7 ms·
Conway's Game of Life digital clock
- tdba 3y agoIncredible! Is the random looking stuff at the top an oscillator for timing seconds?
- staunton 3y agoWhy is this incredible? (Do you know "life in life"?) Is it the way the website is built?
- happytoexplain 3y agoThat's nothing, have you seen CERN's LHC?
- staunton 3y ago"Life in Life" is actually Conway's game of life... Directly comparable to this, arguably a lot cooler and not a new thing at all. "Incredible" should mean, at least to some extent, you didn't think the thing existed or was possible. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Is it "never ask anyone why they find something incredible"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 3y ago"Incredible" is commonly used synonymously with "amazing". Even though this isn't literally unbelievable (the primary meaning of "incredible"), it certainly is amazing.
- happytoexplain 3y agoIt's also relevant to note that "amazing to the point of not being believable" is only the primary literal definition, while you would have a legitimately hard time finding even a single colloquial use of the word that includes the "not being believable" part. A similar case is "awful", which nobody uses to mean "full of awe".
- calibas 3y agoLooks like it, it sends out a "glider" once every second.
- danbruc 3y agoIt is more than that, it is essentially the entire clock containing the primary oscillator and dividers respectively counters. Watch closely, when several digits change at once, then it emits multiple pulses. Also note that the pulses are emitted from different places, there are essentially three counters, 0 to 12, 0 to 5, and 0 to 9. The three structures above the display are essentially just seven segment decoders, you can see the digit patterns encoded in them similar to mask ROM. There is one column for each digit and two rows for each segment, one to turn the segment on and one to turn it off. If you zoom in on the right of a decoder, the rows are actually labeled with [S]et and [R]eset and a letter A-G for the segment controlled by that row.
- yoru-sulfur 3y agoLooks like this is from here: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/88783/build-a-digital-clock-in-conways-game-of-life/111932#111932 https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/88783/build-a-d...
- atleastoptimal 3y agoZoom sensitivity set 10000x too high by default
- mindwork 3y agoI'm constantly blown away by the fact that such a simple rules can lead to complex systems such as this. Changed my perspective on a lot of things after that
- jeremy_wiebe 3y agoI read Code by Charles Petzold earlier this year and I feel like I had a similar realization. A simple switch can lead to such complex systems.
- JohnFen 3y agoRight. A transistor (as used in most digital logic, anyway) is just a switch, and is what our most complex computers are made of.
- dclowd9901 3y agoDo we have an understanding yet of the minimum number of unique rules a system must have in order to be able to be Turing complete?
- davidrupp 3y agoNot sure how this translates to "rules" in a cellular automaton, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer
- dclowd9901 3y agoThis is exactly what I was asking about. Thank you!
- riffraff 3y agoThere's also a few "one instruction" CPUs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer
- clnq 3y agoBy the way, Conway’s GoL has been proven Turing Complete. With inputs and outputs, one could conceptually write and run any software in it. Interesting CPU designs exist for GoL.
- nikeee 3y agoOf course, someone did game of life in game of life: https://youtu.be/xP5-iIeKXE8 https://youtu.be/xP5-iIeKXE8
- epidemian 3y agoIt's more impressive to have it running on your browser, with infinite levels of nesting, both "in" and "out": https://oimo.io/works/life/ https://oimo.io/works/life/
- Camisa 3y agoDamn that's a clever implementation!
- air7 3y agoThis site is extraordinary...
- ajjenkins 3y agoSomeone shared this yesterday and I didn’t get what what’s interesting about it. It just looked like a normal GoL simulator. I didn’t realize you could zoom in and out. This is so cool. Thanks for sharing.
- zokier 3y ago> With inputs and outputs, one could conceptually write and run any software in it. IO is major caveat though. And there is also real-time to consider. I've been long wondering if we should define more interesting computer models in addition to Turing machines. Games make interesting milestones as an example; you could define a system to be e.g. "Tetris-complete" if you could run a playable version of tetris on it, or more advanced would be "Doom-complete" and simpler could be "Chess-complete" or "Zork-complete". Each model would imply something about not just pure computation, but the practical capabilities in terms of inputs and outputs and also something about performance. Of course it doesn't need to be games, you could use anything as a basis for a model.
- zzzeek 3y agoit's all the universe is really, a blip in someone's toy digital clock screen in some other dimension
- kid64 3y agoI noticed the title is "Conway life clock PM only" -- does this mean AM isn't implemented?
- tyingq 3y agoIt means it only has a PM indicator...the square box to the left of the "PM" would be an outline instead of filled when it's "AM". Similar to many old LED clocks that just had a single LED to indicate PM. The stackexchange post has a link to a different implementation that has separate AM/PM indicators instead: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/88783/build-a-digital-clock-in-conways-game-of-life/111932#111932 https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/88783/build-a-d... Direct link to a runnable version with AM/PM: https://copy.sh/life/?gist=9d7468755dd76a35d93beeb5c0a5bdcf&step=512 https://copy.sh/life/?gist=9d7468755dd76a35d93beeb5c0a5bdcf&...
- kid64 3y agoAh, understood, thank you. So impressive!
- akkartik 3y agoSource code: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f3413564b1fa9c69f2bad4b0400b8090 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f3413564b1fa9c69f2bad4b040... Source code for the platform: https://github.com/copy/life https://github.com/copy/life
- vitoralmeidasil 3y agoThis is true hacker news! Amazing.
- est 3y agoI wonder why the : symbol between minute and second was so stable?
- richardjam73 3y agoThe dots are acutllay made up of little squares of 4 cells each. Each cell has 3 neighbours so will never die or give life and thus becomes stable. You need to zoom in to see it.
- taeric 3y agoPermutation City never felt more relevant.
- DesiLurker 3y agoWondering if DNA & protein folding can by synthesized by conways GoL.
- block_dagger 3y agoWonder no more: it can! It is Turing complete.
- pugworthy 3y agoWhen I look at this, it's hard to grasp just how it's possible. But then I imagine I'm looking at electrons, atoms, small atomic particles. And I think, "These are kind of cool - some pretty simple concepts and they can do stuff!" Then someone shows me a simple 555 timer that blinks an LED every second that's all built from electrons and atoms. And I "get" how it works, but I'm still blown away how amazing it all is.
- layer8 3y agoNow contemplate that your brain that is being blown away is also just electrons and atoms.
- shaftoe444 3y agoWill be staring at this all day.
- silverfrost 3y agoWitchcraft
- Aardwolf 3y agoA right click alters a cell, it's really cool to watch the destruction that altering 1 cell can cause. The only issue is it becomes super slow due to all the irregularities requiring way more computation.
- arrow7000 3y agoVacuum decay
- eigenvalue 3y agoYes, and it suggests how even a minor stroke in the brain that damages only a small region of brain tissue could potentially have personality and life altering effects.
- bumbledraven 3y agoWould love to have a physical version of this as a wall clock, provided it could al fit on a flat display that wasn't too large. Any suggestions on the display?