Top all-time · #13470
Nikhil R
Personal blog · rnikhil.com · on HN as whoami_nraistartupsprogramming
Nikhil R's personal blog at rnikhil.com covers ai, startups and programming. Since 2022, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “An attempt at building an online business”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-07-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Nikhil R's posts on cryptography and crypto security, including an RSA public-key explainer and a discussion of Tornado Cash dusting attacks and chain analysis.
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.
Personal Website
Most-linked posts?
- An attempt at building an online business2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-07-26
- Tornado cash takedown and its repercussions2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-09
- The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-10-13
What Hacker News says?
I don't think it's so trivial, and it can easily be made much more complicated. Suppose sanctioned party A pays B, a citizen of Indonesia who lives in Indonesia, $X. B's chain analysis decides that $X is "not material", so they continue using the account, and then transfer C $Y < $X. C's chain analysis decides that $Y is "material". What happens now? The first question is whether C delivers B the goods B was paying…
Comment linking /2022/08/09/tornado-cash-block.html
on “Dusting “Attack” via Tornado Cash to Public Wallets”Submitted Why I find diffusion models interesting? as a story · 202 points
HN discussionLocation: Bangalore, India Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Resume: https://rnikhil.com/assets/files/resume.pdf Website: https://rnikhil.com Email: contact@rnikhil.com Ex-pro poker player, founder of a poker saas startup currently working as a SPM at a gaming company in India. Have experience yield farming and building arb bots. Looking to work on interesting problems in DeFi/web3.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2022)”Submitted Is outbound going to die? as a story · 129 points
HN discussionWhile it is actually ridiculous for the games you mentioned, it makes sense for certain FPS/Racing games. Plus, common asset sharing isn't the only thing. Distributed infra for certain cross game modules also make a lot of sense. I wrote[1] a small post summarizing all possible use cases of putting game assets/game itself on-chain. [1] https://rnikhil.com/2022/06/27/web3-gaming.html
Comment linking /2022/06/27/web3-gaming.html
on “Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit”Submitted Tornado cash takedown and its repercussions as a story · 128 points
HN discussionOne of the early projects I worked to teach myself networking was Port Knocking[1]. Think of it like designing a calling bell for your servers where they can smartly understanding who is doing the "knocking" on their ports. Writing it as a linux kernel module, with the low level cryptographic functions would be a great learning tool imo. I also wrote about my progress here[2] when I attempted this about 7-8 years ag…
Comment linking /2016/12/12/port-knocking-python.html
on “Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module”Submitted Counterfactual Regret Minimisation or How I won any money in Poker? as a story · 117 points
HN discussionThis is very alarming and a very overreaching thing by the government. These men wrote an open source protocol (smart contract) which was used by random folks to "also" launder money. Its like arresting Tor developers because people host illegal content on it. Leaving this here for more details and reference: https://rnikhil.com/2022/08/09/tornado-cash-block.html
Comment linking /2022/08/09/tornado-cash-block.html
on “Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency”Submitted Attacks on machine learning models as a story · 103 points
HN discussionhttps://rnikhil.com/ Stuff on the gaming market in India, real money games, Poker and some software projects I worked on in my past life.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Can LLMs do randomness? as a story · 61 points
HN discussionLink disambiguation: Submitted URL: https://rnikhil.com/2022/10/12/wolfram-crypto.html Original URL: < https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/summerschool/pages/2017/Nik... > Original title: "RSA: A simple Public Key Cryptosystem" "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." < https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >
Comment linking /2022/10/12/wolfram-crypto.html
on “The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage”Submitted Building for the Era of Experience as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNo problem. Please replace the above link with the original: https://rnikhil.com/2023/11/12/quitting-fulltime-poker.html
Comment linking /2023/11/12/quitting-fulltime-poker.html
on “Quitting Full Time Poker”Submitted How much does a man need? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAuthor here. I mentioned Pio in a different comment. You are literally the reason I won any money in Poker and I must have studied using Pio/Monker for 1000hrs+ easily. On a relevant note, I built a preflop tool for PLO folks. Check it out here: https://rnikhil.com/2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html You are very accurate with how Poker lured me in. Its a easy place for analytical minded folks to make a ton of mone…
Comment linking /2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
on “Quitting Full Time Poker”Submitted Why do I think prediction markets wont scale? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAuthor of the post here. Your software is literally the reason I made any money in Poker. Must have studied using your software for more than a 1000hrs haha. On a related note, I made a small tool for PLO folks to study their preflop game. Check it out here: https://rnikhil.com/2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
Comment linking /2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
on “Quitting Full Time Poker”Submitted Will MCP stay for the long term? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAuthor here. I also played PLO for a living. BTW, I made a small tool for professionals to study PLO. Check it out here: https://rnikhil.com/2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
Comment linking /2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
on “Quitting Full Time Poker”Submitted You can't bet on everything (and that's okay) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAuthor here. You are spot on about the career break. Luckily for me, during my time I played poker professionally, I was also consulting with poker website to build out their matchmaking and fraud detection algorithms. I also built a small analytics tool for PLO professionals to study their game better. Wrote more about it on my blog here: https://rnikhil.com/2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
Comment linking /2022/06/15/gtoinspector-startup.html
on “Quitting Full Time Poker”Submitted Make Poker Fun Again as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why do I think prediction markets wont scale? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted N8n vs. Zapier as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Airtable "Omni" app builder review as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Random Thoughts on Investing in AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Intro to LLM Security as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why do we think LLMs will keep improving? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
