Who was Aleph Null? (2013)
14 comments
·February 27, 2025dekhn
for a second I thought they were talking about the author of https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs161/fa08/papers/stack_smas... but apparently that's aleph-one.
rtkwe
Not much is known about the Necrotyr who became Aleph-Null.. oh you didn't mean that Aleph-Null.
Random old mysteries like this are fun. Maybe this will spread far enough the original Aleph-Null could hear about it but there's increasing odds they're dead.
ratmice
John Francis in the comments seems to have (correctly) uncovered the mystery, looking at the homepage given in that comment via wayback machine has a link github with commits as recent as november.
fanf2
Mistletoe
I can’t wait to try that spoon trick next time I have a jar that is hard to open. I’ve been using a strap wrench.
rtkwe
I rarely delve into comments sections. Kind of assumed if someone had brought up a solution the author would have updated it but I can see that dropping off when a comment comes 8 years after the article was published.
matthewmorgan
Not sure if related but back in the day there was an aleph null associated with ADOM https://web.archive.org/web/19990428120058/http://www.aleph-...
runjake
Background: Aleph Null was a pseudonymous author of a column in a 1970s software journal whose identity is unknown.
They wrote on many eclectic computing topics. Their true identity is still unknown.
And no, this comment isn't an AI-written summary. :-)
bhouston
This guy says he is Aleph Null: http://richard-parkins.free.nf/
null
aaron695
As per the comments it was Richard Parkins, talked about on their website -https://web.archive.org/web/20220430130623/http://www.zen224...
Robert Morris mentioned in the letter was Robert Morris Jr.'s father.
Core Wars did lead to real life Cyber Wars.
[edit] Wow the in/famous CNN cover https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19880926,00.htm... said this two months before the Morris Worm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm
As an aside, bit-player.org is an amazing blog and resource. Recently I've been thinking about what will happen when Brian Hayes, its author, shuffles off this mortal coil.
Other than relying on the Wayback Machine, what are the options for keeping a site like this alive and at least minimally maintained, at its original URL?