[HN Gopher] A Mind Is Born (2017)
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A Mind Is Born (2017)
Author : matthewsinclair
Score : 277 points
Date : 2021-03-19 08:56 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (linusakesson.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (linusakesson.net)
| yuchi wrote:
| For the record, this is from 2017. A lot of previous discussion
| happened at the time: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=a+mind+is+born
| pvg wrote:
| Seems like the one thread with comments from that search is
| just this one:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164907
| dang wrote:
| Also
|
| _A Mind Is Born_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22642527 - March 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| There are a few other threads with 1 comment but not an
| interesting 1 comment.
| dang wrote:
| If curious, past threads:
|
| _A Mind Is Born_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22642527
| - March 2020 (1 comment)
|
| _A Mind is Born_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164907
| - April 2017 (53 comments)
| _the_inflator wrote:
| This dude is really a C64 genius. For example, his works on
| sprite crunching is invaluable:
| https://linusakesson.net/scene/lunatico/misc.php
|
| This effect took decades to be explained in detail like he did.
| userbinator wrote:
| There's also this - hardware-level race condition bug - which
| he analysed and explained:
| https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/index.php
|
| His site is also full of interesting stuff, not just around
| C64.
| verytrivial wrote:
| Anyone interested in VMs, domain specific languages, and
| Interactive Fiction will also probably be thoroughly impressed
| by what he's produced in that domain too (Dialog and
| A-machibe). Oh, and he programmed some of the Teenage
| Engineering Pocket Operators 8-bit themed synths. And have you
| seen the chiptune organ mod?
|
| He is not on GitHub/Twitch/itch (much), and self-hosts his
| blog. I think he likes it under the radar. I hope he's well
| compensated because he has the skills to become a super villain
| if need be.
| jcims wrote:
| This would have given me chills and a feeling of unlimited
| potential in my life if someone figured it out back in 1983.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| "Attentive readers will have noticed that only the low byte of
| the video matrix pointer gets incremented."
|
| Why yes, hrumpf, of course, anyone would notice that! :-)
|
| Respect. As an ex-Apple II programmer I love that old box. But
| wow the C64 has so many more tools to leverage for demos like
| this.
| diydsp wrote:
| > ex-Apple II programmer I love that old box. But wow the C64
|
| heh, I've been going in the opposite direction. No interrupts
| on the apple II?! gulp. I guess ppl added a MOS 6526 to their
| Apple IIes, but none exists in my IIc.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Makes you think what kinds of things we may find in the space of
| 256-byte programs. Is there a convincing chatbot there somewhere
| (sans language training)? Perhaps something conscious?
| apples_oranges wrote:
| z_n+1 = z_n^2 + c <- fewer than 256 bytes, yet it can be used
| to produce a beautiful endlessly complex image.
|
| To me it almost feels as if God or whoever has intentionally
| hidden it, in the way everything works I mean, so that we could
| one day find it. Once we have invented complex numbers for
| example..
|
| What other secrets are out there? Or rather in here?
| bloak wrote:
| There is probably a 256-byte program that simulates a universe
| in which a superhuman intelligence evolves. Of course the
| memory and runtime requirements of that program would be
| prohibitive, and the superhuman intelligence would not know any
| human language, because there are more than 2048 bits of
| entropy in the basic vocabulary of any language (even Toki
| Pona, I would guess).
| ajuc wrote:
| > There is probably a 256-byte program that simulates a
| universe in which a superhuman intelligence evolves
|
| I can even write it :) x = 0 while
| (true): eval(int_to_code(x)) x += 1
|
| of course the runtime will be probably quite long
|
| EDIT: I forgot about the stop problem. But that's easy - stop
| the eval when memory repeats. x = 0
| prevStates = None while (true): state = x
| prevStates = set() while(not state in prevStates):
| prevStates += state state =
| eval_1_step(int_to_code(state)) x += 1
|
| int_to_code and eval_1_step should be part of the language
|
| What really blows my mind is that this basically makes the
| multiverse (everything that could happen - happens in some
| other universe).
| exikyut wrote:
| Hmmm.
