Bytes.zone
bytes.zone · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Bytes.zone is a developer's personal blog on topics such as SSH randomart, Nix scripts, and modeling Git and CRDTs in Alloy.
What HN saysHN commenters engage with its posts on the SSH randomart image and Nix scripts, and one lists it among favorite personal blogs.
18HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
35stories submitted
404story points
1 year agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1What Is the Randomart Image For?4 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 2Advice you might as well take3 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3Modeling Git Internals in Alloy, Part 3: Operations on Blobs and Trees2 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4Nix-Script2 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 5Tmux-Session2 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 6Modeling CRDTs in Alloy – Counters2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 7Modeling Database Tables in Alloy2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 8Should we design for iffy internet?1 people · 271 points · first shared 2025 · 233 comments on HN
- 9State-Transition Tables1 people · 49 points · first shared 2020 · 13 comments on HN
- 10Reducing Asset Size with Subsetting1 people · 26 points · first shared 2020 · 6 comments on HN
- 11Digital Gardening in Obsidian1 people · 11 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 12Tinyping and Scrub Moves1 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13Modeling Git Internals in Alloy, Part 2: Commits and Tags1 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 14Kratky in the Basement1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 15Thing-a-Month1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
surprisetalk · 2023-01-04
Good directories:
- https://indieweb.org
- Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27302195
My favorites:
- gwern: https://www.gwern.net
- Ben Kuhn: https://www.benkuhn.net
- Shtetl-Optimized: https://scottaaronson.blog
- Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com
- Lyn Alden: https://www.lynalden.com
- Beng Tan: https://bengtan.com/interesting-things/
- Bartosz Ciechanowski: https://ciechanow.ski/
- Brian Hicks: https://bytes.zone
Me:
- https://taylor.town
mr_mitm · 2025-08-29
Generating an evil wallet where the last six characters or so match the original is probably feasible. I heard of this being done to SSH host keys. Someone invented randomart images to make it easier for humans to compare binary strings [1], but I'm not sure how well they fare against similar attacks.
[1] https://bytes.zone/posts/what-is-the-randomart-image-for/
Eduard · 2024-06-01
https://bytes.zone/posts/what-is-the-randomart-image-for/
> what is the randomart image for?
> you can set VisualHostKey to yes in your SSH client config to get that information every time.
> I left this on for a while and see if I started to be able to recognize the randomart images in the way the manual implies I'd be able to, and it turns out it worked! For example, I've started seeing the GitHub fingerprint (above) as something like the Statue of Liberty if it were a cat (don't ask why; that's just how my brain sees it), and the signature for git.bytes.zone (below) as the Vagrant logo. How interesting!
siraben · 2021-03-16
Neat! In your post you mention that it takes a few seconds until you get to the prompt (and the waiting time is similar for the nix-shell shebang scripts), but recently someone made nix-script[0] to cache these scripts, resulting in a runtime on the order of dozens of milliseconds.
Also, thanks for being dedicated enough to read the entire manual and give your impressions! If you spot typos, things that could be clearer, etc. please let us know on Freenode #nixos-dev or the Nixpkgs issue tracker!
Do you also plan on covering flakes? Flakes are currently gaining adopting in the Nix ecosystem and are pretty exciting, since they resolve issues like ad-hoc project structuring, and since evaluation will now be pure, results can be cached aggressively and nix-shell will be much much faster.
[0] https://bytes.zone/posts/nix-script/