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Endless Horse
- dang 4y agoRelated: Endless Horse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558687 - May 2015 (15 comments)
- sam_goody 4y agoA horse, you see, has an infinite number of legs. It has two hind legs, aside from its fourlegs. Which means it has six legs. Now six is an even number, so it must have an even number of legs. But six is an odd number of legs for a horse to have, so it has an odd number of legs. The only number that is both odd an even is infinity. Since a horse has both an odd an even number of legs, it must have infinite legs. But there is one horse, that not only has an infinite number of legs, it has legs that are infinitely long. And here it is!
- ffhhj 4y agoWhat is also infinite to scroll and is expelled by horses?
- throwaway1777 4y agoMy brain hurts
- sigmonsays 4y agowell if there is two horses...
- ARandomerDude 4y agoPerhaps a large, wooden badger.
- sandworm101 4y agoZero is both odd and even. Horses do not have legs.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAnd the infinite-legged horse said, “I can’t stand sitting, so I need a hand standing.”
- layer8 4y ago> The only number that is both odd an even is infinity. That doesn’t seem correct: https://math.stackexchange.com/a/49046/429295 https://math.stackexchange.com/a/49046/429295
- marzell 4y agoinfinity is not a number.
- layer8 4y agoIt is a transfinite ordinal number, and the linked text explains how "even" and "odd" are defined for those.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago"Infinity is a transfinite ordinal number" is a lot more definitive of a claim than you can justify making. There are different systems and they use different infinite quantities. Nonstandard analysis doesn't bother with ordinal numbers, but it has plenty of infinite numbers. "Infinity" without further specification seems more likely to refer to the concept in the extended reals (where there are exactly two infinite numbers) than to refer to the concept of infinite ordinal numbers. The obvious analysis would appear to be that, not being an integer, it cannot be considered either even or odd, but there might be a convention I don't know about.
- layer8 4y agoSince most reals are not either even and odd, I don’t know why you find the extended reals the more likely interpretation of “infinity” in the context of that question. In any case, the GGP objected to infinity being a number, but however you slice it, it is either an ordinal or cardinal number. And the GGGGP claimed that infinity is both even and odd, but however you slice it, it is at most one of those. I found it being either even or odd, as in the ordinals, more interesting, that’s why I gave that link.
- ketanmaheshwari 4y agoWhat does this mean? Could someone please clarify what this prose / poem means or what is the author's intention? Going completely over my head.
- realworldperson 4y ago[dead]
- michaelnoguera 4y agoThe author has devised a logical argument based off drawing equivalences between similar sounding words ("forelegs" vs "four legs"). The absurdity of the conclusion that a horse has infinite legs and the novelty of the invalid leaps in reasoning makes the story humorous.
- jdkee 4y agoA mare has four (4) legs. But no mare, meaning there is not any mare such that it has five (5) legs. Thus the cardinality of "no mare" > the cardinality of "mare".
- akiselev 4y agoIt's a series of misspellings, puns, and tortured logic. > It has two hind legs, aside from its fourlegs. Hind legs are the opposite of forelegs so the statement is true but misspelled, and [---tortured logic here---] two hind legs plus "four" forelegs totals to six legs. > Which means it has six legs... Now six is an even number, so it must have an even number of legs... But six is an odd number of legs for a horse to have, so it has an odd number of legs. Six is an even number but it's "odd" - as in strange - for a horse to have six legs so horses [---tortured logic here---] must also have an odd - as in mathematical - number of legs. > The only number that is both odd an even is infinity. Since a horse has both an odd an even number of legs, it must have infinite legs. Infinity is a complicated "number" with different interpretations and [---tortured pure math here---] if you stretch some of them to the breaking point, the only horse that can have both an "even" and an "odd" number of legs is one that "must have infinite legs" > But there is one horse, that not only has an infinite number of legs, it has legs that are infinitely long. This plays on the ambiguity of "infinite legs" which could mean an "infinite number of legs" or "infinitely long legs". All in all, thumbs up. Cost me some cherry switches thanks to projectile tea.
