_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Size of Life
throwaway290 wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
Arthropleura is missing shadow.
fastaguy88 wrote 1 day ago:
Nice display, but it starts off with misleading measurements of DNA.
The spacing between DNA base pairs is 0.34 nm, so the 10 base pairs
pictured are in fact 3.4 nm. But the DNA in a single human cell is
about 2 meters, and chromosome lengths vary from 2 to 10 cm. I am
skeptical of the hemoglobin vs ribosome sizes as well; hemoglobin has a
molecular weight of about 60,000, while ribosomes weigh more than 5
million.
xwowsersx wrote 1 day ago:
This is absolutely incredible. Thank you.
almog wrote 1 day ago:
One error I think I spotted: Wooly Mammoth atill lived 4000 years ago
in Wrangel Island but the the website says it got extinct 10,000 years
ago.
its_ethan wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe it's a stupid question, but how does the poliovirus "work"? Like
at this scale, the DNA strand is still pretty visible and a decent-ish
percentage of the polio virus in size.. is it just a ball with DNA
inside and not much else? How does it pack enough DNA to replicate
itself into it's own size at that scale?
zxexz wrote 1 day ago:
Youâre pretty close actually. Itâs a single strand of
positive-sense RNA 7.5kb long, and a protein capsule. +ssRNA is
treated as mRNA by the host and is directly translated into proteins.
Zak wrote 1 day ago:
Never before have I seen the message "Firefox has been terminated by
the Linux kernel because the system is low on memory". Thanks for a new
experience!
I do like the visualization.
Helmut10001 wrote 1 day ago:
Great visualization! It would have been nice to zoom out to a view of
the world from space at the end, since this is really the max size of
life as we know it (n=1 so far).
chakintosh wrote 1 day ago:
> Human
A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a
nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.
js8 wrote 1 day ago:
I would like to play an open world game (like Minecraft) where 1
in-game meter equals 1 micrometer in the real world. That way, one
could get a feeling about the scale of things.
mncharity wrote 1 day ago:
Hmm, perhaps with flying? When stuck on the ground, people's feel for
size gets poorer as things get bigger (tall buildings, clouds, map
distances). I think of having 4ish orders of magnitude available for
visual reference in a classroom (cm to 10 m), plus less robustly 100
m and km in AR. At that micrometer per meter, a grain of salt towers
over a city skyline - "nano view" in [1] (eep - a decade ago now - I
was about to take another pass at it as covid hit).
(HTM) [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/http://www.clarif...
mncharity wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
Hmm, err, that could be misleading... 4ish for visible lengths in a
large class. But especially in a small group, one can use reference
objects of sand (mm) and flour (fine 100 um, ultrafine 10 um). The
difference between the 100 um and 10 being more behavioral and feel
(eg mouth feel) than unmagnified visible size. Thus with an outdoor
view (for 100 m), one can use less-abstract "it's like that there
accessible length" concrete-ish analogues across like 8 orders of
magnitude. Or drop to 6, or maybe push for 9, as multiples of 3
nicely detent across SI prefixes.
AleixR wrote 1 day ago:
Hi all! Iâm Aleix Ramon, the music composer of the soundtrack.
Since some of you asked, hereâs the soundtrack on Bandcamp: [1] There
you can download it in high quality, and itâs a pay-what-you-want:
you can get it for free if you want, or pay what you feel like and
support me. Either way, Iâm happy that you enjoy it!
The music should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, and most music
streaming services within the next 24h.
A bit about the process of scoring Size of Life:
Iâve worked with Neal before on a couple of his other games,
including Absurd Trolley Problems, so we were used to working together
(and with his producerâyouâre awesome, Liz!). When Neal told me
about Size of Life, we had an inspiring conversation about how the
music could make the players feel.
The core idea was that it should enhance that feeling of wondrous
discovery, but subtly, without taking the attention away from the
beautiful illustrations.
I also thought it should reflect the organisms' increasing sizeâas
some of you pointed out, the music grows with them. I think of it as a
single instrument that builds upon itself, like the cells in an
increasingly complex organism. So I composed 12 layers that loop
indefinitelyâas you progress, each layer is added, and as you go
back, theyâre subtracted. The effect is most clear if you get to the
end and then return to the smaller organisms!
Since the game has an encyclopedia vibe to it, I proposed to go with a
string instrument to give it a subtle âEnlightenment-eraâ and
âculturalâ feel. I was suspecting the cello could be a good
instrument because of its range and expressivity.
Coincidentally, the next week I met the cellist Iratxe Ibaibarriaga at
a game conference in Barcelona, where Iâm based, and she immediately
became the ideal person for it. Sheâs done a wonderful job bringing a
ton of expressivity to the playing, and itâs been a delight to work
with her.
I got very excited when Neal told me he was making an educational
gameâI come from a family of school teachers. Iâve been scoring
games for over 10 years, but this is the first educational game Iâve
scored.
In a way, now the circle feels complete!
(if anyone wants to reach out, feel free to do so! You can find me and
all my stuff here: [2] )
(HTM) [1]: https://aleixramon.bandcamp.com/album/size-of-life-original-so...
(HTM) [2]: https://www.aleixramon.com/
XCSme wrote 1 day ago:
Neurons are huge
01-_- wrote 1 day ago:
Wow! That's very interesting.
solarized wrote 1 day ago:
All hail web based apps!
We really dont need playStore and appStore to run beautiful things like
this.
bilsbie wrote 1 day ago:
Youâre telling me a white blood cell is only ten times longer than
mitochondria?
How is that possible? Doesnât it contain at least thousands?
anoplus wrote 1 day ago:
So many new facts to learn and I like how popular a post about the
natural world is here
catoc wrote 1 day ago:
No.fun in the cookie dialogue. Had to click 26 (sic!) switches to opt
out of being tracked.
N-Krause wrote 1 day ago:
uBlock seemed to have handled it for me.
kunley wrote 1 day ago:
Not on mobile..
gl-prod wrote 1 day ago:
Firefox on mobile can install ublock
fortyseven wrote 1 day ago:
On Firefox mobile with unblock, here. Experienced nothing
intrusive. It works, apparently. :)
qn9n wrote 1 day ago:
Honestly I don't really see cookie banners anymore because I have a
dismiss feature built into my ad blocker.
catoc wrote 1 day ago:
Always afraid that auto dismiss results in auto allow-all on thus
type of dialog.
miramba wrote 1 day ago:
It is encouraging to know that I am not the only one who does that
(sometimes, on interesting sites. otherwise I just leave).
kunley wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, you are not the only one.
catoc wrote 1 day ago:
I would have definitely left normally. Just wanted to see the site.
And I know this also likely not Neil's idea of fun, and mostly the
silly EU rules that are to blame but still, dialogs without a
directly available "refuse all" are the worst
dsign wrote 1 day ago:
Amazing!
I always thought that the best we could do for targeted drug delivery
was an adenovirus. But after seeing that parasite being only slightly
bigger than a red blood cell, I think we can do better...
ebastiban wrote 1 day ago:
You are an artist, a good one .
8-prime wrote 1 day ago:
My main takeaway was that I had no clue how large Krill can get.
To think that Antarctic Krill is as long as the Bee Hummingbird is tall
is absurd to me.
hamiecod wrote 1 day ago:
It makes me emotional when I think about where life started and what it
evolved into. Life created so many different types of organisms, each
having different features while maintaining the equilibrium of the
planet. From bacteria, to massive dinosaurs, to tiny homosapiens who
inevitably control the largest organisms.
thunderbong wrote 1 day ago:
On a desktop screen, you also see a 'Compare To' button which puts the
current and the compared one beside each other!
mchinen wrote 1 day ago:
If you liked the first half of this site and want an extension, Cell
Biology by the Numbers (2015, Milo, Phillips, [1] ) is great and has a
similar intuition-building fun sense about size as well as various
other measurements, including weight, time and energy at the atomic to
micro-organism level.
(HTM) [1]: https://book.bionumbers.org/
tcsenpai wrote 1 day ago:
I find it amazing, that we can build microprocessors with transistors
the size of a DNA molecule
singularity2001 wrote 1 day ago:
it seems strange E. Coli can fit 70,000 ribosomes
k__ wrote 1 day ago:
A week ago, I learned that animals weren't bigger in the past.
Sure, there were dinosaurs that were quite big, but they weren't living
all at the same time. So there was maybe a big one, that died out, and
the next big one would evolve much later.
As this project shows, the biggest animals and plants are living right
now.
Also, we're living in the time with the biggest spiders in history.
Somehow they don't get that big on average. Turns out, the high oxygen
levels in the past didn't affect arachnid sizes as much as insect
sizes.
maelito wrote 1 day ago:
The first page looks like a book. It's awesome. Thanks, so refreshing.
No fucking inhuman cookie banner.
filo404 wrote 1 day ago:
This is what the web should be
bobnarizes wrote 1 day ago:
HUMAN
A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a
nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.
:)
gauravbluepi wrote 1 day ago:
Like all of your projects....thank you for sharing
oscord wrote 1 day ago:
Why not the super cluster?
Evidlo wrote 1 day ago:
The people on the page look really scary with DarkReader enabled.
Simplita wrote 1 day ago:
Crazy how something so simple hits so hard. Always wild to see how much
meaning people can pack into a minimal format.
bicepjai wrote 1 day ago:
Great webapp. There is a similar app that I love to scroll through from
time to time. Its free and needs no internet connection. [1] The range
of size in the universe, from the tiniest particles to the epic
galaxies - we take you on a journey of size that lets you explore it
all with a single swipe.
(HTM) [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/universe-in-a-nutshell/id1526364...
vrighter wrote 1 day ago:
awesome that there was a banana for scale!
shahzaibmushtaq wrote 1 day ago:
Is banana a life? If yes, then hundreds of other lives are not included
in this project.
A simple idea but fabulous execution!
klaushougesen1 wrote 1 day ago:
!! super nice thanks !
baalimago wrote 1 day ago:
Why not "microinches" while you're at it?
ComputerGuru wrote 1 day ago:
Onl missing a Wikipedia link on each page!
utopcell wrote 1 day ago:
nicely done.
manlymuppet wrote 1 day ago:
The music is phenomenal. Really, really phenomenal.
kretaceous wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting things from this:
- Smallest animal: Myxobolus Shekel. Smaller than a WBC at 10
micrometeres.
- Biggest butterfly: Queen Alexandra's Birdwing. Bigger than human
brain at 18cm.
- Largest insect to ever live: Meganeura (283 MYA). At 40cm long, a
dragonfly larger than a house cat.
- Rafflesias are larger than German Shepherds
- Earth's largest crab: Japanese Spider Crab. 1m, legs pan of 3.75m.
More than half the size of a human.
- Always thought Mososaurs were largest animal to ever live but it's
the Blue whale at 26m. I don't think I ever appreciated how
unfathomably huge they are. (The largest Mosasaur found was 13m.
There's a speculated size of 17m as well.)
- World's largest living tree: Hyperion - a giant redwood in california
at 115m.
Love seeing something so polished and inspiring. Amazing illustrations
and even better music.
Thanks Neal for these projects!
the-mitr wrote 1 day ago:
One of the books that got me introduced to this fascinating aspect of
our natural world is John Tyler Bonner's Size and Cycle. It has
features amazing log-log plots of how different organisms from grow
with time: from eggs to full-grown organisms. This kind of
visualisation gives you a different perspective on growth and scale
For example, Sequoia gigantea
Sequoia is the largest tree and can be effectively compared
to the annual plant shown above. Fertilization
and the early growth to the seed stage are essentially
similar, but because of the cambium and the possibility
of secondary thickening, the size of the tree can
increase enormously. As can be seen from Figure 1 in
the text, the sequoia does not begin to set seed until
it is sixty years old and eighty meters tall.
(HTM) [1]: https://postimg.cc/hfdGGJ8H
buyTheDip wrote 1 day ago:
That was fun, neal.fun.
vinhnx wrote 1 day ago:
> Human: A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once
a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.
Thanks for the laugh!
ronbenton wrote 1 day ago:
Going to make this my LinkedIn headline
takira wrote 1 day ago:
Did a great job keeping the scale jumps fresh. Every step had a little
twist instead of just a commonly known larger animal on the next slide.
Wild that the Japanese spider crab is basically the same size as an
orangutan.
ProllyInfamous wrote 1 day ago:
CGP Grey does a similar video â spanning the sizes of our entire
observable universe â called "Metric Paper" [0]
[0] [1] Even if you've never taken a mild psychedelic, this video hits
in a similar manner (as sober metaphor).
----
I still drive with Neal.fun's Internet Roadtrip (same OP link author),
every time I'm out in my workshop.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI
kec wrote 1 day ago:
These are all riffs on "Powers of 10", a film made in the 70's for
IBM by Charles and Ray Eames:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
darepublic wrote 1 day ago:
this has more of an indie gem feel compared to the blockbuster that was
stimulation clicker. as others have mentioned it reminds me of scale
of the universe flash animation. I think borrowing some ideas from
that, including zooming in and out rather than side to side, could have
benefits here.
g_host56 wrote 1 day ago:
Beautiful website, love that it's using vue.
pazimzadeh wrote 1 day ago:
This has DNA as the smallest object and has a large protein next to it,
so it misses the fact that a gene's DNA is almost always larger by
weight and volume than the protein it encodes.
p2detar wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm pleasantly surprised that Tyrannosaurus rexâs tiny hands were
depicted so accurately. As far as I recall, scientists are still
puzzled about why it even had hands. Apparently, they were too small to
be useful for anything, not even scratching its face.
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
>Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon
>Cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga
Got a link to the music?
nickvec wrote 1 day ago:
Always a joy to see neal.fun on the HN front page.
thymine_dimer wrote 1 day ago:
(Uninsightful comment but Iâm gonna put it here anyway)
The US spelling of haemoglobin is all kinds of wrong.
Love the site. Would love some algae in there though. Perhaps a desmid
or diatom?
higgins wrote 1 day ago:
where is Solaris?
cantalopes wrote 1 day ago:
Why would th3 website switch from metric to usa units out of nowhere m
njarboe wrote 1 day ago:
Fun to see the Jerboa. I recently read a family history written by my
uncle and he believes this is the source of our family name.
worldsayshi wrote 1 day ago:
I didn't know tardigrades can be big enough to be seen with the naked
eye. Apparently big enough to be seen but not big enough to be
recognised without magnification.
danielfalbo wrote 1 day ago:
For comparison: ASML machines print chips with precision up to 2nm.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems/twins...
jfarlow wrote 1 day ago:
And the atoms in the proteins and DNA that are exactly replicated to
the atom each have a feature sizes resolved at fractions of a
nanometer in 3 dimensions (and likely in time/dynamics too).
ag8 wrote 1 day ago:
Not 13?
kreelman wrote 1 day ago:
So wonderful.
Thanks for making this so open.
I'll show it to my kids.
The artwork is very good and the soundtrack too.
hashstring wrote 1 day ago:
So many loving comments, I have nothing more to add to them, and
nothing to subtract from them.
bariswheel wrote 1 day ago:
The music is so moving, tear inducing. One of the best links I've seen
posted here and I've been here 15+ years. Well done Neal. I wish credit
was given to the music, anyone know who created it?
gizmo385 wrote 1 day ago:
If you click the "i" info button in the top right, it'll list the
full credits, including those who worked on the music.
hypertexthero wrote 1 day ago:
The following from clicking on the i on the top-right after starting
the show:
> Created by Neal Agarwal
> Illustrations by Julius Csotonyi
> Production by Liz Ryan
> Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon
> Cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga
Beautiful work.
psikomanjak wrote 1 day ago:
amazing job
ptak wrote 2 days ago:
Illustrations are fantastic
ge96 wrote 1 day ago:
looks like they don't show up with an adblocker
varispeed wrote 2 days ago:
What made the DNA?
spydr wrote 2 days ago:
The Japanese spider crab being the same size as a tiger shocked me.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote 2 days ago:
I am sure everyone has their own mind blown moment, and for me it was
there being an animal about the size of a red blood cell.
talksik wrote 2 days ago:
beautiful soundscapes
susiecambria wrote 2 days ago:
Sorry to say that my first reaction was that this is heresy. . . all
this talk of science is a hoax.
But then the music calmed me right down and I wended my way through,
not understanding 99% of what I saw but in awe of nature and Neal's art
nonetheless.
yunnpp wrote 1 day ago:
Did you just escape from a religious sect living inside an underwater
cavern or something?
arunc wrote 2 days ago:
It was great until Sea snail appeared in inches. Transitioning from
micrometer/milliliter to inches is pretty rough
Mogzol wrote 2 days ago:
For me it appears in millimetres, but I'm in Canada not the US. I'm
guessing the default is chosen based on your browser's language. You
can change the units in the top right.
Edit: I checked the page's code and it does indeed set the units
based on language. If your language is "en-US" you get imperial by
default, everyone else gets metric.
macleginn wrote 2 days ago:
Blood cells are huge!
MagicMoonlight wrote 2 days ago:
He always makes great content, I love it.
hermitcrab wrote 2 days ago:
Great job.
I did a side project that helps with comparisons, but in a rather
different way (e.g. how many African elephants does something weigh).
Not as slick as this site, but someone might find it useful:
(HTM) [1]: http://howmanyelephants.co.uk/
mncharity wrote 1 day ago:
Nice. Two quick UI thoughts. Upon loading, perhaps start with some
unit selected, and a default amount 1, so there's immediate content
to be seen? And to extend the experience, maybe add a "dice roll"
button, so users can "see more neat things" click-click-click without
the cognitive overhead of pathing the option space
hermitcrab wrote 1 day ago:
That is a possibility, thanks.
js2 wrote 2 days ago:
Nit: the tool-tips on the action icons in the top-right aren't
consistent.
When music is playing the tool tip is "unmute" which is a verb. It
should either be "mute" (to indicate what clicking will do) or
"unmuted" (adjective) indicating the current state. Similarly, when the
music is muted the tool-tip should either be "muted" or "unmute".
I'm not sure _which_ is wanted (verb or adjective) because the ruler
tool-tip uses "Hide Ruler" and "Show Ruler" (verb), while the units
tool-tip uses "Units: imperial" and "Units: Metric" (adjective). The
info tool-tip ("Info") is also an adjective.
For consistency, I'd use a verb-phrase in all the tool tips:
- "Show info"
- "Switch units to metric/imperial"
- "Hide/show ruler"
- "Mute/unmute music"
I mean, I know this is pedantic nit-picking, but the site is so
perfect, what else am I going to do?
genix wrote 2 days ago:
Well made!
sungho_ wrote 2 days ago:
What surprised me most was how large a single neuron is.
jbotz wrote 2 days ago:
In generalized, abstract sort of way it's probably accurate, but in
reality most neurons don't look much like that and many have
dendrites orders of magnitude longer than the one in that image.
Stringing all your dendrites end-to-end they can probably easily go
to the moon and back.
krosaen wrote 2 days ago:
Neal.fun is good clean fun - my kids love it too. Neal, if you are
listening, would pay for an ad-free version (I already bought you some
coffees too).
runtimepanic wrote 2 days ago:
Tools like this are surprisingly effective for teaching, especially
compared to static diagrams. Interaction makes the scale differences
stick.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote 2 days ago:
I felt like I was at a museum exhibit. It is fantastic.
abustamam wrote 2 days ago:
When my daughter is old enough, I'm definitely going to show her a
bunch of visualizations on Neal's site as supplementary education. I
learned so much from these visualizations as an adult, and even
without being able to read you can get a sense of scale.
mncharity wrote 1 day ago:
> When my daughter is old enough
Fwiw, I've done a pinch-nail-hand-arms 1-10-100-1000 mm "body as
size reference" a couple of times around 5ish. And a 1000x "micro
view" "pinch is zoomed to arms size" "it's like a scale model or
doll playset - everything zoomed together" world of "bacteria
sprinkles, red blood cell candies (M&M minis or concave Smarties
minis or Sweetarts - there's lots of cell candy analogs), hair
poles, salt/sugar boxes". Stories of sitting on a grain of salt and
eating... etc; pet eyelash mites. No idea if it actually worked.
I did some user-test videos, now only on archive.org.[1] Hmm... the
"Arms, hands" video there now doesn't seem to play inline? - but
does wget'ed and browsered. :/
(HTM) [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/www.clarifyscie...
abustamam wrote 16 hours 20 min ago:
Hey that's cool! I like that idea
runtimepanic wrote 2 days ago:
Totally agree! Even as adults, the sense of scale hits differently
when you interact with it. Your daughter will probably love
discovering it too.
foxrider wrote 2 days ago:
Missing a mushroom from Oregon [1]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-la...
phkahler wrote 2 days ago:
EDIT: Nevermind. Perhaps it was an ad that I clicked on. Lots of
comments here indicating they don't see it, and some that did.
My Original comment here (too late to delete):
Beware. When you reach the end there is a "more projects" button. In
there is a cute IQ test (possibly appealing to the HN crowd). When you
reach the end of the test it asks for email, and then ultimately wants
$1 to get your results. If you pay by credit card due note that there
is an auto-checked box for some $29.99 per month subscription for...
something.
krosaen wrote 2 days ago:
Saw this too on mobile - I think it's an ad - I requested a paid
ad-free version elsewhere in the comments
beejiu wrote 2 days ago:
For what it's worth, there are AdSense interstitial ads on the site,
so you probably got duped by one of those ads.
WD-42 wrote 2 days ago:
Ironically this sounds like a piece of satire Neal would make.
abustamam wrote 2 days ago:
I can't seem to find the IQ test. I see captcha and other "games"
pxndx wrote 2 days ago:
Are you sure about that? for me it just leads to neal.fun, which is a
well loved by HN list of projects, but no IQ test nor begging for
money.
waxpancake wrote 2 days ago:
This is definitely not something Neal would ever do. Can you share
the URL you're talking about? There's no IQ test in his projects list
at all.
(HTM) [1]: https://neal.fun/
varenc wrote 2 days ago:
Link? couldn't find the IQ test in more projects. And super skeptical
neal.fun is trying to trick people into $30/month subscriptions
edit: I turned off my ad blocker and discovered the site is showing
some ads. Guessing you clicked on an ad?
also it's pretty ironic because one of his projects is showcasing
dark patterns:
(HTM) [1]: https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/
marseysneed wrote 2 days ago:
1 nitpick: The Dwarf Lanternshark is not found off the coast of
"Columbia" but "Colombia!"
leourbina wrote 1 day ago:
Came to say exactly the same thing :)
system2 wrote 2 days ago:
If I see a neal.fun link on HN, I click.
jwpapi wrote 2 days ago:
Neal is him
thangalin wrote 2 days ago:
[1] Star Size Comparison 3, simply a stunning visualization.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY
jakemanger wrote 2 days ago:
This is simply beautiful, and will definitely inspire me with some arty
projects I'm working on.
Great work -> the minimalist UI, art and music fits amazingly.
One thing I noticed: the site's images fail to load if the brave
adblocker is on
newman8r wrote 2 days ago:
It claims a banana isn't technically living, but a banana has living
cells so I'm not sure how accurate that is. I'm not sure when they're
all considered 'dead' after harvesting though - maybe some wiggle room
there.
HelloUsername wrote 2 days ago:
I think the banana was mostly added as a joke:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiducial_marker#%22Banana_for_...
newman8r wrote 2 days ago:
I got the reference, it's just the 'not technically alive' part
that I was calling out
mritterhoff wrote 2 days ago:
My understanding is that picked fruits and veg are still alive [1],
and often respirating [2]. This is a big component in figuring out
how to refrigerate them at the optimal temperatures and atmospheric
makeup.
1. [1] 2.
(HTM) [1]: https://healthland.time.com/2013/06/21/theyre-alive-harveste...
(HTM) [2]: https://agriculture.institute/food-chemistry-and-physiology/...
kayge wrote 2 days ago:
If anyone wants to set this up to auto-run all the way to the right and
then all the way back to the left, here is a vibe-coded (sorry) browser
console script. Makes a great "screen-saver" if you kick off the script
and then put your browser in full screen mode :)
(function() {
let direction = 'right'; // Start by going right
let intervalId;
function getCurrentAnimalName() {
const animalDiv = document.querySelector('.animal-name');
return animalDiv ? animalDiv.textContent.trim() : '';
}
function pressKey(keyCode) {
const event = new KeyboardEvent('keydown', {
key: keyCode === 37 ? 'ArrowLeft' : 'ArrowRight',
keyCode: keyCode,
code: keyCode === 37 ? 'ArrowLeft' : 'ArrowRight',
which: keyCode,
bubbles: true
});
document.dispatchEvent(event);
}
function autoScroll() {
const currentName = getCurrentAnimalName();
if (direction === 'right') {
pressKey(39); // Right arrow
if (currentName === 'Pando Clone') {
console.log('Reached Pando Clone, switching to
left');
direction = 'left';
}
} else {
pressKey(37); // Left arrow
if (currentName === 'DNA') {
console.log('Reached DNA, switching to right');
direction = 'right';
}
}
}
// Start the interval
intervalId = setInterval(autoScroll, 3000);
// Log start message and provide stop function
console.log('Auto-scroll started! To stop, call:
stopAutoScroll()');
// Expose stop function globally
window.stopAutoScroll = function() {
clearInterval(intervalId);
console.log('Auto-scroll stopped');
};
})();
ekipan wrote 1 day ago:
Cannot stand robot code. Thanks for the genuinely cool thing though.
I hope you don't mind me rewriting, if only for my own satisfaction.
{
const s = window.scroller = {}
const press = (key, code) => () =>
document.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent('keydown', {
key: key, keyCode: code,
which: key, code: code, bubbles: true
}));
const step = () => {
const div = document.querySelector('.animal-name')
const name = div?.textContent.trim()
if (name === 'Pando Clone') s.dir = s.left
if (name === 'DNA') s.dir = s.right
s.dir()
}
s.left = press(37, 'ArrowLeft')
s.right = s.dir = press(39, 'ArrowRight')
s.start = (ms) => s.ival = setInterval(step, ms)
s.stop = () => clearInterval(s.ival)
}
scroller.start(5000)
kayge wrote 1 day ago:
I don't mind at all, your rewrite looks much more elegant. Thanks!
ekipan wrote 1 day ago:
You could try posting both at the LLM and ask it to explain the
stuff I changed, if you're interested in learning more
Javascript. Assuming you aren't already deep in the JS trenches
and only vibed bc you couldn't be bothered.
ramaniyer wrote 2 days ago:
cool and artistic app, how did you make this
JKCalhoun wrote 2 days ago:
Banana, ha ha.
cgh wrote 2 days ago:
âCompressible rodentâ was not a phrase I thought Iâd ever hear
but Iâm glad I did. Worth the price of a couple of coffees.
modeless wrote 2 days ago:
Reminds me of the classic "powers of 10" video: [1] . Someone ought to
remake that but as a gaussian splat reconstruction, so you can freely
move the camera as well as zoom.
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0
conorbergin wrote 2 days ago:
>microns to inches
absolutely foul
Moxdi wrote 2 days ago:
if anyone that made this sees this, you made a typo on the Dwarf
Lanternshark, its not Columbia, its ColOmbia
sheepolog wrote 2 days ago:
Very cool. I was surprised that orangutans are described as being only
2 feet 9 inches tall, I think most are a bit larger. Maybe when sitting
they're under 3 feet? From wikipedia:
"females typically stand 115 cm (45 in) tall and weigh around 37 kg (82
lb), while adult males stand 137 cm (54 in) tall and weigh 75 kg (165
lb). The tallest orangutan recorded was a 180 cm (71 in)."
LeifCarrotson wrote 2 days ago:
It's using the size of the ruler, matching the posture as shown in
the image. A few keys over and there's a picture of a grizzly bear
that says it is 1m or 3'4" tall. And maybe when it's on all fours,
that's a typical measurement to the shoulders - its arm length, more
or less.
That's much shorter than the human at 1.7m or 5'7". From just those
numbers, you might think that a human would weigh more than a grizzly
or take one in a fight: But when a bear stands on its hind legs, it's
2.4m/8' tall and can be 800 lbs, I'd have put a grizzly way further
to the right.
dwa3592 wrote 2 days ago:
[edited] - It's incredible to think that it starts from DNA, is 3.5nm
tall and the solid silicon fins in our phone's transistor is twice
that.
kyriakos wrote 2 days ago:
The chip is not smaller than 3.5nm; but a component on the chip is
that small.
