardware to a new board. It's anything but plug and play. https://niconiconi.neocities.org/tech-notes/nvidi…
Comment linking /tech-notes/nvidia-cmp-170hx-review/
on “ASRock BC-250: Building the Budget Steam Machine”Submitted All GB/S Without Flops – Nvidia CMP 170HX Review as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted Compile Fortran to WebAssembly and Solve Electromagnetic Fields in Web Browsers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Physics-Defying Marketing: Misleading Vendor Article, and VNA Calibration Primer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChaCha20 Encryption Performance on DEC PDP-11 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChaCha20 Encryption Performance on Dec PDP-11 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChaCha20 Encryption Performance on Dec PDP-11 (2021) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion