8 HN users recommended this talk7 months2018–2023score 9
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN fans call it a favorite engineering video and a showcase of Tom7's masterpiece-level, playful hacking.
Tom7 explains how he built a SIGBOVIK 2017 paper made only of printable ASCII bytes that is also a valid DOS executable. He writes a C compiler targeting printable x86 without self-modifying code and solves the puzzles the constraint creates.
“His video about the printable x86[1] is my favorite engineering video of all time.” (HN, 2019)
He's a mad genius! I like his compiler that generates executables made up only of printable characters: [this video] / [link] He's super playful and awesomely smart!
Compiler producing executables from printable characters only.
Every one of this guy's SIGBOVIK papers/videos are pure gold. His video about the printable x86[1] is my favorite engineering video of all time. ^1: [this video]
The author is an absolute legend. Absolutely every video on his Youtube channel is a masterpiece [link] And this includes the video that explains this code (Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper) [this video]
Video explaining the code; the author's channel is all masterpieces.
Love Tom7, his video "Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper" [0] is my favorite but most of his stuff is super interesting. [0] [this video]
Personal favorite among Tom7's interesting videos.
tom7 made a while video explaining how to create an executable only with printable characters [0]. He even write a compiler called 'ABC' for it. [0] [this video]
Explains creating an executable using only printable characters.
That last one (Tom 7's executable x86 paper) is incomplete without the video where he demonstrates running the paper (or running the paper yourself). [this video]
A mix of various things. Google to get to the channel: pbs spacetime stuff made here ben eater's 8 bit computer mike boyd nerdforge sabine hossenfelder gotham chess uthermal 3blue1brown veritasium Numberphile Suckerpinch (all time favourite: [this video] ) Stevey's tech talk leonard susskind's stanford lectures
Named as all-time favorite among suckerpinch videos.
On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint [link] Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper [this video] HDR Photography in Microsoft Excel?! [link] Zebras All the Way Down [link] Solving Layout Problems with CSS Grid and Friends [link] Console Security - Switch [link] Let's move SMM out of firmware and into the kernel [link] Bringing Linux back to server boot ROMs with NERF and Heads [link] Sharing the Chisel [link] (looks like the actual conference video wasn't released)
In the accompanying video[0] at 7:36 mark, he goes to great lengths to express (A or B) as (A and B) + (A xor B). Can anybody explain why it can't simply be expressed as (A and B) xor (A xor B)? What am I missing here? 0. [this video]
Discusses a specific moment on expressing OR via AND and XOR.
Tom Murphy VII (tom7) did such a thing. It's a partial C89 compiler that outputs only printable characters. In meta fashion, the compiler is compiled by itself to also contain only printable characters. The TXT and EXE files below are exactly the same. Video: [this video] Paper (PDF): [link] Paper (TXT): [link] Compiler (EXE): [link]
Partial C89 compiler outputting only printable characters, self-hosting.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
11 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes