9 ms·

Hacker Purity Test (1989)

110 points by oliverkwebb 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
schoen 2y ago
Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240517122419/http://www.armory.com/tests/hacker.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240517122419/http://www.armory...
- osamagirl69 2y ago
  Important to note that the 'score' button doesn't work on the archive.org version Then again any half decent hacker would know their score before clicking the button anyway ;-)
schoen 2y ago
When I first took this test (around 1994) I wanted to improve my score, so in 1995 I learned troff in order to get the last point in this sequence: 0x1D1 Can you solve the Towers of Hanoi recursively? 0x1D2 ... Non-recursively? 0x1D3 ... Using the Troff text formatter? I successfully managed to get the point: http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/troff-hanoi.txt http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/troff-hanoi.txt
- globular-toast 2y ago
  There is also a point for "have you tried to improve your hacker score?"
bandrami 2y ago
I knew that light pen would be useful some day
monocasa 2y ago
0xDD - I feel like that's pretty decent these days.
- kstenerud 2y ago
  Nerds of the era would have made a joke about that, but it would be inappropriate nowadays.
zaptrem 2y ago
Need an updated version for those of us who were born after nearly everything mentioned here was no longer manufactured/supported/commonly used!
- can16358p 2y ago
  Exactly. This might be the perfect test for ones born in 60s-mid 80s but anyone later born will have probably score much lower than their actual "hackerness" (is there such a word?) and the test would really not reflect the truth simply because the used tools and techniques and memes of the era. (But hey the test is from 1989 so it makes perfect sense)
  - oliverkwebb 2y ago
    I see it more as a piece of history than any actual measurement of someones "hackerness". It's a fun way of peering into the realm of 80s hacker culture and seeing what was popular or cutting-edge at the time ("Have you ever programmed in the X windowing system?")
  - ascorbic 2y ago
    Mid-80s is a bit late for a test from 1989. Most of these questions would need you to be in university or work. I'd say mid 40s to early 70s is more realistic. My uncle was born around '48 and was working at Cambridge Computer Lab in 1989, so I'm sure would have answered this.
    - anthk 2y ago
      Indeed Mid-80s would be either using Debian/Slackware, writting a device driver for Linux/BSD, tampering with Video4Linux, cracking TV cards by nearly decoding Nagra by hand, writting something akin to minimodem/tempest for Eliza, hacking a cable-modem to get free internet access, smashing the stack, doing anything close to what Fabrice Bellard did and so on.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      Agreed. I was born in '81, and by the time I got my first computer (coincidentally, probably '89, when this test was compile), a ton of the questions on that list would have required you to have been in the industry for a couple decades already. I feel like even a hacker born in 1970 would have a trouble answering "yes" to many of those questions.
ainiriand 2y ago
I wrote a virus in 1998! Other than that I achieved a meager 15%, pity me.
- gala8y 2y ago
  Not bad, this gets rather steep!
xcdzvyn 2y ago
> 0x0D0 Do you use more than 16 megabytes of disk space? > 0x1B2 Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer? Aged like wine. Anyway, 0x83.
Woshiwuja 2y ago
Ever drop a card deck? Im gonna assume this is talking about my yugioh deck, checked.
mikewarot 2y ago
wow... I got 105 of 510... and a score of 79.4% This thing obviously needs an update. Who doesn't have a Terabyte of storage these days?
- pfg_ 2y ago
  It does ask about if you use, not have. So maybe some people have a terabyte but only use 600gb
  - teekert 2y ago
    Have you ever argued the semantics of questions from this test with a stranger on the internet? Check.
PhilipRoman 2y ago
> ... Xedit (in VM/CMS)? Anyone know if this refers to the same xorg-xedit program which you can install for x11? I've used it but I have no idea what is either VM or CMS.
- anon35 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEDIT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEDIT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system)
lepisma 2y ago
[flagged]
- fragmede 2y ago
  that's pretty good! humanity is doomed.
- M95D 2y ago
  They're too easy.
HaZeust 2y ago
83% pure -- but then again, it took me 12 years after this was published to become a human.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
praptak 2y ago
Being fifty I think I can say I grew up in this culture. Looking at this test made me realize I grew up to dislike it. (This, or I got grumpy with age) The chest banging coming from knowing obscure and useless details is kinda cringe. Yeah I know this test is tongue-in-cheek but I remember dudes who were really like that.