- michaelnoguera 4y agoCries logical Bobby to Ned, will you dare A bet, which has most legs, a mare, or no mare. A mare, to be sure, replied Ned, with a grin, And fifty I’ll lay, for I’m certain to win. Quoth Bob, you have lost, sure as you are alive, A mare has but four legs, and no mare has five. - from A Panorama of Wit, 1809, p. 53
- hooli_gan 4y agoCare to explain? I don't get it
- xypage 4y agoThey bet on whether a horse or no horse has more legs, guy says a horse duh, other guy says haha but a horse has 4 legs and no horse has 5. This means horses don't have 5 legs so no horse has 5, but also taken very literally "no horse has 5" means no horse has more than a horse, 5 vs 4, so they win the bet.
- rubyist5eva 4y ago> But there is one horse, that not only has an infinite number of legs, it has legs that are infinitely long. You had me until this one. Even the tortured logic made sense to me until this point and it feels like this was just shoehorned in to make it work..unless I'm missing something?
- pjot 4y agoThis would be a great example for the definition of “truthy[0]” a truthy value is a value that is considered true when encountered in a Boolean context. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Truthy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Truthy
- kmoser 4y agoI've been through the network on a horse with no end It felt good to scroll down again On the Internet you can remember your name 'Cause there ain't no one horse to give you no pain
- SanjayMehta 4y agoThere's a version which proves Alexander had an infinite number of arms. Alexander was a great general. Great generals are forewarned. Forewarned is fore armed. But four is an odd number for a general to have. ...
- xg15 4y ago> The only number that is both odd an even is infinity. Couldn't the horse have zero legs too?
- echelon 4y agoHorse domains are the best. traceroute bad.horse ofcourse.horse There used to be walmart.horse. I'm very vested in this TLD. I originally launched FakeYou.com on jungle.horse, and I have a few more in my back pocket saved up for future occasions.
- drivers99 4y agoI love Dr. Horrible! It helps to increase the maximum number of hops (like with "tracert -h 50 bad.horse" on windows or "traceroute -m 50 bad.horse" on linux, etc.) to get the full output :)
- paxys 4y agoWhy on earth is .horse a TLD?
- trynewideas 4y agohttps://icannwiki.org/.horse https://icannwiki.org/.horse: "The purpose of the .horse gTLD is to offer horse owners, service providers, horse industry employees, and volunteers the opportunity to clearly define their presence on the Internet and to help potential customers gain access to content about horses. ... We specifically examined more restrictive registration policies, such as limiting registration to members of organizations with a specific tie to horses. We rejected such limitations because they would interfere with .horse’s primary mission, purpose, and goals--which is to encourage as many registrants as possible to associate themselves with horses for any legal purpose." Who did this? "MMX, also known as Minds + Machines, applied for the gTLD on behalf of the company and its subsidiary. ... Minds + Machines Group Limited (MMX) (formerly Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. (TLDH)) is the parent company of Minds + Machines. The company is dedicated to acquiring and operating new gTLDs, as well as providing consultancy services and back-end registry solutions for entities interested in operating new gTLDs. The company is publicly traded on the AIM under the ticker symbol TLDH.L. Its market cap is valued at over $60 million USD." Also: "The application for the .horse TLD is supported by the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government, Keeneland Pony Club, Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, The Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce, Inc., Kentucky Equine Humane Center, and the Inforatag Racing Stable LLC."
- layer8 4y agoThere’s also .cat, .fish, and .dog, so why not.
- notatoad 4y agobecause somebody thought that spending ~$250k on it would be a good investment?