|
| This makes me wonder if, in the same way we've been
| technically-erroneously been hyperfocusing on CPU speed and
| quantity of memory in system-measuring contests and
| benchmarks, we've developed a fixation for how little RAM or
| CPU we can use while doing something interesting. I don't see
| the same sorts of fights developing around how much disk
| space we use or what the specs of all the systems we used for
| preprocessing are.
|
| Demos are supposed to be about conquering limitations, right?
| Inspiring creativity and all that? Well, why can't we add
| those sorts of constraints in, then? Aren't we smart enough?
| :P
|
| We might even build consciousness one day if we're honest
| about how much total resources we're using. That way we would
| actually have to reason about all the bits (no more "GPUs are
| really * _that complicated_ * that what you're describing is
| impossible") and there would be no more black boxes.
|
| Demos would be _interesting_.
| grishka wrote:
| It is plausible that there could be an initially 256-byte
| program that is self-expanding, as in, it generates more code
| as it runs, gradually increasing the complexity of whatever
| it's doing.
| alcover wrote:
| > increasing the complexity of whatever it's doing.
|
| I wonder if this is possible at all without external input.
| I'm an ignorant in Complexity Theory though.
| codeulike wrote:
| You could have something generating a sequence, say PI to
| infinite digits, and then 'executing' instructions based on
| those digits. You'd have to design the 'language' very
| carefully so that any errors or nonsensical series of
| instructions were ignored or recovered from. Some way of
| avoiding infinite loops. Hmmmm. It's probably not possible to
| guarantee that it wouldn't get stuck in a loop eventually
| (which would mean complexity would no longer increase).
|
| My bet is on this being impossible to continue indefinitely
| due to the halting problem implying that it would fall into a
| loop eventually.
| wussboy wrote:
| ... you mean like our DNA?
| indy wrote:
| Although not quite 256 bytes, here's a chess playing program in
| 288 bytes:
|
| https://leanchess.github.io/
| Cybiote wrote:
| Anthropomorphizing evolution a little, I'd bet the department
| that works on crafting serious intelligence into bees and
| jumping spider into milliwatt (or perhaps order 102 mW) brains
| would look respectfully at this kind of demo-scene wizardry.
| tpmx wrote:
| Looks like Linus A moved on from Axis (the IP camera manufacturer
| now owned by Canon) to Teenage Engineering, job-wise. Probably a
| good move in terms of having more fun at work.
| kruxigt wrote:
| It is beyond my comprehension the unbelievably large portions of
| intelligence and clear thought that is "hidden" away in obscure
| places like that in question here. Some people really just want
| to put their obviously enormous brains to work tinkering on
| things almost no one will appreciate.
| motohagiography wrote:
| His execution on this is absolutely humbling to see. So awesome!
| fortran77 wrote:
| I wonder how much progress we're missing out on today because few
| people are hand tuning x64 and ARM assembly language.
| elymar wrote:
| Is anyone selling NFT's of demos? I feel like a Farbrausch would
| have a high valuation.
| ogrisel wrote:
| If you plan to mint digital art and sell or buy NFTs, please
| consider low-carbon platforms such as:
|
| https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/
|
| that is based on Tezos and therefore relies on Proof-of-Stake
| instead of Proof-of-Work to reduce the environmental impacts.
| [deleted]
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I love procedural composition. I got my MFA in the early 90's in
| electronic music and there used to be WAY more of this happening
| in the 60's, 70's and especially in the 80's (with MAX on Macs)
| than today.
|
| Clever that he exploited artefacts of the DSP to create the drum
| sounds. That's kind of how old cheap CASIO keyboards work, by
| filtering glitches. Sweeping tight filter on you DSP is a trick
| modern electronic music uses to create a sense of variety in a
| repeating line. The melody generation is similar to how a Sample-
| and-hold waveforms create "melody" out of a random feed forward.
|
| I remember when Nibble magazine used to have a 2-liner contest at
| the end of every issue for who go do the most with 2 lines of
| Applesoft Basic. Beagle Brothers even released a disk of
| 1-liners, which were really impressive.
| oceanghost wrote:
| Visually it seems to be a distorted Serpenski Triangle? I'm not
| sure I'm impressed.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| What were your thoughts/opinion on the explanation in the
| technical details of the "How it Works" section?
|
| Since you referenced the visuals, and the "How it Works"
| section details that they were secondary/dictated by the
| audio...what prompted you to focus on the visuals?