- belZaah 2y ago
  Might it because you do not remember the currency of the time was knowledge? In absence of Internet, people traded knowledge, their status depended on this, they got access to cool things because of it. And, as with any valuable, there’s bound to be hoarding.
  - praptak 2y ago
    Maybe. I think I was in the camp of "I will share my knowledge whether you want it or not", always eager to tell people they are doing things in an uninformed way, like not using the right editor ;)
  - asveikau 2y ago
    > their status depended on this But it's not inevitable that people chase status and lord it over others. Doing that is a choice. People can always choose to focus on something more healthy and productive.
    - wffurr 2y ago
      I think it is inevitable though when a bunch of hairless apes taught sand how to think.
  - blueyes 2y ago
    what is the currency now?
    - throwway120385 2y ago
      Data
brna-2 2y ago
While I am largely out of sync with the timeframe of the topics in the test the personality-related questions made me giggle with joy several times.
Symbiote 2y ago
I like how some of the questions which used to be very "hacker" now apply to a large segment of the population. Have you ever used a computer for more than 8 hours continuously? Do you log in before breakfast? Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer? Do you talk to the person next to you via computer?
- themoonisachees 2y ago
  Also: Do you use more than 8Mb? I was actually surprised the test make thought to include terabytes at all
ozim 2y ago
People find this funny but then we get interviews having to check out random boxes.
bux93 2y ago
0x1AC Do you think garbage collection means memory management? Woah, this debate again..
- BalinKing 2y ago
  I had to think about what this question meant for a few seconds, because I forgot that "garbage collection" could ever mean anything other than memory management....
- themoonisachees 2y ago
  I read is as "you're such a hacker that hearing garbage collection makes you think of memory management instead of the much more normal public service"
- vincent-manis 2y ago
  One of my grad student colleagues once asked a faculty member whose specialty was discrete-event simulation what he knew about garbage collection. The prof was taken aback and said, “almost nothing”, until the student clarified that he was asking about simulating waste management pickup.
sgt 2y ago
You answered "yes" to 162 of 510 questions, making you 68.2% hacker pure; that is, you are 68.2% pure in the hacker domain (you have 31.8% hacker in you). According to the scoring guide, your hacker experience level is: User Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 17%, based on a comparison of your test results with 64695 other submissions for this test. The average purity for this test is 76.9%.
- jmclnx 2y ago
  Yes, I got a similar result. Most of the question I have forgotten about. But one curious thing, I am surprised they did not have questions like "Ever change and compile a kernel ?".
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    The test is from '89. Linux 0.01 was two years in the future.
    - dfox 2y ago
      Loadable device drivers are somewhat modern invention. On many systems adding a device driver involved recompiling (or at least relinking) the kernel.
      - sgt 2y ago
        Fast forward many years to 2024, and we're using things like System Extensions on a modern Unix (macOS). Drivers and low level code running in user space rather than in kernel space, but with the code being granted privilege that allows certain things previously done by kernel extensions. Interesting how times change!
spiritplumber 2y ago
Crazy how some of these still apply if you do hardware.
- dfox 2y ago
  My favorite case of solving a software problem in hardware involves precision kick with steel-toed boot, which caused part of the machine to bend slightly such that the timing/position errors in software would not cause a jam.
Terr_ 2y ago
In my memory, the era for this stuff was also when folks were taking questionnaires on their beliefs/preferences/circumstances which output an encoded string. This string would then be placed into an e-mail signature in lieu of an "About me" webpage somewhere.
- praptak 2y ago
  These were called Geek codes (it took me a while to recall the name!). I remember them being pretty popular during the Usenet era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
zzo38computer 2y ago
