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Disassembling terabytes of random data with Zig and Capstone to prove a point

https://jstrieb.github.io/posts/random-instructions/
27•birdculture•4d ago

Comments

0x1ch•1h ago
I believe this is the third or fourth posting of this article in the last week.
degamad•49m ago
Yep: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=jstrieb.github.io
mfcl•37m ago
Why the AI disclosure? Is it just for the author to make sure the readers know they are AI-skeptic and use the opportunity to link to another article, or would there be something wrong with the proof had AI been used to help write the code?

(By help I mean just help, not write an entire sloppy article.)

jstrieb•19m ago
Hey, I wrote this! There are a couple of reasons that I included the disclosure.

The main one is to set reader expectations that any errors are entirely my own, and that I spent time reviewing the details of the work. The disclosure seemed to me a concise way to do that -- my intention was not any form of anti-AI virtue signaling.

The other reason is that I may use AI for some of my future work, and as a reader, I would prefer a disclosure about that. So I figured if I'm going to disclose using it, I might as well disclose not using it.

I linked to other thoughts on AI just in case others are interested in what I have to say. I don't stand to gain anything from what I write, and I don't even have analytics to tell me more people are viewing it.

All in all, I was just trying to be transparent, and share my work.

kazinator•9m ago
[delayed]
kazinator•32m ago
In common anecdotal experience with disassembling code, it is very common for data areas interspersed with code (like string literals) to disaassemble to instructions, momentarily causing the human to be puzzled: what is this repetition of five "or" instructions doing here referencing registers that would never be arguments?

The reason is that the opcode encoding is very dense, and has no redundancy against detecting bad encodings, and usually no relationship to neighboring words.

By that I mean that some four byte chunk (say) treated as an opcode word is treated that way regardless of what came before or what comes after. If it looks like an opcode with a four-byte immediate operand, then the disassembly will pull in that operand (which can be any bit combination) and skip another four bytes. Nothing in the operand will indicate "this is a bad instruction overall".

kazinator•11m ago
[delayed]

The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

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524•andrewl•8h ago•705 comments

Project Euler

https://projecteuler.net
290•swatson741•7h ago•75 comments

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843•bertman•14h ago•517 comments

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https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe
926•Philpax•6h ago•343 comments

Disassembling terabytes of random data with Zig and Capstone to prove a point

https://jstrieb.github.io/posts/random-instructions/
27•birdculture•4d ago•6 comments

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https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/20755
110•firexcy•2h ago•103 comments

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45•Neuronaut•1h ago•12 comments

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127•bookofjoe•1w ago•11 comments

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https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/omniai/jobs/fuTMf2w-forward-deployed-engineer
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505•runesoerensen•1d ago•450 comments

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309•doener•6h ago•96 comments

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16•EA-3167•45m ago•3 comments

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234•rramadass•9h ago•160 comments

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213•onename•15h ago•122 comments

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251•meetpateltech•10h ago•258 comments

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111•justin-reeves•11h ago•31 comments

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150•pabs3•19h ago•133 comments

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289•nharada•8h ago•353 comments

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