5 ms·

What special limits can this limbo under? 15 kb is so small. It's even smaller than l1 cache. (In case you wanted to bruteforce every possible text file you c

What special limits can this limbo under? 15 kb is so small. It's even smaller than l1 cache. (In case you wanted to bruteforce every possible text file you could feed this binary, and wanted to do it all on cache in the CPU). Maybe it's the size of payload you can put into a usb C cable or something. I mean it's just so freaking small. Any ideas what limits this is "small enough" to fit under?

Dylan16807 7y ago
> Maybe it's the size of payload you can put into a usb C cable or something. The part you grab on a typical usb C cable is just about the size of a microsd card. You might have to use a slightly narrower chip, but you can also go many times thicker. So if you're sneaking storage into a usb C cable think "terabyte". (Unless you mean hijacking an existing chip, which might have 0 writable storage or might have a megabyte, who knows.)
- logicallee 7y ago
  yes I meant the latter. maybe that's all a malicious agent has for usable payload for whatever reason. I really had to think hard to come up with that, it's not meant to be realistic.
roywiggins 7y ago
It would fit inside the MERCIA relay computer's ROM. http://www.relaiscomputer.nl/index.php/memory http://www.relaiscomputer.nl/index.php/memory It could comfortably fit inside the Apollo lander computer's RAM three times over. You can easily build a ROM this big in Minecraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4TXjhZLHpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4TXjhZLHpw You could encode it into a relatively short Twitter thread https://qntm.org/twitcodings https://qntm.org/twitcodings
- logicallee 7y ago
  but none of these come close to a real world use case. like, where does this limbo bar setting come from? who chose 15k and why?
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    Code golf is its own reward? https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/ https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/
  - sterlind 7y ago
    If you were truly paranoid about the Ken Thompson hack, and couldn't trust any hardware or software, you might choose to breadboard a primitive computer out of raw NAND gates. Your memory in such a scenario would be extremely limited... you'd be hand-crafting each bit, and toggling in instructions by hand or by punched card. Code golf would be rather necessary.
  - taneq 7y ago
    I'd imagine "small as possible" is a core goal for anything for which you might have to type the object code in by hand.
zik 7y ago
It'd fit in an STM32 microcontroller's 64K RAM comfortably, with room to spare for some actual programs. That's actually a pretty useful application. Except I think it targets x86 rather than ARM.

Dylan16807 7y ago

> Maybe it's the size of payload you can put into a usb C cable or something. The part you grab on a typical usb C cable is just about the size of a microsd card. You might have to use a slightly narrower chip, but you can also go many times thicker. So if you're sneaking storage into a usb C cable think "terabyte". (Unless you mean hijacking an existing chip, which might have 0 writable storage or might have a megabyte, who knows.)

logicallee 7y ago
yes I meant the latter. maybe that's all a malicious agent has for usable payload for whatever reason. I really had to think hard to come up with that, it's not meant to be realistic.

roywiggins 7y ago

It would fit inside the MERCIA relay computer's ROM. http://www.relaiscomputer.nl/index.php/memory http://www.relaiscomputer.nl/index.php/memory It could comfortably fit inside the Apollo lander computer's RAM three times over. You can easily build a ROM this big in Minecraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4TXjhZLHpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4TXjhZLHpw You could encode it into a relatively short Twitter thread https://qntm.org/twitcodings https://qntm.org/twitcodings

logicallee 7y ago
but none of these come close to a real world use case. like, where does this limbo bar setting come from? who chose 15k and why?
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Code golf is its own reward? https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/ https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/
- sterlind 7y ago
  If you were truly paranoid about the Ken Thompson hack, and couldn't trust any hardware or software, you might choose to breadboard a primitive computer out of raw NAND gates. Your memory in such a scenario would be extremely limited... you'd be hand-crafting each bit, and toggling in instructions by hand or by punched card. Code golf would be rather necessary.
- taneq 7y ago
  I'd imagine "small as possible" is a core goal for anything for which you might have to type the object code in by hand.

zik 7y ago

It'd fit in an STM32 microcontroller's 64K RAM comfortably, with room to spare for some actual programs. That's actually a pretty useful application. Except I think it targets x86 rather than ARM.