I have borrowed Art of Computer Programming from a interlibrary loan in the past (although I do not own a copy), and I have written a MIX simulator, and an assembler. It supports both decimal and binary. (I also have written programs in both MIX and in MMIX.) I had never used computers with cards, but I had made an option (it can be switched on and off) in an assembler so that you can easily find the first and last cards from the holes and the rest are allowed to be in any order, in order to solve a problem of getting them mixed up, many years after they have been no longer in common use. I have written self-modifying code in a few programming languages, including uxn (it is common to modify literal values but I have also sometimes used it to modify instructions, in an error handling routine), and PostScript, and in 6502 assembly language (with code running from RAM in NES/Famicom). I had also once written a self-modifying code in GWBASIC by opening a file and writing to it and then using CHAIN MERGE to load the modified code. (I had probably done some others as well but do not remember the details.) I am currently wearing a shirt with the circuit diagram of a "blue box". I had also programmed a computer to do the functions of blue box and red box (but had never used them to control any telephones), and also to generate a dial tone and many other tones relating to telephones. I do have a flowchart template from IBM. I also have a fortune file, which I maintain. I have also reverse-engineered and decompiled some parts of some of programs, and I have patched binary code too.
AeZ1E 2y ago
feeling like a hacker wizard with a 0x018 purity level after taking this funky test! who else out there is hacking their way to guru status? let's compare our results and geek out together!
- cnity 2y ago
  Thank you for validating the dead internet theory.
  - AeZ1E 2y ago
    No problem. Can I further help you?
    - cnity 2y ago
      Yes! Can you please give me a recipe for anchovy soup?
      - AeZ1E 2y ago
        [dead]
M95D 2y ago
What was the most weird answer that you could check on that test? For me, it was "0x11A Have you ever toggled in boot code on the front panel?" When I still used PATA HDDs and BIOSes didn't have F11/F12 boot menu, I wired a front panel switch to Master/Slave HDD jumpers, so I could toggle boot drive without entering the BIOS setup. I guess that counts.
- eythian 2y ago
  It's a wee bit different. It wasn't my time, so someone correct me if my details are wrong, but this is using the rows of switches on the front panel of, say, an early IBM machine to actually put in the bootloader code in binary. I.e you could do something like set the address with one set of switches, set the opcode with another set, and press a button (or something) that would then write that opcode into that point in memory. Repeat until you've put the whole bootloader in. And, I imagine, hope you never have to go through that again.
  - linux2647 2y ago
    Yes exactly this. For example on the PDP-11: https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/news_items/RRqw/large.jpg?v=63814500366 https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/news_items/RRqw/large.jpg?...
- spogbiper 2y ago
  sorry friend, no that does not count
- ok123456 2y ago
  They mean like toggling the switches on the front of a PDP/8 to make it do something other than be a paperweight.
  - vincent-manis 2y ago
    There was a time when I could toggle the PDP-8 RIM bootstrap loader by heart (my programs had a nasty habit of destroying the memory-resident copy by accident).
aaron695 2y ago
Puffer train has a great Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffer_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffer_train 0x040 Can you build a puffer train? 0x041 ... Do you know what it is? Can you imagine Gen Z seeing the real circa 90's Purity Test and being told it was pretty average for pre-internet society? Here "internet" as shorthand for WWW kinda fails, although pre-WWW the sum of the decades of internet is probably a week/day by most metrics today.
makapuf 2y ago
archive.org mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240214000951/http://www.armory.com/tests/hacker.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240214000951/http://www.armory...
anthk 2y ago
I did that long ago as Debian had that since forever on his repos. OFC, Ubuntu and Trisquel might have it too. There are both purity and purity-off. Another fun stuff from (nearly) that era would be geekcode, asr-manpages and funny-manpages, as they span from early to mid-late 90's.
Karellen 2y ago
If you have the right package installed purity /usr/share/games/purity/hacker will do the same thing, but local-first. Also: dpkg -L purity or whatever equivalent lists package files on your system, will indicate the presence of other tests you can take. Also also, `purity-off`
raesene9 2y ago
The armory is a fun site, part of the Santa Cruz geek houses (http://www.geek.org/geekhouse.html http://www.geek.org/geekhouse.html). Most of the sites are gone now, but there's still a couple (like this one) still going!
- gattilorenz 2y ago
  Nice, I didn’t realise this was on the Armory. 10/15 years ago it was still relatively alive
Retr0id 2y ago
> Have you ever patched binary code? > ... While the program was running? One of my favourite activities.
- dfox 2y ago
  One thing is when you do that as an exploit, another thing is doing that intentionally in order to fix an obscure issue in production without down time and having to recompile the thing. At seven in the morning after a whole-night infrastructure upgrade… did that, twice.
jdblair 2y ago
hugged to death, its also here: https://github.com/nyxgeek/nyxgeek-readinglist/blob/master/hacker-purity-test.md https://github.com/nyxgeek/nyxgeek-readinglist/blob/master/h...
jimmaswell 2y ago
> 0x07B Do you have any defunct documentation? > 0x07C ... Do you still read it? I still like to flip through my cherished copy of Windows 98 For Dummies on occasion, the book given to me in 3rd grade that I read front to back and probably played a part in kickstarting me on computer literacy. That would have been 2003 for reference. I also just enjoy looking through similar old books when I can, like one I saw recently on VB6, or a "guide to the internet" from the late 90s.
klik99 2y ago
> 0x087 Ever had your activities mentioned in the newspaper? > 0x088 ... Did you get away with it?
Jun8 2y ago
(Among many others) I didn’t know what a lace card was so I had to look up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card. How would you even make one? And it had to be cleared with a “card knife”!
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  You use one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch
- dfox 2y ago
  You punch 80 columns worth of DEL. The card will jam the reader, but will get punched just fine.
- kens 2y ago
  Since I work with punch cards at the Computer History Museum, I can answer this. A standard IBM punch card has 80 columns and 12 rows, with each character represented by 1-3 punches in a column. A lace card has all the holes punched, so it's not punched with a normal card pattern. You can create a lace card, though, with a keypunch if you hold down the "multi punch" key. This lets you punch multiple times in a single card column, allowing you to punch patterns that don't have keys. So you could type &-0123456789 with multi-punch in each column to punch all 12 holes, which would be tedious but give you a lace card. (More efficient key combinations exist). A second alternative is punching the card via computer using the card reader/punch attached to the computer. Normally, this lets you punch characters on the card. But using the optional "punch column binary" instruction, you can punch an arbitrary 12-bit binary value in each column. So you can create a lace card this way, if it doesn't jam.
- vincent-manis 2y ago
  I remember that a lace card was a really good way of jamming an IBM 029 (or 026) card. You put the card in the feed hopper, and selected DUPlicate, it would almost always jam in the read station.
vunderba 2y ago
0x017 Have you ever wanted to download pizza? Surprisingly relevant when the makers of EverQuest added the /pizza command. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/just-the-right-kind-of-weird-how-the-secret-weapon-of-a-pizza-command-let-everquest-2-slice-into-wow-and-accidentally-end-up-topping-pizza-hut-on-google/ https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/just-the-right-kind-of-wei...
- shagie 2y ago
  A more modern implementation - https://github.com/nat-henderson/terraform-provider-dominos https://github.com/nat-henderson/terraform-provider-dominos
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    a less modern (1974) implementation: ordering a pizza via synthetic voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA&t=41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA&t=41s
kuroguro 2y ago
> your hacker experience level is: Computer Illiterate Well, apparently I can't use the computer ^^;
ocean_moist 2y ago
if i was born 30 years earlier i would have had much more. still got 72.9%
bithead 2y ago
I can remember when you had to have a credible account of a coding run to converse with people who were self-described 'hackers' - EMACS/TPU skills notwithstanding.
fragmede 2y ago
What a wonderful view into the past!
082349872349872 2y ago
> 0x00D Have you ever written a flight simulator? After 4, or maybe even 5, decades, BCPL finally* got a floating point datatype. Why? Because Martin Richards was writing a flight simulator for the Raspberry Pi. > 0x046 ... Is it out-of-date? Specifically, 1969: https://dosfanboy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/snoopy.gif?w=924 https://dosfanboy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/s... > 0x04D ... Emacs "Eight Megabytes and [therefore] Continuously Swapping" > 0x072 Have you ever received a case of beer with your computer? IIRC, this would've been a Cray > 0x09F Ever been asked for a cookie? This was an early fairly benign virus, not the cookie inquiries we're all thinking of. EDIT: * https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/bcplman.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/bcplman.pdf says floats were added during 2014, so 47 years later.
dim13 2y ago
Anybody remembers Geek Code? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code

