
Fravia’s web-searching lore (2009) - jtaft
http://search.lores.eu/basic.htm
======
jasim
Searchlores at the time was a disappointing pivot from Fravia's pages of
reverse engineering. Searchlores was all about advanced search techniques and
finding the unfindable; reverse engineering was about decoding binaries and
knowing the unknowable. Little did I then realize that Fravia had the
foresight to see what the internet will become, and that instead of stepping
through binaries in SoftICE in search of understanding, we'll be drowned in
open-source code that'll never be read.

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userbinator
Some background on the author:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia)

Very interesting guy. It was an odd coincidence to see the quality of Google's
search results drop drastically shortly after his death... and now if you try
some of the "advanced techniques" that he describes, Google is likely to block
you for looking like a bot.

~~~
makmanalp
It's like if Umberto Eco decided to go into programming instead.

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e_modad
I remember being 12 years old and obsessively reading through fravia's pages
into the morning in the mid-90's. On a whim, I e-mailed +orc. He responded so
kindly that it had a significant effect on my interests and attitudes. I'll
always remember that time fondly. It's too bad fravia passed. His legacy lives
on in those he influenced.

~~~
jrumbut
I wonder what is out there today that feels like the enlightenment that
fravia's writing provided back then. The links between technology and
philosophy, in its original meaning as the love of knowledge. Fravia really
helped form my worldview. Going back and reading it again, it doesn't feel the
same due to how the internet unfolded over the last 20 years.

I wish I had thought to reach out! Glad they were nice!

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jlg23
To put his work in context: He taught people how to identify a Russian medal
(IIRC, it was 20 years ago..) before image search or tabbed browsers were a
thing. Even if there had been image search, most people would not have had the
bandwidth to go through a few hundred image results visually...

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yosefzeev
This brings back memories. Fravia was ahead of his time.

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lsh
Fravia! I thought he was gone for good. He got me into Opera which remained my
browser of choice for 15 years? more?? I used to print his webpages off into
plastic sleeves inside huge A4 binders and read them at school. Him and RMS
definitely helped raise the bar about how the world could and should be at an
impressionable age.

~~~
lsh
oh, he died. I guess he is gone for good. What an interesting person ...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia)

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nuclx
Good old Fravia - I didn't know he is already no longer with us. May he rest
in peace. His writings were inspiring in the late 90's. He sparked curiosity
for a deeper understanding of how computers work, from the bottom up. His
resources were accessible, non-academic, creative reflections on computing and
information technology. Knowledge is power and he taught us young nerds how to
gain access to it.

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rboyd
If I remember correctly he has a daughter? It would be interesting to get an
interview from her. Fravia was a big inspiration as a teenager.

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svilen_dobrev
yeah... have forgotten some of these things. data reverse engineering? who
remembers that..
[http://search.lores.eu/realicra/finn_de1.htm](http://search.lores.eu/realicra/finn_de1.htm)
[http://search.lores.eu/bg_weird.htm](http://search.lores.eu/bg_weird.htm)
[http://search.lores.eu/angewalk.htm](http://search.lores.eu/angewalk.htm)

another mirror of the software side, still alive, is here:
[http://www.woodmann.com/fravia/papers.htm](http://www.woodmann.com/fravia/papers.htm)

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pfarnsworth
The +orc posts were the best reverse engineering posts at the time, I never
understood what happened with it.

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bordercases
Are there any modern takes on the objectives that Fravia was trying to
achieve?

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bsaul
I just had a look at +orc wikipedia page, and it says his identity isn’t
known. Yet i’m pretty sure i’ve read a post on HN or a comment, a long time
ago, implying otherwise... anyone knows more ?

~~~
rhexs
As far as I'm aware, no one is still looking as Fravia is dead and +Orc hasn't
posted publicly in decades.

I always thought they were the same person. Fravia was operating at a time
when reverse engineering was very dangerous legally. Creating an anonymous
persona to publish these tutorials makes perfect sense. I'm sure he knew how
to mask his writings to look like someone from a vague location in Europe.
Read and wrote latin, accomplished linguist, +Orc quoted many Latin phrases
and obscure references to old texts, estimated ages of +Orc lines up with
Fravia etc.

Only people that ever conclusively stated that +Orc was not Fravia was Fravia
himself and others in the HCU.

Probably the same guy. So much has been lost to time that I doubt anyone will
ever known one way or the other. Friends probably do, but they would have no
reason to give up that secret and probably helped spread disinformation.

That's my conspiracy theory for the day.

~~~
stevekemp
At the time I came across +fravia I believed that +Orc was a real person, but
like you nowadays I'm more inclined to believe they were one and the same.

Regardless I remember finding the reversing pages in the early 90s and
learning a lot. I was disappointed by the pivot to the search-based site, but
regardless Fravia himself was a huge influence on me, and I was saddened to
learn of his passing.

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

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yread
I miss him. Anyone got a list of the "hidden" pages on searchlores?

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yasp
Wish I could vote this up more than just once.

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yesenadam
I hadn't heard of him before, just starting to check out his essays. Great
stuff!

Only gee, what an irritating and unfriendly style, throwing in a phrase in
Latin in every other sentence, or even entire section titles—as if all his
readers will understand it? or not caring?—just makes it really bad prose,
there's no way to get around that. And "the unwashed"?!

edit: "He'll be honing onto his target", "being a tag paranoid is probably a
good idea", "You'r"...ah ok, the English is bad too. That was surprising, from
someone posing as a master of language.

~~~
userbinator
It's funny how the perception of style has changed, reading Fravia's writings
now has a similar feeling to reading a book from the early 20th century.
However, I can safely say that he wrote far better than the majority of the
other reverse-engineers at the time.

