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Why the Sun 2 has a message “Love your country, but never trust its government”

(nohats.ca)
266 points longwave | 1 comments | 25 Jan 16 11:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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lultimouomo ◴[25 Jan 16 11:49 UTC] No.10966653[source]▶
I wonder if this trap street message, which was inserted in some code initializing a DES chip, was chosen because it was rumored that NSA had backdoored DES. The article doesn't mention it, but it would be quite a coincidental choice!
replies(3): >>10966716 #>>10966929 #>>10967610 #
1. geofft ◴[25 Jan 16 15:20 UTC] No.10967610[source]▶
As far as I can tell, it was not inserted in code initializing a DES chip. It was shipped with the ROM monitor, and the DES chip, which would have been initialized by software (not boot ROM), was not even shipped.

The article is a little confusing but it looks like an email reply to multiple questions, the first one "Why this message" and the second one "Why the empty chip slot". (And the third one about a Sun-2 emulator, which also comes out of nowhere.)