110 points by oliverkwebb 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240517122419/http://www.armory.com/tests/hacker.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240517122419/http://www.armory...

osamagirl69 2y ago
Important to note that the 'score' button doesn't work on the archive.org version Then again any half decent hacker would know their score before clicking the button anyway ;-)

schoen 2y ago

When I first took this test (around 1994) I wanted to improve my score, so in 1995 I learned troff in order to get the last point in this sequence: 0x1D1 Can you solve the Towers of Hanoi recursively? 0x1D2 ... Non-recursively? 0x1D3 ... Using the Troff text formatter? I successfully managed to get the point: http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/troff-hanoi.txt http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/troff-hanoi.txt

globular-toast 2y ago
There is also a point for "have you tried to improve your hacker score?"

bandrami 2y ago

I knew that light pen would be useful some day

monocasa 2y ago

0xDD - I feel like that's pretty decent these days.

kstenerud 2y ago
Nerds of the era would have made a joke about that, but it would be inappropriate nowadays.

zaptrem 2y ago

Need an updated version for those of us who were born after nearly everything mentioned here was no longer manufactured/supported/commonly used!

can16358p 2y ago
Exactly. This might be the perfect test for ones born in 60s-mid 80s but anyone later born will have probably score much lower than their actual "hackerness" (is there such a word?) and the test would really not reflect the truth simply because the used tools and techniques and memes of the era. (But hey the test is from 1989 so it makes perfect sense)
- oliverkwebb 2y ago
  I see it more as a piece of history than any actual measurement of someones "hackerness". It's a fun way of peering into the realm of 80s hacker culture and seeing what was popular or cutting-edge at the time ("Have you ever programmed in the X windowing system?")
- ascorbic 2y ago
  Mid-80s is a bit late for a test from 1989. Most of these questions would need you to be in university or work. I'd say mid 40s to early 70s is more realistic. My uncle was born around '48 and was working at Cambridge Computer Lab in 1989, so I'm sure would have answered this.
  - anthk 2y ago
    Indeed Mid-80s would be either using Debian/Slackware, writting a device driver for Linux/BSD, tampering with Video4Linux, cracking TV cards by nearly decoding Nagra by hand, writting something akin to minimodem/tempest for Eliza, hacking a cable-modem to get free internet access, smashing the stack, doing anything close to what Fabrice Bellard did and so on.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Agreed. I was born in '81, and by the time I got my first computer (coincidentally, probably '89, when this test was compile), a ton of the questions on that list would have required you to have been in the industry for a couple decades already. I feel like even a hacker born in 1970 would have a trouble answering "yes" to many of those questions.

ainiriand 2y ago

I wrote a virus in 1998! Other than that I achieved a meager 15%, pity me.

gala8y 2y ago
Not bad, this gets rather steep!

xcdzvyn 2y ago

> 0x0D0 Do you use more than 16 megabytes of disk space? > 0x1B2 Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer? Aged like wine. Anyway, 0x83.

Woshiwuja 2y ago

Ever drop a card deck? Im gonna assume this is talking about my yugioh deck, checked.

mikewarot 2y ago

wow... I got 105 of 510... and a score of 79.4% This thing obviously needs an update. Who doesn't have a Terabyte of storage these days?

pfg_ 2y ago
It does ask about if you use, not have. So maybe some people have a terabyte but only use 600gb
- teekert 2y ago
  Have you ever argued the semantics of questions from this test with a stranger on the internet? Check.

PhilipRoman 2y ago

> ... Xedit (in VM/CMS)? Anyone know if this refers to the same xorg-xedit program which you can install for x11? I've used it but I have no idea what is either VM or CMS.

anon35 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEDIT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEDIT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system)

lepisma 2y ago

[flagged]

fragmede 2y ago
that's pretty good! humanity is doomed.
M95D 2y ago
They're too easy.