- ugh123 4y agoFrom view source: <!-- endless.horse Colleen Josephson and Kyle Miller, 2015 Created during the West Coast Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon -->
- twifkak 4y agoIndeed, it lives up to its name: https://stupidhackathon.com/ https://stupidhackathon.com/
- kmill 4y agoCo-creator here; but endless.horse was entirely Colleen's idea. It's wonderful seeing this pop up occasionally. As boing boing once said, it's not called endless for nothing. We personally use https://secure.endless.horse/ https://secure.endless.horse/ as a quick check our internet connections, especially when there's a captive portal.
- kmill 4y agoA surprising recent bit of news is that we learned that there's a phishing website out there somewhere that mysteriously redirects to endless.horse. We tried adding endless.horse to a database of non-phishing urls (after all, it's merely an ASCII art horse with abnormally long legs), but the one we were pointed to by the security researchers hasn't allowed new accounts for the last two years. It's a strange being implicated in this indirect way -- Does endless.horse condone phishing? The horse says "neigh."
- AkshatJ27 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_many_legs_does_a_horse_have%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_many_legs_does_a...
- password1 4y agoI wasn't aware .horse was a TLD.
- wintorez 4y agoI don't know what I was expecting...
- ComplexSystems 4y agoI wish there were some kind of Easter egg a few minutes in. Perhaps a rogue "neigh" or something
- khazhoux 4y agoThere are several easter eggs if you keep scrolling.
- michaelnoguera 4y agoI don't see any sign of this in the page source. What sort of easter eggs have you found?
- TrueGeek 4y agoit’s there, just keep scrolling...
- larsbrinkhoff 4y ago[dead]
- midhunsezhi 4y agoWOW!! Glad I didn't give up after 5 minutes of scrolling. Thank you!
- kmill 4y agoYou should see the speedrunning videos on YouTube!
- btheshoe 4y agoI saw them, takes a while though. Just keep scrolling
- bartimus 4y agoIt's why the legs are loaded server-side.
- layer8 4y agoThere’s also https://endless.dog/ https://endless.dog/.
- envp 4y agoThat’s an average dachshund
- MichaelZuo 4y agoIt would have been more convincing as a long horse.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Taywee 4y agoSlightly inefficient, because it repeatedly loads http://endless.horse/legs.html http://endless.horse/legs.html . Would be better to keep it inline and just clone it and insert it endlessly.
- TravisLS 4y agoYou say inefficient. I say mysterious. Who's to say the server always returns the same thing? The only way to find out is to scroll infinitely as the domain name suggests. Beware, your scrolling may have been finite.
- robin_reala 4y agoIt’ll be cached after the first load anyway.
- steele 4y agoThanks, my kid got a kick out of scrolling this
- brap 4y agoMissed opportunity, should have been a Dali elephant
- djha-skin 4y agoReminds me of traceroute bad.horse
- paranoidrobot 4y agoFor those unaware - it's showing the lyrics to a song from Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog - a web-miniseries from Joss Whedon.
- b5n 4y agohttp://endless.horse/legs.html http://endless.horse/legs.html
- yawnxyz 4y agoFor those new to the .horse tld, frontend.horse is a great frontend dev blog
- reustle 4y agoClickable https://frontend.horse https://frontend.horse
- smcl 4y agoSome of these newer TLDs are really fun. There was a submission the other day for https://dogapi.dog https://dogapi.dog and something about the words "dog api dot dog" had me smiling all day, thinking of different dot-dog domains. Oh god I realised I need to buy mylastname.dog and make an email address for Alfie, my Vizsla, brb :) edit: woof! at ~80 EUR/year, the joke is maybe not worth it
- who2 4y agojQuery rules!
- mesutissimo 4y ago1 - open dev console at bottom 2 - refresh page 3 - close dev console the end :)
- graylien 4y agoinfinite scroll!
- kmill 4y agoWe also support HTTPS over at https://secure.endless.horse/ https://secure.endless.horse/
- rolenthedeep 4y agoThis horse does not render infinitely :(
- kmill 4y agoAh, thanks for the report -- it seems not to work on mobile Chrome. One of our Equestrians will take care of it on the next sprint.