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And here is the author himself confirming that in the Wikipedia talk page for TIFF! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TIFF/Archive_1#h-Source_for_the_42_thing?

• Tempat1 1y ago
  Great find! And oh no, it’s complete with the customary blissfully unaware user replying to say he’s wrong!
• rzzzt 1y ago
  Are talk pages accepted as a source for the same article?
  • speedgoose 1y ago
    Talk pages aren’t valid sources in general. In this case the author is dead and an established expert having published in the field, so I guess it’s fine, but I wouldn’t bet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_(online_and_paper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-p...
• darkwater 1y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20 and I loved TFA and I don't want to ruin it but... that comment was there from 2007 and the Wikipedia user bio was pretty clear since the beginning (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scarlsen&oldid=160291977 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scarlsen&old...)
  • svat 1y ago
    Yes but it's not easy to find random Wikipedia user pages, or even find the specific talk page comment in the archives without knowing what to look for. Go ahead, find a friend, give them no clues, and see if they find it.
    • darkwater 1y ago
      Yes but the author was specifically investing over this, had a clue on a similar name and even edited the same page himself.
      • svat 1y ago
        I don't know what “investing over” means, but all I can say is (repeating myself): try it with a friend, without giving them the benefit of hindsight. (Very few visitors to a Wikipedia page read its talk page, very few of them will further look at the archives of the talk page, let alone read every single comment and its corresponding commenter's name, and in this case as soon as the author knew the spelling to look for, the rest was straightforward for them.)
        • hellojohnbuck 1y ago
          well said svat. without laboring the point, "once you know - you know". until then it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack - and some people do not want to be found.
        • darkwater 1y ago
          I mean that the author was literally writing a book about this and literally conducting an investigation about who was the real author of the TIFF spec. He interviewed other people about it, he had a name that had a typo in it, he even found a white-on-white line in a PDF with the real name. He was clearly putting effort into the research. We are humans, everybody can miss things, I mentioned "hindsight is 20/20" but still, it was in the Wikipedia discussion page for the TIFF article all the time. It's a matter of fact and some random HNer found it in minutes/hours. I repeat myself, it was probably better that he didn't found that out and went to write a hand-written letter to the alleged author's home address, it created a much deeper human bond, which is especially meaningful since Stephen Carlsen passed away not much later.
          • hellojohnbuck 1y ago
            thanks darkwater
• bambax 1y ago
  (Also: 42 is the answer to everything because it's the ascii code for *).
  • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Was that a happy coincidence or intentional?
    • clan 1y ago
      Perfectly pure happiness: "The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story." from the man himself[1] ...but let us not ruin a good story with the truth. Remember why earth was built. The "real" answer might then be flowing in the ether. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#The_Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything_is_42 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27...
    • bambax 1y ago
      I think it was intentional but I don't have a source. Edit: from the other comment, it appears it was in fact random...
  • abdusco 1y ago
    > the ASCII code for h Umm. The ASCII code for h is 102 ;)
    • bambax 1y ago
      I don't know why or how you're seeing an h? I'm talking about the asterisk.
      • 0manrho 1y ago
        I could be wrong but the winky face leads me to believe theyre referencing the hunter2 password meme
• jakub_g 1y ago
  And interestingly, the person he replies to is taviso [0][1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taviso https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taviso [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Ormandy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Ormandy