Who is Nick Black, and what is dankwiki?

Updated

Nick Black (also known as "dank" or "dankamongmen") is an Atlanta-based developer who maintains dankwiki, a personal wiki at nick-black.com covering Linux and Unix, computer science, nuclear physics, postmodern literature, and what the site itself calls "cartoonish supervillainy." It's worth exploring if you want one practitioner's working notes on systems programming and Unix — but not if you need authoritative, current documentation, since the author explicitly disclaims guarantees of correctness, relevance, or timeliness.

What dankwiki actually is

The site describes itself as "the wiki of nick black," written primarily, in the author's words, "to force my own understanding, and remember things." That framing matters: this is a personal knowledge base, not a curated reference. The author notes that only "a few entries are actually semi-authoritative" and asks readers to get confirmation before relying on his writeups for anything consequential.

The wiki is located in midtown Atlanta (the site gives coordinates 33.779, 85.384) and tracks changes through a recent changes page, which is the practical way to follow updates if you want to check back periodically.

Main topic areas

Area What you'll find
Unix and Linux Notes on Unix systems, networking, and general computing remarks
Computer science An eponym collection, grad school and CS GRE prep pages, LaTeX material
Nuclear physics Notes on decays, elemental naming, and a chart connecting TaB consumption to nuclear weapons
Postmodern literature Reading and writing interests woven through the wiki
Projects Notcurses, course material, hardware builds, and more

Notable projects and pages

  • Notcurses — a library for "blingful TUIs and character graphics" that Black created. This is likely the most widely relevant project for developers visiting the wiki.
  • Computer science eponyms — described on the site as "the world's largest(?) collection of computer science eponyms," with the question mark included by the author.
  • UNIX Weapons School (CS4803UWS) — a course Black created and taught at Georgia Tech in Summer 2013.
  • Talks — including "Dynamic iSCSI at Scale" for Google at the 2015 Linux Plumbers' Conference and "Miscompiling Programs with 'Benign' Data Races" for Papers We Love Atlanta in 2018.
  • Hardware and machines — notes on builds, cases, power supplies, and fans.

Who should use it

This wiki suits you if you want to see how an experienced systems developer organizes his own notes on Unix internals, TUI programming, or adjacent technical topics, and you're comfortable verifying anything important against primary sources. It's a poor fit if you need stable, citable documentation or up-to-date reference material — the author makes no promises on either front.

If you derive use from it, the site's own guidance is to consider yourself lucky and confirm before relying on it. Start with the recent changes page to see what's active, then browse toward whichever of the topic areas above matches your interest.