Top all-time · #599
Tom Murphy VII
Personal blog · tom7.orgprogramminggamesscience
Tom Murphy VII writes Tom Murphy 7's Invincible Web Page, a personal blog at tom7.org about programming, games and science. Since 2019, 102 different Hacker News readers have linked it 140 times, most often “Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link tom7.org as a pointer to Tom Murphy VII's papers and projects: SIGBOVIK papers, Harder Drives, the ABC compiler and Bovex. Comments call them amusing and a favourite.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called amusing, a favourite and great contenders; one says readers will love ABC and another calls him brilliant.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Tom 7's serious web page for graduate school. (But it has fun stuff nonetheless.)
Most-linked posts?
- Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-04-10
- Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need (2022) [pdf]9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2022-04-10
- C compiler for producing completely printable DOS executables8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-02-18
- Learnfun and playfun: a general technique for automating NES games (2013)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-05-23
- No one can force me to have a secure website [pdf]7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2026-04-14
- NaN Gates and Flip FLOPS6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-04-02
- Tom 7: Badness 0 (Three ways)5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-06-07
- The GlEnd of Zelda(): Automatic 3Dification of NES Games5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-10-12
- Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-04-02
- Nan gates and flip FLOPS (April first, 2019) [pdf]4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-08
What Hacker News says?
How about this one: http://tom7.org/chess/cve.pdf Sarcastic PDFs never stop being amusing to me.
Comment linking /chess/cve.pdf
on “When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number”Submitted Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters as a story · 727 points
HN discussionFrom chainsaws to ICMP echo packets (and more) http://tom7.org/harder/
Comment linking /harder/
on “First images from Euclid are in”Submitted Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video] as a story · 425 points
HN discussionObligatory mention, the GNU JUSTIFIED PUBLIC LICENSE: https://tom7.org/bovex/JCOPYING (for the rabbit hole: https://tom7.org/bovex/ )
Comment linking /bovex/
on ““I just chose words carefully””Submitted Tom 7: Badness 0 (Three ways) as a story · 367 points
HN discussionsuckerpinch has a great video where he uses an LLM to do this same thing automatically https://tom7.org/bovex/
Comment linking /bovex/
on ““I just chose words carefully””Submitted NaN Gates and Flip FLOPS as a story · 199 points
HN discussionAh, SIGBOVIK. So many amazing papers come out of that. My favorites are often by Tom7, see for example http://tom7.org/mario/mario.pdf or http://tom7.org/abc
Comment linking /abc
on “X”Submitted Research paper is also an executable x86 program [pdf] as a story · 189 points
HN discussionFrom the paper ( http://tom7.org/lowercase/lowercase.pdf ): ... fonts where everything is fine except that just the lowercase r has a width of MAX INT... Okay, I cannot imagine what the use of that font would be, but I really want to know.
Comment linking /lowercase/lowercase.pdf
on “Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters”Submitted Rupert's snub cube and other Math Holes as a story · 148 points
HN discussionThere's also this compiler (with accompanying paper/video), that compiles C89 to x86 with the output executable restricted even further, to only printable ASCII bytes: http://tom7.org/abc/
Comment linking /abc/
on “αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε”Submitted Survival in chessland [pdf] as a story · 128 points
HN discussionCf. also http://tom7.org/bovex/ (a layout engine that tries to achieve a similar effect by rephrasing the input using an LLM).
Comment linking /bovex/
on “The Monospace Web”Submitted Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need (2022) [pdf] as a story · 98 points
HN discussionRelevant tom7 project: http://tom7.org/lowercase/
Comment linking /lowercase/
on “Brutalita Sans: An Experimental Font and Font Editor”Submitted GNU Justified Public License as a story · 85 points
HN discussionIn agreement that this is good old fashioned cargo-cult security theatre, but tom7 also coined a more catchy phrase for this, he calls it "toxic max-security." http://tom7.org/httpv/httpv.pdf
Comment linking /httpv/httpv.pdf
on “Git 3.0's upcoming SHA-256 default will be a costly mistake”Submitted Learnfun and playfun: a general technique for automating NES games (2013) as a story · 44 points
HN discussionWell I think it's shit. It's a not-so-interesting view of the kind of perspective change you get from something like http://tom7.org/zelda/ and I resent the suggestion that the reason I don't like it is my own smallmindedness. I have many flaws but that isn't one of them.
Comment linking /zelda/
on “MAR1D: First-Person Mario”Submitted Conditional Move for Shell Script Acceleration [pdf] as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSomething like this? http://tom7.org/zelda/
Comment linking /zelda/
on “MAR1D: First-Person Mario”Submitted C compiler for producing completely printable DOS executables as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSee also, the glEnd() of Zelda http://tom7.org/zelda/
Comment linking /zelda/
on “MAR1D: First-Person Mario”Submitted Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSome great contenders for new uppestcase letters on this page. http://tom7.org/lowercase/
Comment linking /lowercase/
on “Unsettling capital letters”Submitted No one can force me to have a secure website as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTo defend against ALL CAPS prompt injection, write all your prompts in uppestcase. If you don't have uppestcase, you can generate it with derp learning: http://tom7.org/lowercase/
Comment linking /lowercase/
on “Weaponizing image scaling against production AI systems”Submitted Elo World, a framework for benchmarking weak chess engines [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