JDEW wrote 2 days ago:
Beautiful site. Also very pleased to see the mitochondrion being
referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as is law.
SubiculumCode wrote 2 days ago:
Why haven't I seen a Tardigrade with my eyeball?
It seems like they are the size of a spot on a ladybug from the pics.
rsynnott wrote 1 day ago:
The spot on the ladybug is black against red, usually (there are many
varieties); it's very conveniently highlighted. We're better at
seeing "bold colour on bold colour" than "semi-translucent thing in
water".
LeifCarrotson wrote 2 days ago:
Because you clearly haven't spent enough time closely looking at pond
and river water!
Our local parks department has several annual events where they ask
for volunteers to help perform benthic macroinvertebrate surveys. It
basically amounts to meeting up at a local park with a couple people
in waders dragging special nets along the bottom, dumping scoops of
material into buckets and large, shallow, white trays, and others
sitting at picnic tables with spoons, magnifying glasses, and muffin
tins sorting out the critters that get caught in the nets.
The cool part is that at the end, you can score the creek based on
the quantity and types of larvae that you find: Caddisfly, mayfly,
and stonefly larvae are very sensitive to factors like runoff from
agriculture and road salt, sediment, water oxygenation, and other
factors, beetles, crayfish, dragonflies, and scuds are moderately
tolerant, while leeches, worms, midges, and flies will grow in
anything. Thousands of these surveys happen every year, so you can
compare the relative frequency and quantity of various species and
determine the relative health of the stream.
I don't know how many tardigrades you'll find just scooping 4-8mm
nymphs and larvae by eye, but I've brought my microscope to a couple
and put random droplets of water under a cover and slide: there are
an astonishing number of tiny critters swimming around at any zoom
level.
myself248 wrote 1 day ago:
Do you set aside the tasty-looking ones and wrap it up with a
seafood boil?
HelloUsername wrote 2 days ago:
You have seen a tardigrade with the naked eye (without microscope),
that's as large as a spot on a ladybug?
LeifCarrotson wrote 1 day ago:
No, sorry if that wasn't clear, I've not identified one by eye
without a scope. Maybe your fine vision is better than mine, but
all the tiniest things in a drop of water are just about
indistinguishable without magnification. The kinds of water that
have sufficient density to contain a tardigrade just look like
they're full of grit, I don't think you could identify which
speck was a tardigrade and which was just dirt.
Nymphs are larger (that's why they call them "macro"
invertebrates), but it's always good to have at least a
magnifying glass if not a loupe or microscope on site.
isametry wrote 1 day ago:
As a non-native speaker, TIL that "magnifying glass" and
"loupe" are not synonyms. According to Wikipedia:
> [Loupes] generally have higher magnification than a
magnifying glass, and are designed to be held or worn close to
the eye.
adammarples wrote 2 days ago:
What about that 3.5 sq mil fungi
larodi wrote 2 days ago:
yes indeed, fungi are under-represented here
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillaria_ostoyae
robrain wrote 2 days ago:
I've got a sudden strong urge to play Katamari Damacy.
chrismorgan wrote 2 days ago:
The dynamic soundscape is delightful, as it subtly adds instruments and
musical texture as you progress. And going back down the scale
regresses it to simple again. Smoothly done.
It reminded me of Operation Neptune (1991): each level starts with just
one channel, probably percussion, and as you progress through the rooms
it adds and removes more channels or sometimes switches to a different
section of music. It is unfortunately all sharp cuts, no attempts at
smoothing or timing instrument entry and exit. A couple of samples: [1]
is an hour of gameplay revelling in âthe dynamic and sometimes
beautiful music of Operation Neptuneâ using a Roland MT-32 MIDI
synthesiser; and [2] is the PCM files used on some platforms (if you
want to compare that track with the MT-32, it starts at 28 minutes).
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk
(HTM) [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&list=PL3FC048B134B...
AleixR wrote 1 day ago:
Hi there, I'm the composer of the soundtrackâglad that you enjoyed
the music.
The idea was to have a single instrument (a cello) that builds upon
itself, like the cells in an organism. It starts with a very
minimalistic loop, and new layers of music are progressively added as
the organisms grow in size.
Thanks for sharing Operation Neptune! I didn't know about it, but
it's a great example of early adaptive game music.
WhyNotHugo wrote 1 day ago:
It truly is, thanks for pointing it out! I just went through the
entire site 5 minutes ago and it didnât occur to me to grab my
headphones and turn sound on first.
cachius wrote 1 day ago:
Oh noes, I explored with sound off.
vanderZwan wrote 1 day ago:
So I guess Operation Neptune was the inspiration for UFO 50s Porgy?
(HTM) [1]: https://ufo50.miraheze.org/wiki/Porgy
tracerbulletx wrote 1 day ago:
This is something you do when scoring a game too, wonder if the
author ever worked on game programming.
AleixR wrote 1 day ago:
Hi there, I'm the composerâI do! 99% of my work is making music
and sound effects for games.
And you're right, the music following the player's actions is
common in games; we call it "adaptive music.
jevogel wrote 1 day ago:
The rest of the author's website is a bunch of games, so I'd say
so.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 1 day ago:
Thank you for sharing this, I played Operation Neptune as a kid and
never noticed the dynamic music!
anon_cow1111 wrote 2 days ago:
Anyone find an actual link for the finished track? Credits are
mentioned on his site and twitter but I didn't find it anywhere when
searching for the artist names.
voxleone wrote 2 days ago:
I love how the music swells and becomes more intricate as life
expands and grows more complicated.
gizmo385 wrote 2 days ago:
The music was breathtaking here - I'd absolutely pay for a version of
it. Really solidified the experience
ralfhn wrote 2 days ago:
From the author on twitter[1] "The background music is a cello
performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga and composed by Aleix Ramon"
(HTM) [1]: https://x.com/nealagarwal/status/1998788695449808920
wormpilled wrote 2 days ago:
I absolutely loved that looping music track, please authors make it
available.
ralfhn wrote 2 days ago:
From the author on twitter[1] "The background music is a cello
performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga and composed by Aleix Ramon"
(HTM) [1]: https://x.com/nealagarwal/status/1998788695449808920
modeless wrote 2 days ago:
Man I played Operation Neptune a lot when I was a kid. I wonder if it
was the first game to do this style of adaptive music layering. It
predates the iMUSE system used in LucasArts games like X-Wing and TIE
Fighter.
For anyone curious, you can actually play it here:
(HTM) [1]: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Super_Solvers_Operation_Ne...
compiler-guy wrote 2 days ago:
The arcade classic Space Invaders had a primitive soundscape in
that every time the remaining invaders advance, it plays a short
bass note. As fewer and fewer invaders remain, it takes less time
for them to advance, and the note repeats faster and faster, it
adds a remarkable amount of increasing tension as each level
progresses.
