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Show HN: Monkeys.zip – 3000 Monkeys on Typewriters

145 points by yathern 2y ago

Hey HN! I posted this on April 1st when it launched, and though it didn't get traction here, it was a minor hit on reddit! Now that we've got a few thousand monkeys under our belt, wanted to give it another shot here! Happy to talk about the technical details of running the site - using supabase/postgres and constantly putting out fires from the traffic.

cdaringe 2y ago
Looks interesting, but after two (<30s) attempts I gave up trying to figure out what it even is . There’s no about page, there’s some stats that I don’t know the significance of, there’s a blog that talks about improvements… But there’s just no straightforward description of what the heck I’m even looking at besides some fun monkey animations.
- yathern 2y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I kinda take it for granted that people are aware of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, but maybe it's not as popular as I imagined! This is basically an art/community experiment project built around it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Grandparent commenter is one of today's lucky 10000 https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- MitziMoto 2y ago
  For goodness sake, this is what makes it great! This reminds me so much of the "old" internet where people would just make fun things for the hell of it.
netsharc 2y ago
Funny that one can login and claim a monkey, and customize its working environment. In an alternate universe where a version of you wants to make a buck, they'd sell "monkeycoins" that users can earn to get customizations for their monkey (like the fancy couch or a Macbook). Did I say earn? I mean buy...
- blatantly 2y ago
  And then someone would pay their drug supplier 60M for a monkey NFT
- E_Bfx 2y ago
  That was my first thought : "Oh NFT is still a thing in 2025". But no, it is really awesome.
- yathern 2y ago
  Glad you like it! I was considering taking some form of payment for some cosmetics, but it just felt out of character for me.
krzat 2y ago
Awesome idea, I wonder how long it will take to write a coherent sentence.
BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
Many of these look like apes, not monkeys.
- yathern 2y ago
  I won't tell if you won't.
mechagodzilla 2y ago
Ha! When I was first learning to program in high school, I wrote a 'distributed monkeys-on-typewriters' simulator. I somehow acquired a stack of surplus Pentium 100s that I had running in an unused closet at the school, communicating with each other over IPX. I remember the server had a fun 'Guess-operations-per-second' (GOPS) realtime display.
chewmieser 2y ago
That’s fun! Couple of things I would suggest: Maybe get rid of 1-2 character words in the word counter? Seems easy for it to hit things like i or ie etc. I would love to see a counter that ignores those at least Also the report card section on the Shakespeare progress panel wasn’t scrollable on iOS. Neat either way!
- yathern 2y ago
  > Maybe get rid of 1-2 character words in the word counter? Seems easy for it to hit things like i or ie etc. I would love to see a counter that ignores those at least I'm considering that as well, if only to calm my database down a bit > Also the report card section on the Shakespeare progress panel wasn’t scrollable on iOS. Second time I've heard that! I have no iOS devices so I can't fix it too easily, but I'll take another look.
vekatimest 2y ago
Is the plan to monetize this with paid 'gear' upgrades & 'claiming'? Feels a lot like an NFT project from 3 years ago.
- yathern 2y ago
  Haha I don't think anyone would pay money for a monkey hat, and it would take away from the fun if they did
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    Some people would. But that doesn’t mean we should exploit them. I really admire what you’ve made and I think any attempt to cash in would sour and diminish your accomplishment. Not that art shouldn’t be salable. But not all art is appropriate for monetization.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
yeah879846 2y ago
Not nearly enough to write the works of shakespeare
lugvruzzle 2y ago
Anyone else have trouble logging in/staying logged in. Logging in with email.
- avadhesh18 2y ago
  verify the email and then refresh.
thomasfromcdnjs 2y ago
Awesome. Can you do a write up on that beautiful rendering? my lord.
- yathern 2y ago
  I've spent the last few weeks working on the backend, I completely forgot how much work I put into making it able to render enough unique monkeys. Mostly a custom implementation built around THREE.js InstancedMesh to add animations, and support egonomically instancing lots of small types of objects
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
How can I search for which monkey has written the word blurst? /s
hombre_fatal 2y ago
This has a weird amount of polish for what it is. I'm impressed. I'd like to hear more about the impl.
- yathern 2y ago
  Absolutely, going to do a write up once some of the dust settles. The implementation is not perfect for sure, but I learned a whole lot doing it.
voussoir 2y ago
This is beautiful man, congratulations. I love how much personality there is in the animations!
- yathern 2y ago
  Thanks you very much! I'm proud of the silly animations too, that was fun to learn
sen 2y ago
This is adorably cute, and deceptively fun to follow along with. I particularly like that it shows which monkey discovered a word first, making you want to visit back and see if your monkey found any new words. One thing I'd like to see is a way to go back from the "Word view" (after you clicked to see details about a specific word) back to your monkey view with the list of words.
Spacemolte 2y ago
Cool, but it's not great seeing a swastika when zooming out..
- yathern 2y ago
  Where? I don't see anything near the main clump
h1fra 2y ago
Impressive. Few problems, after sign-in could not get a monkey until hard refresh, big monkey is flickering like crazy on chrome M3 14", https://monkeys.zip/profile https://monkeys.zip/profile is not working when accessed directly.
hodorwang 2y ago
Funny