HaZeust 2y ago

83% pure -- but then again, it took me 12 years after this was published to become a human.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

praptak 2y ago

Being fifty I think I can say I grew up in this culture. Looking at this test made me realize I grew up to dislike it. (This, or I got grumpy with age) The chest banging coming from knowing obscure and useless details is kinda cringe. Yeah I know this test is tongue-in-cheek but I remember dudes who were really like that.

belZaah 2y ago
Might it because you do not remember the currency of the time was knowledge? In absence of Internet, people traded knowledge, their status depended on this, they got access to cool things because of it. And, as with any valuable, there’s bound to be hoarding.
- praptak 2y ago
  Maybe. I think I was in the camp of "I will share my knowledge whether you want it or not", always eager to tell people they are doing things in an uninformed way, like not using the right editor ;)
- asveikau 2y ago
  > their status depended on this But it's not inevitable that people chase status and lord it over others. Doing that is a choice. People can always choose to focus on something more healthy and productive.
  - wffurr 2y ago
    I think it is inevitable though when a bunch of hairless apes taught sand how to think.
- blueyes 2y ago
  what is the currency now?
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    Data

brna-2 2y ago

While I am largely out of sync with the timeframe of the topics in the test the personality-related questions made me giggle with joy several times.

Symbiote 2y ago

I like how some of the questions which used to be very "hacker" now apply to a large segment of the population. Have you ever used a computer for more than 8 hours continuously? Do you log in before breakfast? Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer? Do you talk to the person next to you via computer?

themoonisachees 2y ago
Also: Do you use more than 8Mb? I was actually surprised the test make thought to include terabytes at all

ozim 2y ago

People find this funny but then we get interviews having to check out random boxes.

bux93 2y ago

0x1AC Do you think garbage collection means memory management? Woah, this debate again..

BalinKing 2y ago
I had to think about what this question meant for a few seconds, because I forgot that "garbage collection" could ever mean anything other than memory management....
themoonisachees 2y ago
I read is as "you're such a hacker that hearing garbage collection makes you think of memory management instead of the much more normal public service"
vincent-manis 2y ago
One of my grad student colleagues once asked a faculty member whose specialty was discrete-event simulation what he knew about garbage collection. The prof was taken aback and said, “almost nothing”, until the student clarified that he was asking about simulating waste management pickup.

sgt 2y ago

You answered "yes" to 162 of 510 questions, making you 68.2% hacker pure; that is, you are 68.2% pure in the hacker domain (you have 31.8% hacker in you). According to the scoring guide, your hacker experience level is: User Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 17%, based on a comparison of your test results with 64695 other submissions for this test. The average purity for this test is 76.9%.

jmclnx 2y ago
Yes, I got a similar result. Most of the question I have forgotten about. But one curious thing, I am surprised they did not have questions like "Ever change and compile a kernel ?".
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  The test is from '89. Linux 0.01 was two years in the future.
  - dfox 2y ago
    Loadable device drivers are somewhat modern invention. On many systems adding a device driver involved recompiling (or at least relinking) the kernel.
    - sgt 2y ago
      Fast forward many years to 2024, and we're using things like System Extensions on a modern Unix (macOS). Drivers and low level code running in user space rather than in kernel space, but with the code being granted privilege that allows certain things previously done by kernel extensions. Interesting how times change!

spiritplumber 2y ago

Crazy how some of these still apply if you do hardware.

dfox 2y ago
My favorite case of solving a software problem in hardware involves precision kick with steel-toed boot, which caused part of the machine to bend slightly such that the timing/position errors in software would not cause a jam.

Terr_ 2y ago

In my memory, the era for this stuff was also when folks were taking questionnaires on their beliefs/preferences/circumstances which output an encoded string. This string would then be placed into an e-mail signature in lieu of an "About me" webpage somewhere.

