
Fravia’s web-searching lore (2009) - homarp
http://biostatisticien.eu/www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm
======
gwern
Unfortunately, most of Fravia's googlefu has bitrot since his passing in 2009.
I wrote my own guide for contemporary search:
[https://www.gwern.net/Search](https://www.gwern.net/Search)

------
mrspeaker
Ah, "reality cracking"!

The Fravia pages are what made me _finally_ "understand" computers. I'd always
been into them, and I could program them... but only after Fravia's reverse
engineering stuff did I actually understand what was actually going on at the
hardware level. Then the search lore pages really changed how I thought about
the importance of computers and society.

Years later I ended up with my first taste of "very minor internet fame" by
getting some crazy high (for the time) Digg score for a blog post on finding a
long-hidden cheat in the pinball game that came with Windows -
[https://www.mrspeaker.net/2006/01/07/hacking-
pinball/](https://www.mrspeaker.net/2006/01/07/hacking-pinball/) (holy cow,
2006! Feels like yesterday!)... using the techniques I'd picked up from
Fravia. Then again years later on the Mac:
[https://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/01/06/mac-
hacking/](https://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/01/06/mac-hacking/) \- with a post
that ends "Thanks for all your help, Fravia.".

Now I'm here in 2020, hacking away on something interesting and sipping on
some good Irish whiskey... so once again, thanks for all your help, Fravia!

~~~
sponns
You'll be remembered always Fravia! For imparting the knowledge and the
collective effort to teach RE!

------
dang
If curious see also

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162062)

2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291494)

2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1388706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1388706)

~~~
homarp
and I guess
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=593955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=593955)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600523)
from 2009

------
bsaul
I do remember fravia’s texts about reality hacking (i think), but i also
definitely remember +Orc tutorial about reverse engineering, and i owe them my
first crack using wdasm ( what a thrill). Looking at the wikipedia page for
+ORC, it seems that his true identity was never found. Is the article up to
date ?

~~~
homarp
+orc must be Satoshi :)

------
homarp
as mentioned in "12 Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future" (
[https://www.divergent-
desktop.org/blog/2020/08/10/principles...](https://www.divergent-
desktop.org/blog/2020/08/10/principles-overview/) ) about the Arcan Project

~~~
crazyloglad
thanks for noticing. RiP +Fravia.

