Top all-time · #413
John Graham-Cumming
Personal blog · blog.jgc.orgprogrammingsecurityhistory
John Graham-Cumming's personal blog at blog.jgc.org covers programming, security and history. Since 2010, 135 different Hacker News readers have linked it 980 times, most often “A downloadable nanosecond”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 0 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Commenters link posts on John Graham-Cumming's blog about his hands-on projects, old security experiments such as cracking a 512-bit DKIM key, 1980s coding, and GNU Make.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /2011/11/why-im-not-supporting-campaign-for.html5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-12-07
- A downloadable nanosecond4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2012-10-16
- GAGA-1: The Flight4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-04-12
- All the symmetrical watch faces and code to generate them4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-06-05
- There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-08
- The difference between parentheses and curly braces in GNU Make4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-06-01
- John Graham-Cumming's Blog4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-07-02
- Tonight, I'm going to write myself an Aston Martin3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2010-06-15
- Cracking an old ZIP file to help open source the ANC's "Vula" secret crypto code3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-09-07
- The Search for the “perfect” Advent Calendar (involves Python and Processing)3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-12-11
What Hacker News says?
not trolling, I followed your HN profile link: what blog post? http://blog.jgc.org/
Comment linking /
on “Cloudflare Reverse Proxies Are Dumping Uninitialized Memory”Submitted Controlling the Taylor Swift Eras Tour wristbands with Flipper Zero as a story · 971 points
HN discussionHere's the advanced version, that let you use different, mostly uncorrelated passwords for different services. http://blog.jgc.org/2010/12/write-your-passwords-down.html I have implemented a little program to generate such a square: http://loup-vaillant.fr/projects/password-generator Though by now, I find this a little tedious. I'm thinking of using an encrypted password database, protected with a diceware generated…
Comment linking /2010/12/write-your-passwords-down.html
on “The Dropbox hack is real”Submitted The secret message hidden in every HTTP/2 connection as a story · 600 points
HN discussionThe sort of debugging seems to have been around since the very beginning: http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/talking-to-porgy.html
Comment linking /2010/05/talking-to-porgy.html
on “Why HN was down”Submitted My Email Canary as a story · 581 points
HN discussionI made a 'Ponyo' boat out of a used soda can (which I took from the office), a used milk/juice carton (which I took for a party I went to). Didn't cost anything (even the glue I used was the end of a pot of epoxy I've had for years). http://blog.jgc.org/2011/06/making-ponyo-or-putt-putt-boat.h... Fun to do if you have kids.
Comment linking /2011/06/making-ponyo-or-putt-putt-boat.html
on “A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects”Submitted Original WWW proposal is a Word for Macintosh 4 file from 1990, can we open it? as a story · 478 points
HN discussionMe writing over 14 years ago: https://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/facebooks-dkim-rsa-key-should-b... This was doable 14 years ago for 512-bit keys.
Comment linking /2010/06/facebooks-dkim-rsa-key-should-be.html
on “Cracking a 512-bit DKIM key for less than $8 in the cloud”Submitted How I coded in 1985 as a story · 470 points
HN discussionThere are other fun tricks for squares like this: https://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-y...
Comment linking /2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-your-head.html
on “A visual proof that a^2 – b^2 = (a + b)(a – b)”Submitted The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using as a story · 426 points
HN discussionDoes it really? http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/getting-little-tired-of-security... There's no evidence that it sends this information to the company and no evidence that it actually logs it. Only that APIs are called containing it.
Comment linking /2011/11/getting-little-tired-of-security.html
on “Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps ”Submitted Low-background Steel: content without AI contamination as a story · 408 points
HN discussionI just write up stuff I've done or have been working in. I try to do it in a clear manner so that others may learn something from it if they are unfamiliar with whatever it is I'm up to. And I hope that people who do know a bit about what I'm writing will make suggestions. My latest post is exactly that: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/it-was-time-for-dim-bulb-curren... It's very niche, wasn't written up for SEO or wha…
Comment linking /2025/06/it-was-time-for-dim-bulb-current-limiter.html
on “How to post when no one is reading”Submitted Guest WiFi using a QR code as a story · 408 points
HN discussionDid you ask? Many years ago I decided to reproduce an algorithm used to detect copy/paste image modification. http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself... The researcher was happy to provide me with their test images to verify that my implementation worked. Try asking.
Comment linking /2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html
on “FingerIO: Using Active Sonar for Fine-Grained Finger Tracking”Submitted One line you should add to every makefile as a story · 322 points
HN discussionI use the touch screen on my Panasonic Toughbook: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/07/ode-to-anti-mac-panasonic-tough...
Comment linking /2025/07/ode-to-anti-mac-panasonic-toughbook-fz.html
on “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch”Submitted Cracking an old ZIP file to help open source the ANC's "Vula" secret crypto code as a story · 316 points
HN discussionI use Mac mostly, but I also use a Panasonic Toughbook ( https://blog.jgc.org/2025/07/ode-to-anti-mac-panasonic-tough... ) and it has a touch screen display and I find it's a useful addition to how I interact with it.
Comment linking /2025/07/ode-to-anti-mac-panasonic-toughbook-fz.html
on “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch”Submitted A non-mathematical explanation of one way functions as a story · 297 points
HN discussionAfter I saw Gupta in Japan talking about protection against gamma radiation ( http://blog.jgc.org/2011/03/cnn-sounding-authorative-while-t... ) I stopped listening to him at all.
Comment linking /2011/03/cnn-sounding-authorative-while-talking.html
on “Why I Changed My Mind On Weed”Submitted Why don't they just..? as a story · 293 points
HN discussionI'm glad you included RMS, but what about JWZ [1], GKH [2] or JGC [3] ? :] [1] https://www.jwz.org/about.html [2] https://plus.google.com/+gregkroahhartman [3] http://blog.jgc.org/
Comment linking /
on “Writing Less Code”Submitted Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware as a story · 275 points
HN discussionI started out writing machine code without an assembler and so had to hand assemble a lot of stuff. After a while you end up just knowing the common codes and can write your program directly. This was also useful because it was possible to write or modify programs directly through an interface sometimes called a "front panel" where you could change individual bytes in memory. Back in 1985 I did some hand-coding like…
Comment linking /2013/04/how-i-coded-in-1985.html
on “Why xor eax, eax?”Submitted Ambient bus arrival monitor from hacked Linksys WRT54GL as a story · 273 points
HN discussionReminds me of when I went crazy with some Christmas lights: https://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/turning-ge-color-effects-g-35-c...
Comment linking /2011/11/turning-ge-color-effects-g-35-christmas.html
on “IKEA Frekvens LED box hack”Submitted Steve Ballmer's incorrect binary search interview question as a story · 264 points
HN discussion
