Top all-time · #9936
q3k
Personal blog · q3k.org · on HN as q3ksystemshardware
q3k is a personal blog at q3k.org about systems and hardware. Since 2018, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “Lanai, the mystery CPU architecture in LLVM”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link q3k's posts on low-level work: compiler backends, reverse engineering embedded firmware, and building small tools from scratch. Comments cite the linked PDFs as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Lanai, the mystery CPU architecture in LLVM3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-21
- wInd3x, the iPod Bootrom exploit 10 years too late2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-13
What Hacker News says?
Using graphviz for visualizing these things is fast and easy. print('digraph foo {') # adj_list contains tuples of (parent node name, child node name) for parent, child in adj_list: print(f'{parent} -> {child}') print('}') Redirect that to a file and view with `xdot`, done. I've done exactly this a few days ago to visualize the Linux build graph: https://q3k.org/u/73839114a0e5ee65002029892a069dd1b645a8f9f0...
Comment linking /u/73839114a0e5ee65002029892a069dd1b645a8f9f0b336e4cc3f622874772960.png
on “Create diagrams with code using Graphviz”Submitted Lanai, the mystery CPU architecture in LLVM as a story · 287 points
HN discussionThis is amazing. Mirror, as supposedly non-EU addresses get redirected back into the JS hell version: https://q3k.org/u/177a712e927a13dd63d249a6336ab505e29cf6ddfb...
Comment linking /u/177a712e927a13dd63d249a6336ab505e29cf6ddfb126c57f71ac5d71f4a0592.html
on “Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline”Submitted Lanai (The Myrinet CPU Architecture) in LLVM as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYes, it seems to patch a licensing function at 0xEC95FD4 [1] to always return 1, by patching the jump at 0xEC95FE2 (that should be only taken for the always-allowed H263 codec) to always be taken, thus always allowing all codecs. [1] - https://q3k.org/u/8e3173aef341df726e4f38f30e58417239423250f3...
Comment linking /u/8e3173aef341df726e4f38f30e58417239423250f3e44f5b8b79acdc451d1553.png
on “MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired”Submitted WInd3x, the iPod Bootrom exploit 10 years too late as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes. You can still access the old UI. https://q3k.org/u/0640089a352229b87077f05752ea415abd19e76288...
Comment linking /u/0640089a352229b87077f05752ea415abd19e762889b9d8c346c57b8db863bd4.png
on “We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead”Submitted wInd3x, the iPod Bootrom exploit 10 years too late as a story · 1 points
HN discussionbrowsh doesn't work well for me at all. https://q3k.org/u/d808e1792782743cd58d4bd04a760211dde2075c32... browsh on the left, links on the right, showing this comment thread. (the terminal emulator is urxvt, which has so far had no trouble rendering any sort of TUI)
Comment linking /u/d808e1792782743cd58d4bd04a760211dde2075c320466a7ba90b60cd9599d4b.png
on “Browsh for text-based internet browsing (2018)”Extremely toxic, as usual. https://q3k.org/u/0a15b5ec655a7153e7c37ee5062da48c57196af3f0...
Comment linking /u/0a15b5ec655a7153e7c37ee5062da48c57196af3f01ebe98acd2ad74a2564b68.png
on “How Reddit plans to make money through advertising”> The really difficult thing would be to write a new compiler backend with a coherent IR that everybody understands and you'll stick to. But why would you bother, when with those same skills and a lot less time, you could fork LLVM, correct its IR semantics yourself (unilaterally), and then push people to use your fork? (I.e. the EGCS approach to forcing the upstream to fix their shit.) > This doesn's support the Fo…
Comment linking /lanai.html
on “TPDE-LLVM: Faster LLVM -O0 Back-End”I very often use complex window layouts [1], not just side-by-side. The fact that I can ask my window manager to arrange them for me, in the way I want, without having to drag them, and without them ever overlapping, and without wasting screen space on useless window decorations, is something I'm just too used to to switch back to the way Windows would have me manually arrange and resize them. [1] - https://q3k.org/…
Comment linking /u/96613e57e6d630e35c8872f2fe970331fa327cd50143aae26f389ad927af7f42.png
on “Try Linux”> simple tools I can fully build and understand myself This reminds me of an excerpt from PoC||GTFO. "[W]hen you’re tooling around with a from-scratch tool and your neighbors tell you to use this or use that, look ’em in the eye and say, “I’m building my own fucking birdfeeder.”" [1] [1] https://q3k.org/birdfeeder.pdf
Comment linking /birdfeeder.pdf
on “Show HN: Greg – a simple “cal” clone written in C”Same guys cracked Toshiba password mechanism hidden inside EC/KBC (Renesas M16C) https://q3k.org/slides-recon-2018.pdf couple of years ago.
Comment linking /slides-recon-2018.pdf
on “Polish trains lock up when serviced in third-party workshops”