So not exactly the same, but perhaps prototypical. I think
Asteroids did as well.
chrisweekly wrote 1 day ago:
That reminds me of the music in the film "Inception", in which
the extremely low-register bass-heavy music in the background of
scenes from lower levels of dream-in-dream is actually the main
score, played back dramatically (and semantically / thematically)
slower and lower.
mrandish wrote 2 days ago:
Interesting Space Invaders Trivia:
The game speeding up as invaders are eliminated was an unintended
consequence of the hardware running full speed to draw all 55
invaders. As invaders are eliminated the draw calls finish faster
and the game speeds up. There is no code in the game to throttle
the speed. The 2 Mhz 8080 is always drawing full speed. It's
delightfully serendipitous this happens to ramp up the difficulty
as you near the end of each level in such a compellingly perfect
way. ( [1] )
I've watched some interviews with the game's programmer Tomohiro
Nishikado and, although translated (so subject to garbling), he
seems to confirm this was a 'happy accident'. He indicates he set
the max number of invaders based on what the hardware could draw
but there was no intent to have the speed ramp up. Of course, he
noticed that it did this during play testing but decided to keep
it that way. Arguably, it's one of the most compelling aspects of
the game. Modern emulators have to add code game-specific code to
limit the speed or the game plays too fast. Leaving no CPU cycles
unused is the sign of an elegant design.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/sp...
alyxya wrote 2 days ago:
Minor thing that bothers me is that I can't scroll through the things
like in the deep sea or space elevator.
inciampati wrote 2 days ago:
Very beautiful. Love this.
If it helps, AFAIK (I do atomic force microscopy of DNA), DNA's height
is closer to 2nm than 4.
crubier wrote 2 days ago:
My kids will LOVE this
wpwpwpw wrote 2 days ago:
beautiful illustrations, beautiful site
p1nkpineapple wrote 2 days ago:
Absolutely loved that the intensity of the music is synced with the
swiping. Fantastic job as always!
cs702 wrote 2 days ago:
Beautiful. It's clearly a labor of love.
The authors deserve our support. Buy them a coffee via the provided
link.
Thank you for sharing this on HN.
abustamam wrote 2 days ago:
You really can't go wrong with any of Neal's fun projects!
setgree wrote 2 days ago:
He has many other cool visualizations!
Space Elevator: [1] Deep Sea:
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640226
(HTM) [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850527
echelon wrote 1 day ago:
I love Neal's work so much. He's constantly making some of the
coolest stuff on the web. I'm utterly delighted every time I see
his domain on the front page of HN.
I hope he never stops making these art pieces - everything he
creates brings joy, regardless of whether it's educational or funny
or whimsical. I'm in awe of his creative output, his manner of
communication, and his ability to steal hours of our time playing
ridiculous little games that make us question the fundamentals of
life and society.
He's right up there with XKCD in my mind.
--
This is probably the only time I'll use my super pedantic mode on
Neal's work, and it's only because I love biology -
> DNA
> The genetic instructions for life
> 3.5 nanometers tall
DNA has a lot of dimensional metrics. It gets complicated. The
people that study this stuff really care because it's essential for
how our enzymes work, and small differences in spacing tolerances
would totally break all of the machinery.
This "3.5 nm" figure is roughly the height of one turn of the helix
for one form of DNA (B-DNA). The figure is showing multiple turns
in the cartoon illustration.
In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length (or
height).
B-DNA is 34 Ã
per turn, with 10.5 bp per turn (table 1) : [1] >
Blue Whale
> King of the animal kingdom, it is the largest animal to have ever
lived. It can eat up to 40 million krill per day during peak
feeding season.
Please fix this one, Neal! We don't know that the blue whale is the
largest animal to have ever lived (even assuming we know we're just
talking about earth).
Blue whales are perhaps the largest animal to have ever lived on
earth. But we simply do not know. The fossil record is woefully
incomplete.
We even have new papers coming up all the time that challenge this:
[2] Then refutations: [3] This is undoubtedly the last time the
claim to largest will ever be challenged. Even if we dug up no new
fossils, the estimations of previous finds change all the time as
we learn more.
Also - what does "largest" mean? Mass? Length? Surface area?
It's okay to say that they're the largest (by some metric) that we
know of. But it is not correct to say that they're the largest to
have ever lived - at least as far as we know or could ever know.
And by setting an absolute, inquiring minds memorize the point and
stop wondering.
It's very probable that we'll never know the definitive answer to
this.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6545/
(HTM) [2]: https://www.science.org/content/article/whale-whale-may-be...
(HTM) [3]: https://www.science.org/content/article/have-blue-whales-r...
Timwi wrote 1 day ago:
> (even assuming we know we're just talking about earth)
This is a nitpick, but life on other planets wouldn't be called
âanimalsâ. Animal is a clade defined by common ancestry. The
only way you could have an extraterrestrial animal is for it to
have evolved on Earth and then migrated somehow, and I think we
can fairly confidently rule that out.
tim333 wrote 1 day ago:
Nitpic nitpic. I bet if we find animal like life on other
planets people will call them animals. Langage use isn't that
pedantic.
oasisbob wrote 1 day ago:
The dimensioning of DNA was an immediate turn-off for me. A
common biochemistry demo is to show how long and macroscopically
visible a chromosome can be. Saying DNA is 3.5 nm tall (long?)
flies in the face of what is a pretty interesting and notable
experience for a lot of people.
It essentially starts the whole project with a weird take on "How
long is a piece of string?"
> In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length (or
height).
Works pretty well in practice too.
simonw wrote 2 days ago:
He was also responsible for one of the worst web pages ever
created: [1] (It's utterly brilliant but monstrous.)
(HTM) [1]: https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/
setgree wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
I'll just stick to Baldur's Gate II, thanks -- my favorite
inventory management simulation
arein3 wrote 1 day ago:
Thabk god the page crashed after 15m
connicpu wrote 1 day ago:
If it doesn't crash there is actually an ending
stOneskull wrote 1 day ago:
woo.. finally got there!
all achievements.. and i made stacks on bitcoin
Cyphase wrote 1 day ago:
Send help.
aschobel wrote 1 day ago:
why did i click. ha, it's incredible how addictive simple
dopamine loops are.
Thank you!
abustamam wrote 2 days ago:
Deep Sea one is scary for some reason. It just gives me shivers to
think about how deep the sea is, and what horrors lurk down there.
I know that I'll never encounter such a being, but still kinda
creepy.
littlekey wrote 1 day ago:
>for some reason
This is a pretty common fear, just look up thalassophobia (or
don't! sorry!)
shmoe wrote 2 days ago:
An obvious benefit of "humans adapting to create websites"!
seemaze wrote 2 days ago:
Just delightful, thank you Neal.
kej wrote 2 days ago:
Reminds me of [1] . I think confining it to just living things removes
the perspective of "Wow, we're really small compared to the rest of the
universe".
(HTM) [1]: https://scaleofuniverse.com
creatonez wrote 1 day ago:
There is another visualization from the same author, that starts at
an astronaut and ends with the observable universe
(HTM) [1]: https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
abustamam wrote 2 days ago:
Somewhat related!
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/XRdh8gmVR90?si=PvgoXrgjV62tsUy6
baxtr wrote 2 days ago:
If youâre interested to read something on that topic I highly
recommend the essay "That's About the Size of It" by Isaac Asimov (in
his book "View from a Height").
He argues that human perception of animal size is skewed because humans
use themselves as a benchmark.
He takes a logarithmic approach to illustrate where humans actually fit
within the overall scale of the animal kingdom. We are way larger than
we think we are!
jiggawatts wrote 2 days ago:
We are megafauna predators! Weâve wiped them almost all out, which
makes it less obvious, but thatâs our ecological niche.
