Where to download a 1px GIF or "hack" the source code of Paul Graham's homepage
Today on HN, I started a discussion about handmade webpages, and one of the examples was Paul Graham's website (https://www.paulgraham.com).
I decided to take a closer look and found several interesting artefacts.
0. Security. Instead of creating his own transparent 1x1 pixel gif for spacing (which is not the easiest task in 2025), Paul's website uses an IMG link from virtumundo.com (http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif). So, if the owner of the virtumundo server receives a lot of requests, it's because of Paul Graham's homepage. It's also possible that Virtumundo might monitor the activity of Paul's visitors and their IP addresses through IMG requests log.
1. Declaration. The HTML version is not declared correctly, as the `<html>` tag is related to HTML5, but the website uses a more or less HTML 4.01 version.
2. Comments. There are a lot of interesting comments, such as "Follow me at @paulg@mas.to" and "Paul Graham, like nobody else, tells us what it means to be a hacker.- Matthias Felleisen."
3. Syntax. The HTML has poor syntax, and many tags have incorrect syntax according to the HTML specification. (Ex. bgcolor=#ff9922, or <br> tag use inside of <font>.
4. Sitemap. The sitemap (/sitemap.xml) mentioned in robots.txt is not available and, instead, displays a Yahoo page.
5. Potential improvements. leftmargin="0" and topmargin="0" in the <BODY> tag can provide a more consistent representation of the menu.
Overall, the HTML code on the page is quite messy, I but understand how difficult it can be to find an expert in HTML 4.01 these days.
Paul, if you read this, please don't hesitate to get in touch if you need assistance with fixing the issues.
I was about to say that virtumundo looks like a pre-2010 website... then saw the copyright date. 15 years without updates, that 1px gif is solid as a fossil.
If it works (and has worked for decades) why fix it?
Because the person who operates Virtumundo.com could, at any time, replace this spacer.gif with anything.
these are all non issues
This is slightly incorrect. The person who controls virtumundo.com can see the IP addresses and user agents of all Paul's website visitors. This is huge privacy issue.