145 points by yathern 2y ago

cdaringe 2y ago

Looks interesting, but after two (<30s) attempts I gave up trying to figure out what it even is . There’s no about page, there’s some stats that I don’t know the significance of, there’s a blog that talks about improvements… But there’s just no straightforward description of what the heck I’m even looking at besides some fun monkey animations.

yathern 2y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I kinda take it for granted that people are aware of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, but maybe it's not as popular as I imagined! This is basically an art/community experiment project built around it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
- netsharc 2y ago
  Grandparent commenter is one of today's lucky 10000 https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
MitziMoto 2y ago
For goodness sake, this is what makes it great! This reminds me so much of the "old" internet where people would just make fun things for the hell of it.

netsharc 2y ago

Funny that one can login and claim a monkey, and customize its working environment. In an alternate universe where a version of you wants to make a buck, they'd sell "monkeycoins" that users can earn to get customizations for their monkey (like the fancy couch or a Macbook). Did I say earn? I mean buy...

blatantly 2y ago
And then someone would pay their drug supplier 60M for a monkey NFT
E_Bfx 2y ago
That was my first thought : "Oh NFT is still a thing in 2025". But no, it is really awesome.
yathern 2y ago
Glad you like it! I was considering taking some form of payment for some cosmetics, but it just felt out of character for me.

krzat 2y ago

Awesome idea, I wonder how long it will take to write a coherent sentence.

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago

Many of these look like apes, not monkeys.

yathern 2y ago
I won't tell if you won't.

mechagodzilla 2y ago

Ha! When I was first learning to program in high school, I wrote a 'distributed monkeys-on-typewriters' simulator. I somehow acquired a stack of surplus Pentium 100s that I had running in an unused closet at the school, communicating with each other over IPX. I remember the server had a fun 'Guess-operations-per-second' (GOPS) realtime display.

chewmieser 2y ago

That’s fun! Couple of things I would suggest: Maybe get rid of 1-2 character words in the word counter? Seems easy for it to hit things like i or ie etc. I would love to see a counter that ignores those at least Also the report card section on the Shakespeare progress panel wasn’t scrollable on iOS. Neat either way!

yathern 2y ago
> Maybe get rid of 1-2 character words in the word counter? Seems easy for it to hit things like i or ie etc. I would love to see a counter that ignores those at least I'm considering that as well, if only to calm my database down a bit > Also the report card section on the Shakespeare progress panel wasn’t scrollable on iOS. Second time I've heard that! I have no iOS devices so I can't fix it too easily, but I'll take another look.

vekatimest 2y ago

Is the plan to monetize this with paid 'gear' upgrades & 'claiming'? Feels a lot like an NFT project from 3 years ago.

yathern 2y ago
Haha I don't think anyone would pay money for a monkey hat, and it would take away from the fun if they did
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Some people would. But that doesn’t mean we should exploit them. I really admire what you’ve made and I think any attempt to cash in would sour and diminish your accomplishment. Not that art shouldn’t be salable. But not all art is appropriate for monetization.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

yeah879846 2y ago

Not nearly enough to write the works of shakespeare

lugvruzzle 2y ago

Anyone else have trouble logging in/staying logged in. Logging in with email.

avadhesh18 2y ago
verify the email and then refresh.

thomasfromcdnjs 2y ago

Awesome. Can you do a write up on that beautiful rendering? my lord.

yathern 2y ago
I've spent the last few weeks working on the backend, I completely forgot how much work I put into making it able to render enough unique monkeys. Mostly a custom implementation built around THREE.js InstancedMesh to add animations, and support egonomically instancing lots of small types of objects

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

How can I search for which monkey has written the word blurst? /s

hombre_fatal 2y ago

This has a weird amount of polish for what it is. I'm impressed. I'd like to hear more about the impl.

yathern 2y ago
Absolutely, going to do a write up once some of the dust settles. The implementation is not perfect for sure, but I learned a whole lot doing it.

voussoir 2y ago

This is beautiful man, congratulations. I love how much personality there is in the animations!

yathern 2y ago
Thanks you very much! I'm proud of the silly animations too, that was fun to learn

sen 2y ago

This is adorably cute, and deceptively fun to follow along with. I particularly like that it shows which monkey discovered a word first, making you want to visit back and see if your monkey found any new words. One thing I'd like to see is a way to go back from the "Word view" (after you clicked to see details about a specific word) back to your monkey view with the list of words.

Spacemolte 2y ago

Cool, but it's not great seeing a swastika when zooming out..

yathern 2y ago
Where? I don't see anything near the main clump

h1fra 2y ago

Impressive. Few problems, after sign-in could not get a monkey until hard refresh, big monkey is flickering like crazy on chrome M3 14", https://monkeys.zip/profile https://monkeys.zip/profile is not working when accessed directly.

hodorwang 2y ago

Funny