praptak 2y ago
These were called Geek codes (it took me a while to recall the name!). I remember them being pretty popular during the Usenet era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

zzo38computer 2y ago

I have borrowed Art of Computer Programming from a interlibrary loan in the past (although I do not own a copy), and I have written a MIX simulator, and an assembler. It supports both decimal and binary. (I also have written programs in both MIX and in MMIX.) I had never used computers with cards, but I had made an option (it can be switched on and off) in an assembler so that you can easily find the first and last cards from the holes and the rest are allowed to be in any order, in order to solve a problem of getting them mixed up, many years after they have been no longer in common use. I have written self-modifying code in a few programming languages, including uxn (it is common to modify literal values but I have also sometimes used it to modify instructions, in an error handling routine), and PostScript, and in 6502 assembly language (with code running from RAM in NES/Famicom). I had also once written a self-modifying code in GWBASIC by opening a file and writing to it and then using CHAIN MERGE to load the modified code. (I had probably done some others as well but do not remember the details.) I am currently wearing a shirt with the circuit diagram of a "blue box". I had also programmed a computer to do the functions of blue box and red box (but had never used them to control any telephones), and also to generate a dial tone and many other tones relating to telephones. I do have a flowchart template from IBM. I also have a fortune file, which I maintain. I have also reverse-engineered and decompiled some parts of some of programs, and I have patched binary code too.

AeZ1E 2y ago

feeling like a hacker wizard with a 0x018 purity level after taking this funky test! who else out there is hacking their way to guru status? let's compare our results and geek out together!

cnity 2y ago
Thank you for validating the dead internet theory.
- AeZ1E 2y ago
  No problem. Can I further help you?
  - cnity 2y ago
    Yes! Can you please give me a recipe for anchovy soup?
    - AeZ1E 2y ago
      [dead]

M95D 2y ago

What was the most weird answer that you could check on that test? For me, it was "0x11A Have you ever toggled in boot code on the front panel?" When I still used PATA HDDs and BIOSes didn't have F11/F12 boot menu, I wired a front panel switch to Master/Slave HDD jumpers, so I could toggle boot drive without entering the BIOS setup. I guess that counts.

eythian 2y ago
It's a wee bit different. It wasn't my time, so someone correct me if my details are wrong, but this is using the rows of switches on the front panel of, say, an early IBM machine to actually put in the bootloader code in binary. I.e you could do something like set the address with one set of switches, set the opcode with another set, and press a button (or something) that would then write that opcode into that point in memory. Repeat until you've put the whole bootloader in. And, I imagine, hope you never have to go through that again.
- linux2647 2y ago
  Yes exactly this. For example on the PDP-11: https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/news_items/RRqw/large.jpg?v=63814500366 https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/news_items/RRqw/large.jpg?...
spogbiper 2y ago
sorry friend, no that does not count
ok123456 2y ago
They mean like toggling the switches on the front of a PDP/8 to make it do something other than be a paperweight.
- vincent-manis 2y ago
  There was a time when I could toggle the PDP-8 RIM bootstrap loader by heart (my programs had a nasty habit of destroying the memory-resident copy by accident).

aaron695 2y ago

Puffer train has a great Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffer_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffer_train 0x040 Can you build a puffer train? 0x041 ... Do you know what it is? Can you imagine Gen Z seeing the real circa 90's Purity Test and being told it was pretty average for pre-internet society? Here "internet" as shorthand for WWW kinda fails, although pre-WWW the sum of the decades of internet is probably a week/day by most metrics today.

makapuf 2y ago

archive.org mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240214000951/http://www.armory.com/tests/hacker.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240214000951/http://www.armory...

anthk 2y ago

I did that long ago as Debian had that since forever on his repos. OFC, Ubuntu and Trisquel might have it too. There are both purity and purity-off. Another fun stuff from (nearly) that era would be geekcode, asr-manpages and funny-manpages, as they span from early to mid-late 90's.

Karellen 2y ago

If you have the right package installed purity /usr/share/games/purity/hacker will do the same thing, but local-first. Also: dpkg -L purity or whatever equivalent lists package files on your system, will indicate the presence of other tests you can take. Also also, `purity-off`

raesene9 2y ago

The armory is a fun site, part of the Santa Cruz geek houses (http://www.geek.org/geekhouse.html http://www.geek.org/geekhouse.html). Most of the sites are gone now, but there's still a couple (like this one) still going!

gattilorenz 2y ago
Nice, I didn’t realise this was on the Armory. 10/15 years ago it was still relatively alive

Retr0id 2y ago

> Have you ever patched binary code? > ... While the program was running? One of my favourite activities.