Jordan-117 wrote 2 days ago:
Reminds me of the classic Scale of the Universe flash toy by Cary Huang
(now available in HTML 5!):
(HTM) [1]: https://htwins.net/scale2/
ncgl wrote 2 days ago:
Great use of sound!
milancurcic wrote 2 days ago:
Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered
living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here because
they're both relevant and interesting in this context.
someNameIG wrote 1 day ago:
From what I remember from undergrad the reason they're not life is
that they lack their own metabolism, they use the metabolism of host
cells. And metabolism needs to be a constant thing, they don't have
any when outside a cell.
dartharva wrote 1 day ago:
Hey, if they originated naturally and interact with the environment
and reproduce, they are living beings. Mere human taxonomists can't
just "classify" away the fact.
4ndr3vv wrote 1 day ago:
MRS GREN would like to have a word with you :)
kruczek wrote 1 day ago:
You are doing the same classification. It all depends on the
definition of what a living being is.
margalabargala wrote 1 day ago:
Are crystalline structures alive?
LtWorf wrote 1 day ago:
The one that destroyed Data's planet was, I'd say.
dsego wrote 2 days ago:
I was taught in school they were something in between.
alkyon wrote 2 days ago:
They do have genes and are subject to natural selection so to say the
least they are a clear borderline case.
rssoconnor wrote 2 days ago:
Not that I'm qualified to reply, but I think this is debated. I seem
to recall reading in "Immune" by Philipp Dettmer that there is an
argument that a virus is analogous to a spore stage of life, and the
virus begins "living" when it plants itself inside a cell full of
"nutrients", sheds it's skin and begins consuming and replicating.
dJLcnYfsE3 wrote 1 day ago:
It is always going to be controversial but after discovery of
prions - needle shifted to "self-replicating means nothing and
viruses are also dead". Then scientists also found viruses large
enough that they get infected with other viruses, and parasitic
cells that are missing most parts required for metabolism, so it is
getting more fuzzy again.
cainxinth wrote 2 days ago:
Viruses are to life as LLMs are to reasoning: they often behave like
their category expects but not for the same reasons as the genuine
article.
paddleon wrote 2 days ago:
as a former virologist, I love the thought that LLMs are the virus
of reasoning :)
graybeardhacker wrote 2 days ago:
Once a virologist always a virologist I always say.
seemaze wrote 2 days ago:
..er, a parasitic threat to life and happiness that become an
endemic drag on global well being?
tock wrote 1 day ago:
Every other living organism looking at human beings: yeah.
thundergolfer wrote 2 days ago:
Pretty glad the 9 foot long Arthopleura centipede went extinct 300
million years ago. No one wants to deal with that thing.
adrian_b wrote 2 days ago:
It was a millipede, not a centipede, which probably ate fungi or
decaying plants.
So it was not a dangerous predator, though it could have been
poisonous, like many modern millipedes.
kkylin wrote 2 days ago:
We've still got this: [1] Thankfully they don't live on land.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_aphroditois
hermitcrab wrote 2 days ago:
Not really bothered by snakes, sharks or spiders. But those things
(and cave centipedes) look terrifying.
swiftcoder wrote 2 days ago:
That's fresh nightmare fuel all right
mkmk wrote 2 days ago:
Nice that the back button works.
bitpush wrote 2 days ago:
> Velociraptor
> Smaller than usually depicted, the Velociraptor was actually only
about the size of a turkey.
This is an interesting fact.
vadepaysa wrote 2 days ago:
Beautiful! I love the human feet always visible in the background! It
helps me set perspective.
lrpe wrote 2 days ago:
Are there supposed to be pictures? I passed a human silhouette, but
that was it.
travisgriggs wrote 2 days ago:
> A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a
nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.
Definitely worthy the scroll!
dim13 wrote 1 day ago:
Also: Banana - Although not technically living, it does make for a
good size comparison.
mihaaly wrote 23 hours 35 min ago:
It had to be added:
> Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the largest land predators ever, it had
teeth the size of a banana
8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote 2 days ago:
Makes a good profile description on certain websites.
Magi604 wrote 2 days ago:
The visual scale seems off, especially on the smaller end of things.
Also, are Velociraptors really that small? Jurassic Park lied to me.
psunavy03 wrote 2 days ago:
Spielberg took a Deinonychus and called it a Velociraptor because it
sounded cooler.
mkl wrote 1 day ago:
No, Michael Crichton did:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus#Cultural_signifi...
Bnichs wrote 2 days ago:
Reminds me of the video game Everything. Its a really cool game where
you explore the various scales of the universe. It has its quirks
(somewhat phoned in graphics like animals walking) but the concept and
execution are great IMO, would love a sequel. Also bonus points for
featuring Alan watts as a core character.
jakozaur wrote 2 days ago:
I wish Neal would do behind the scenes, how he built this art. I wonder
whether LLM assistants like Claude Code make such an interactive show
more feasible.
He previously did a game "Infinite Craft" which leveraged Llama models.
However, I was only able to find an outdated blog from 2019.
jonahx wrote 2 days ago:
I think you'd notice a pretty big difference in an LLM clone of this
site. The art, music, and other small wouldn't be as consistent or
hang together as nicely.
benatkin wrote 1 day ago:
If I could download the LLM clone, and share it, I think I'd prefer
it. This is just a website that could at any moment disappear, it
isn't like a book.
mda wrote 2 days ago:
I like the stuff un the sute but the number if partners and affiliates
in the consent window is very off putting.
troupo wrote 1 day ago:
It's only 141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s), with no way to
reject all, and you have to manually click on every "vendor" to
remove consent.
It's the second or third time I see this "managed by Google compliant
with IAB" (note: not with GDPR)
thn-gap wrote 1 day ago:
This is super infuriating. I wish there was a way to offshore the
effort and work needed to toggle each option off to the culprit
website.
Perhaps when website A presents you with such hostile prompts, take
their contact email, and subscribe it with automation to each of
the vendors. I'm just too tired of this shit.
yoyohello13 wrote 2 days ago:
I always click when I see neal.fun.
hmokiguess wrote 2 days ago:
This was awesome! Also, I couldn't stop my child brain from
anticipating "your mom" at the end.
siavosh wrote 2 days ago:
Wonderful. The music, illustrations, and sliding sound effect reminded
me of the game Braid.
luqtas wrote 2 days ago:
the slinding at some point made me wonder what if i was playing
Tinder
smallerfish wrote 2 days ago:
I like it, but the switch from metric to inches is confusing, and I
think introduces a bug - there's no way a sea snail is 5-6 neurons
high.
Mogzol wrote 2 days ago:
You can change the units in the top corner. It defaults to metric for
me, but if your browser language is "en-US" you get imperial by
default.
robotresearcher wrote 2 days ago:
Some of your neurons stretch from your brain to your big toe. 1.5m,
or more in a tall person.
yesitcan wrote 2 days ago:
There's no way a tardigrade is half a sea snail.
smallerfish wrote 2 days ago:
Correct, but not the one on the site.
macintux wrote 2 days ago:
> A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a
nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites
jphoward wrote 2 days ago:
It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off?
If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the
left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it would
actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)?
Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird's foot?
Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger
(the in the adjacent picture), which isn't the case?
dartharva wrote 1 day ago:
The T-rex appears taller than the giraffe, but it isn't and the scale
in the website itself shows it.
prmph wrote 2 days ago:
Cool visualization, but I also noticed the switch from SI units to
imperial. From micrometers to inches, which was jarring and hard for
me to compare.
I'd suggest keeping the SI unit , or at least having both once we get
to the level of inches.
s1mon wrote 2 days ago:
I found that jarring as well. There's a toggle in the upper right
to switch to metric.
Even with setting it to metric, it progresses through units based
on the scale. I realize that scientists love to work in scientific
notation, and progressing from nanometers to micrometers, mm, cm,
and finally meters sort of follows that kind of logic. I wonder how
it would feel if the whole thing was in constant units or at least
there was an option for that.
teo_zero wrote 2 days ago:
But if scales were perfectly respected, how could you see both a
neuron and a human on the screen?
ModernMech wrote 2 days ago:
The tardigrade vs. ladybug gave me pause. So a tardigrade is about
the side of a ladybugs eye?
adrian_b wrote 2 days ago:
Actually the tardigrade used as an example is quite big at 500
micrometers.
Most tardigrades are not much bigger than 100 micrometers.
Tardigrades, together with nematodes, rotifers, mites and a few
more rarely encountered groups are among the smallest animals and
they are smaller than many of the bigger among the unicellular
eukaryotes. That is why they have been discovered only after the
invention of the microscope.
The tardigrades have evolved towards smaller and smaller sizes very
early, already during the Cambrian. It is interesting that they are
segmented animals, like their relatives the arthropods and the
velvet worms, but they have very few segments, because in order to
achieve such a small size they have lost all intermediate segments,
so the segments that now form their body were originally the
segments of the head, and now they are followed immediately by the
original segments of the tail, without the original body that
connected the head to the tail. Thus they have been miniaturized by
losing their body and becoming a walking head (the legs of the
tardigrades are what in arthropods have become appendages of the
mouth, e.g. mandibles and maxillae).
glenstein wrote 2 days ago:
I'm seeing the amoeba as approximately the size of the heel segment
of a ladybug's leg. I consider lady bugs pretty small in an intuitive
sense, their legs quite small and the smallest end segment to be
especially small. I think that leaves an amoeba on the fringes of
distinguishable perception which seems right to me, unless I'm
overestimating their size.
elicash wrote 2 days ago:
I came to the comments to express surprise that amoebas were so
large. It appears they vary wildly in size (as small as 2.3
micrometers... but up to 20 cm, or nearly 8 inches).
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba#Size_range
selcuka wrote 1 day ago:
I got surprised by that too, and while comparing its size to the
next organism (Tardigrade) I learned that every member of the same
species of tardigrades has the exact same number of cells [1],
which was even more surprising for me:
> Eutelic organisms have a fixed number of somatic cells when they
reach maturity, the exact number being relatively constant for any
one species. This phenomenon is also referred to as cell constancy.
Development proceeds by cell division until maturity; further
growth occurs via cell enlargement only.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutely
earlyriser wrote 2 days ago:
On the other side, wasps could be so tiny. like you could put
thousands of them inside an amoeba volume.
"Megaphragma mymaripenne is a microscopically sized wasp. At 200
μm in length, it is the third-smallest extant insect, comparable
in size to single-celled organisms. It has a highly reduced nervous
system, containing only 7400 neurons, several orders of magnitude
fewer than in larger insects."
albedoa wrote 2 days ago:
The males of dicopomorpha echmepterygis are even smaller, with
wide sexual dimorphism: [1] I never knew about these either.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicopomorpha_echmepterygis
adrian_b wrote 2 days ago:
It is not right to call the xenophyophore that is on the last row,
and which can have a size of up to 20 cm as an "amoeba".
Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an amoeba and
one that is very frequently encountered and which usually has sizes
not much less than 1 millimeter and sometimes it can reach a size
of a few mm.
The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans, than to
xenophyophores (giant marine unicellular living beings) or to
plants.
Besides the true amoebas there are also a few other kinds of
unicellular eukaryotes with shape-shifting cells, e.g.
foraminifera, radiolarians and others, but already in the first
half of the 19th century it was recognized that those other groups
change their shapes in a different way than the amoebas, so they
were classified separately, even if the term "amoeboid cell" has
always been used about any cell with variable shape.
The true amoebas are related to the group formed by animals and
fungi, and there are some amoebas that have a simple form of
multicellularity, so it is likely that some of the mechanisms
needed for the evolution of multicellularity have been inherited
from a common ancestor of animals, fungi and amoebae.
The multicellular or multinucleate amoebae that belong to
Myxomycetes (one of the kinds of slime moulds) can reach much
bigger sizes, e.g. a diameter of up to 1 meter, because they do not
have the size limitation that exists for simple unicellular
eukaryotes.
elicash wrote 2 days ago:
Thank you for that info/correction!
yunwal wrote 2 days ago:
I don't understand how the location of a 377 foot tall tree could be
kept secret. Wouldn't that type of thing be visible in satellite
imagery at the very least?
housecarpenter wrote 1 day ago:
From Wikipedia:
"The exact location of Hyperion is nominally secret but is available
via internet search.[12] However, in July 2022, the Redwood Park
superintendent closed the entire area around the tree, citing
"devastation of the habitat surrounding Hyperion" caused by visitors.
Its base was trampled by the overuse and as a result ferns no longer
grow around the tree.[13]
Measures to protect the Hyperion tree were officially implemented in
2022 when the National Park Service (NPS) closed public access to its
location in Redwood National Park.[14][15] Anyone who gets too close
could face up to six months in jail and a $5,000 maximum
fine.[13][16][17]"
Petersipoi wrote 2 days ago:
It isn't a secret. The location can easily be found if you Google
it.
efilife wrote 2 days ago:
were you able to? I wasn't [1] Nevermind!
(HTM) [1]: http://famousredwoods.com/hyperion/
1970-01-01 wrote 2 days ago:
It is literally a secret. The location cannot easily be found with
Google. Go ahead, try and find it.
hermitcrab wrote 2 days ago:
And if you do, don't post it.
micromacrofoot wrote 2 days ago:
There are a lot of 300 foot trees in the general vicinity, so you'd
need to actually measure to be precisely sure
1970-01-01 wrote 2 days ago:
It's not sticking straight up from the ground in Kansas. Hyperion has
many siblings nearby and is on rocky terrain which conceals its
overall height.
nh23423fefe wrote 2 days ago:
double clicking makes the animation jitter. ive had to deal with
matching derivatives of smooth slopes in rendering as well. the
animation seems to be finite time (and so variable velocity) and
mashing click is just updating the final point without matching the
current derivative.
MarkusQ wrote 2 days ago:
Cool, but a little more thought on the content rather than the
presentation would improve it. For example starting with an arbitrary
segment of DNA double helix and saying how "tall" this arbitrary
segment is, is just silly.
Instead, it should show how _wide_ it is. And for extra coolness, keep
it in frame, coiling longer and longer as you go, and eventually have
the same strand, which has been with us all the time, as a specific
example (e.g. human chromosome 7 or some such) by _length_
hartator wrote 2 days ago:
Always awesome with by Neal.
(DIR) <- back to front page