2.1M views · Apr 10, 2022 · 36:47 · 12 HN recommenders · 20 mentions · discussed 2022–2025
Tom7 (suckerpinch) builds and evaluates a series of absurd hard drives, including storage made from ping packets across the internet. The video accompanies his paper and mixes deep technical hacking with comedic storytelling.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN treats it as a favorite example of silly but educational computer science, recommended often when threads touch odd storage hacks.
“recommend this video to anyone here.”HN comment, 2025
“His Harder Drive paper was amazing”
Amazing absurd data storage project with a memorable ending.
His Harder Drive paper was amazing [ this video ], most especially the ending that considered a surprisingly common configuration of utterly useless, inefficient mass data storage that solves a problem nobody actually has.
“his style is amazing”
Block storage built from ping packets, with great storytelling.
Suckerpunch did a video on “harder drives” where he implemented a block storage device by storing data in ping packets. It’s one of my all time favourite technical talks - his style is amazing, and he’s an incredible story teller. this video
“everything on his channel is gold”
As the other commenter said, everything on his channel is gold. Just the other day I was rewatching "Automated 3dfication of Nintendo games" link and "Harder Drives" this video
“one of my favorite Tom7 videos”
A favorite Tom7 video; worth strapping in for.
This idea is covered during the first part of one of my favorite Tom7 videos. If this comment is the first you are hearing of Tom7... strap in and enjoy: this video
“recommend this video to anyone here.”
Silly computer science that teaches a lot.
> harder drive Here's the direct YouTube link[0] I'd * HIGHLY* recommend this video to anyone here. It is exactly that fun silly computer science stuff where you also learn a shit ton. His channel is full of this stuff. Don't ask why, ask why not Is essentially the motto of his channel, and it is the best. Leads to lots of innovations and I think we all should encourage more of this kind of stuff. [0] this video
“I found these esoteric storage methods greatly entertaining as well”
Entertaining esoteric storage methods.
Maybe it doesn't have a post of its own, but I found these esoteric storage methods greatly entertaining as well: this video
“Reminds me of Harder Drive by Tom 7”
Best watched unspoiled; a fun hard-drive hack.
I love this! Reminds me of Harder Drive by Tom 7: this video It's better to go in unspoiled so I won't reveal any details.
“The whole thing is great, but the part relevant to the parent comment starts at 2:31.”
Whole video is great; a relevant part starts at 2:31.
See also Tom7's "Harder Drive" video. The whole thing is great, but the part relevant to the parent comment starts at 2:31. this video
Listed among the commenter's favorite videos.
Mine are "Harder Drives"[1], "ELO World"[2], and "Printable x86"[3] [1] this video [2] link [3] link
“though I recommend the whole thing.”
Visualizes the pinged IPv4 space as a Hilbert curve.
They're also useful for representing IPv4 space. Tom7 had a nice video where he does this after pinging the whole (IPv4) internet [0] [0] this video at about 6 minutes, though I recommend the whole thing.
“fantastic associated YouTube video that talks through these too”
Walks through the paper's ideas; commenter found it fascinating.
There's a fantastic associated YouTube video that talks through these too: this video It's a rabbit hole that had be fascinated for quite a while.
“the rest of the video is wildly good”
Maps IP addresses on a Hilbert curve; rest of video is great.
That's a really nice view! Made me think of this map of IP addresses arranged as a Hilbert curve i saw in this Tom7 video: (the rest of the video is wildly good if you haven't seen it) this video
“A lot of the idea feels similar to the recent Tom7 Harder Drive video”
Similar IP charting and exploration in Tom7's video.
This article is wonderful, I love the working knowledge. A lot of the idea feels similar to the recent Tom7 Harder Drive video: this video I had never seen some of this IP charting and stuff and in his video he does a lot of similar stuff.
“stupidly complex/convoluted storage systems”
Funny, I actually tried finding tricks exploiting the cache from Vercel, but it didn't work. Initially I thought I could find a way to use it to share data across users, but nothing worked. Do you have any links to resources that could help getting a datastore from the Vercel cache? I will try adding things you mentioned, and I'd love to find way to also have stupidly complex/convoluted storage systems, inspired by tom7's harder drives: this video
“where the author used ICMP echo requests to store data”
This is my favorite kind of small fun projects, reminds me of the video about harder drives [1], where the author used ICMP echo requests to store data [1] this video
“a rather silly implementation of a unix block device using ping latency”
Hilbert curves (or similar) are often used for graphing billions of nodes[1]. However this will not by default show the relationships between nodes in a graph. Depending on your data you may be able to write a function to map from your edge list to a node index that hints at proximity. Note that visualizations are limited by human perception to ~10000 elements, more usefully 1000 elements. You might try a force directed graph, perhaps a hierarchical variant wherein nodes can contain sub-graphs. Unless you have obvious root nodes, this variant would be interesting in that the user could start from an arbitrary set of nodes, giving different insights depending on their starting point. 1 - An excerpt from "Harder Drive", a rather silly implementation of a unix block device using ping latency with any host that will let him. He visualizes the full ipv4 address space in a hilbert curve at this offset: this video
“Another great Harder Drive to add to the list”
Another great Harder Drive to add to the list: this video Tom7 made a similar one in Tetris as part of the above video
“does remind me of this fun video”
I wonder if registrars provide lists of bought domain names vs. trying to map IPV4 which has multiple domains pointing to same ip would be interesting to do mapping yourself though probably pointless with how much effort/time it would take does remind me of this fun video this video
“Tom 7 did something reminiscent of this”
Definitely one of the harder drives feasible! Tom 7 did something reminiscent of this if you hadn't seen already: this video .
“Maybe suckerpinch can work it into a sequel to Harder Drive”
You can turn Anubis into Proof of Storage by appending large amounts of random data to the session cookie and then hashing it on each request. Combined with per-session-cookie limits, you can effectively force the LLM bots to store all the data you want if they want to scrape your site. Maybe suckerpinch can work it into a sequel to Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [0]. [0] this video
