Yes, changing the salt for a salted hash can change the hash, and thus the tripcode. However, hashes are specifically used to avoid collisions (two separate cleartexts resulting in the same hash). A plaintext IP plus a salt would be the cleartext in this case. All a salt does is add extra data to the item being hashed, to make known plaintext attacks (e.g., dictionary attacks and brute-forcing) more difficult/less effective. Not only are the odds of Q's original IP and salt hashing to the same thing as a different IP, regardless of salt, vanishingly small, hashing algorithms are specifically designed to avoid such things mathematically. Yes, there are certain hash algorithms (e.g., MD5) that have known collision spaces. Which is why they aren't used anymore. SHA256 or SHA512 have no known collision issues, and are the most widely used these days. I spent a good deal of time looking at these posts and you know that I'm not one to agree with everything but after looking at the facts around these posts for the last few days I will say I am leaning towards these being legit. Also, interesting timing with Scavino.