ended up with only 8 "nibbles" (0's) in the hash/txid, instead of 9 like the original
Change endianness. It is quite likely, that the author wanted to get nine nibbles, but mined it with the original SHA-256 endianness (because it is faster), and then, it was too late to change it after broadcasting.
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
48fed127b2f57f3ea90402db257d3c0a4638e282adebea8dab6b58e5fcf10c25
6cb0fade00d4a32bbeb70fb5d83e877097b0377d2b2c8595ce7e74c000000000
See? Nine nibbles, which are turned into eight, when you change endianness after mining it.