dfox 2y ago
One thing is when you do that as an exploit, another thing is doing that intentionally in order to fix an obscure issue in production without down time and having to recompile the thing. At seven in the morning after a whole-night infrastructure upgrade… did that, twice.

jdblair 2y ago

hugged to death, its also here: https://github.com/nyxgeek/nyxgeek-readinglist/blob/master/hacker-purity-test.md https://github.com/nyxgeek/nyxgeek-readinglist/blob/master/h...

jimmaswell 2y ago

> 0x07B Do you have any defunct documentation? > 0x07C ... Do you still read it? I still like to flip through my cherished copy of Windows 98 For Dummies on occasion, the book given to me in 3rd grade that I read front to back and probably played a part in kickstarting me on computer literacy. That would have been 2003 for reference. I also just enjoy looking through similar old books when I can, like one I saw recently on VB6, or a "guide to the internet" from the late 90s.

klik99 2y ago

> 0x087 Ever had your activities mentioned in the newspaper? > 0x088 ... Did you get away with it?

Jun8 2y ago

(Among many others) I didn’t know what a lace card was so I had to look up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card. How would you even make one? And it had to be cleared with a “card knife”!

bunderbunder 2y ago
You use one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch
dfox 2y ago
You punch 80 columns worth of DEL. The card will jam the reader, but will get punched just fine.
kens 2y ago
Since I work with punch cards at the Computer History Museum, I can answer this. A standard IBM punch card has 80 columns and 12 rows, with each character represented by 1-3 punches in a column. A lace card has all the holes punched, so it's not punched with a normal card pattern. You can create a lace card, though, with a keypunch if you hold down the "multi punch" key. This lets you punch multiple times in a single card column, allowing you to punch patterns that don't have keys. So you could type &-0123456789 with multi-punch in each column to punch all 12 holes, which would be tedious but give you a lace card. (More efficient key combinations exist). A second alternative is punching the card via computer using the card reader/punch attached to the computer. Normally, this lets you punch characters on the card. But using the optional "punch column binary" instruction, you can punch an arbitrary 12-bit binary value in each column. So you can create a lace card this way, if it doesn't jam.
vincent-manis 2y ago
I remember that a lace card was a really good way of jamming an IBM 029 (or 026) card. You put the card in the feed hopper, and selected DUPlicate, it would almost always jam in the read station.

vunderba 2y ago

0x017 Have you ever wanted to download pizza? Surprisingly relevant when the makers of EverQuest added the /pizza command. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/just-the-right-kind-of-weird-how-the-secret-weapon-of-a-pizza-command-let-everquest-2-slice-into-wow-and-accidentally-end-up-topping-pizza-hut-on-google/ https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/just-the-right-kind-of-wei...

shagie 2y ago
A more modern implementation - https://github.com/nat-henderson/terraform-provider-dominos https://github.com/nat-henderson/terraform-provider-dominos
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  a less modern (1974) implementation: ordering a pizza via synthetic voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA&t=41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA&t=41s

kuroguro 2y ago

> your hacker experience level is: Computer Illiterate Well, apparently I can't use the computer ^^;

ocean_moist 2y ago

if i was born 30 years earlier i would have had much more. still got 72.9%

bithead 2y ago

I can remember when you had to have a credible account of a coding run to converse with people who were self-described 'hackers' - EMACS/TPU skills notwithstanding.

fragmede 2y ago

What a wonderful view into the past!

082349872349872 2y ago

> 0x00D Have you ever written a flight simulator? After 4, or maybe even 5, decades, BCPL finally* got a floating point datatype. Why? Because Martin Richards was writing a flight simulator for the Raspberry Pi. > 0x046 ... Is it out-of-date? Specifically, 1969: https://dosfanboy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/snoopy.gif?w=924 https://dosfanboy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/s... > 0x04D ... Emacs "Eight Megabytes and [therefore] Continuously Swapping" > 0x072 Have you ever received a case of beer with your computer? IIRC, this would've been a Cray > 0x09F Ever been asked for a cookie? This was an early fairly benign virus, not the cookie inquiries we're all thinking of. EDIT: * https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/bcplman.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/bcplman.pdf says floats were added during 2014, so 47 years later.

dim13 2y ago

Anybody remembers Geek Code? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code