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Exotic Silicon
research.exoticsilicon.com · Company blog · on HN since 2023
Exotic Silicon is a small hardware and software studio publishing technical write-ups on C, BSD, networking, and text-mode graphics.
What HN saysCommenters like the site design and the mail filter article, though one notes its terms forbid using content to train AI.
17HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
14stories submitted
25story points
8 months agolast shared
2023people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Writing a greylisting filter in ~1000 lines of C3 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 2Does the eject command make a USB flash drive fly across the room?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3Routing 4G cellular data to a BSD network using bridge mode on the RUT-2402 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4Homepage2 people · first shared 2023
- 5Exotic Silicon Design Studio1 people · 6 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 6Discovering one bug after another in the UTF-8 decoding logic in OpenBSD1 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 74096 Colours and the Blink Attribute1 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Exoticsilicon.com – Replying to comments about our web page design1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 9Console Screendumps1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 10Web page design studio – Part one: User-friendly visuals, and responsive design1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 11Pinephone openbsd1 people · first shared 2023
- 12Terms1 people · first shared 2023
- 13Welcome1 people · first shared 2023
What HN people wrote when they linked it
turtleyacht · 2023-09-17
Interested to know which languages inspired Jeebox. For example, REBOL, Tcl, Forth, even Prolog.
Love the site design. Picking up vibes similar to Exotic Silicon¹.
This page is CSS' reason-to-be. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31396098
¹ https://research.exoticsilicon.com/
bartvk · 2023-01-31
Then you'll hate the homepage[0] which features a tit (bird) flying off after the page rendered. That's the default theme, though -- you can switch themes using the animated glasses button in the lower-left of the homepage.
[0] https://research.exoticsilicon.com/
brudgers · 2023-10-05
Original article: https://research.exoticsilicon.com/articles/mail_filters
rsync · 2023-04-14
Agreed.
I have no idea who "exoticsilicon" are or if they read HN but if they do, free-for-life rsync.net accounts for any of them that care to contact us.
I am already making good use of this particular piece of content:
https://research.exoticsilicon.com/articles/lte_ethernet_bridge
8ig8 · 2023-04-14
> You agree not to use the content to train AI systems or machine learning systems.
https://research.exoticsilicon.com/terms
First I’ve seen that.
ninjin · 2023-04-11
Probably [1], but it certainly needs more hands on deck last time I talked to Crystal.
[1]: https://research.exoticsilicon.com/series/pinephone_openbsd
KronisLV · 2023-04-14
Tried out all of their themes on the welcome page, which seems like a nice showcase of what's available when you switch the themes: https://research.exoticsilicon.com/welcome
Here's the aspects that I personally enjoyed:
- Tropical nights: this feels like a pleasant theme on the eyes, almost like an IDE dark mode
- Nitrate memories: another theme that feels fairly readable, with the contrast being okay in *most* places
- Light pastels: this one dials down the colors a little bit so they're not as distracting
That said, when most of the web looks more or less the same way, it feels like this site stands out too much and the design detracts from the experience, in my eyes. For example, opening the page linked in this post, you're confronted with colorful shadows, titles (the questions) in a serif font that's not as bold as the answers that come in a sans serif font, a static background for when you scroll the content that's an image that you can't quite read.
I'd probably just have a chuckle about the quirky design and go browse other sites that might have the information that I'm looking for, due to my eyes scanning them more quickly and easily, much like you'd look at data in a spreadsheet (sans annoying pop-ups and other dark patterns that web is plagued with). But you know what? Their website design is none of my business, it's fine for them to make their own choices and run it how they desire, even if some of the answers on this particular page are a bit on the…