|
| Just interested in your thoughts since presumably you read the
| technical details in the "How it Works" section.
| jmull wrote:
| I can only assume you did not have the sound turned on?
| jng wrote:
| In order to appreciate it, it is necessary to understand the
| difficulty of implementing something like that on an 8-bit
| computer from the 80s with 256 bytes of code, which is really
| impressive by itself. It doesn't hurt its ability to impress
| that the creation shows a great, coherent artistic vision,
| which results in an enticing, enjoyable, meaningful viewing
| experience - which of course is only accessible to people with
| the required type and amount of sensitivity.
| oceanghost wrote:
| I supper appreciate your response. I cut my teeth on the 6502
| ad 6508... I think you're romancing the stone a bit.
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| To me, the most impressive part is the audio.
| arethuza wrote:
| I looked at it for a bit and thought "Those graphics are
| incredible for 256 bytes" only after watching it for a while
| did I realise it had audio as well!
| 3np wrote:
| There's the music, as well.
| progre wrote:
| Let's see your 256b demo then, I sure _that_ will be impressive
| royjacobs wrote:
| Like us demosceners say, go make a demo about it then
| [deleted]
| gnramires wrote:
| Your comment itself is about 1/3 of the size (uncompressed) of
| the demo ;)
| deater wrote:
| if you like size-coded demos you should check all of the ones
| released at the lovebyte 2021 "sizecoding" demo party last
| weekend http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1935&when=2021
|
| also look up the byte-battles, the live head-to-head 256-byte
| programming tournamet
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Why aren't we (humanity) bundling those up as NFTs and selling
| them for millions of dollars, rather than tweets and sports
| videos?
| ballenf wrote:
| Watching on YouTube and suffering through the compression
| artifacts made me think that the code has reached near absolute
| compression ratio of the resulting audio/video.
|
| Kind of astounding to think that the 720p50 video from YouTube is
| millions if not billions of times larger than the code that
| produced it and is still incredibly lossy.
|
| (Re: compression, if we're being technical then the C64 machine
| instructions that the code calls would need to be included in the
| total. I think?)
| tgtweak wrote:
| There are almost NO moving parts in this video - where a group
| of pixels could be predictably shifted on the screen between
| frames with minimal changes - and the frequency that color and
| intensity are changing means that nearly every other
| optimization (aside from color-space compression) is thrown
| out.
|
| It is an impressive display of how much video compression
| optimization is dependent on the fundamentals of the things we
| are recording/producing in the real world.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| It's easy to create a signal that would be damaged by
| compression in much less than 256 bytes.
| tombh wrote:
| I'd seen this before on HN, and thought about it many times
| after, but couldn't remember the name, so couldn't find it :( I'm
| glad to see it again.
|
| Personally I see this as a great work of art, perhaps in a way
| that some people consider great classical pieces of music. Here's
| a comment from the linked page that poetically reflects that
| sentiment: This demo is not just technically
| impressive but I found also evocative of thought and emotion.
| This isn't just a programming triumph, but an artistic one.
| The program itself, at 256 bytes, is little more than a "seed"
| from which the demo (and the Mind) blossoms from. It's so small
| that the actual execution in memory takes up more space, and
| watching it play out on YouTube takes up orders of magnitude
| more; how many dozens of gigabytes were transmitted by all the
| people who've watched videos of this demo? But what
| about what we actually see and hear? The visuals start off as
| Sierpinski triangles, symbolic of both the endless, seemingly-
| chaotic nature of fractals as well as their order. As the song
| plays, the fractals become morphed into other shapes. Lines,
| sharp corners, and occasionally blobs show up, evoking in me
| images of wrinkles in brains or circuit patterns. The melody is
| randomly generated but backed by a simple, steady bass rhythm, a
| similar marriage of chaos and order. The song's climax (at 1:42
| in the video) impresses upon me a march of progress as the Mind
| finally takes shape, formed from random matter and energy and
| into an entity. We observe the formation of the Mind from the
| ether not just visually and aurally, but also in the form of the
| 256-byte seed expanding into the demo flower, eventually taking
| shape as the C64's home screen.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| That's my favorite aspect of this demo; I really like the
| music. Like it legit works as a standalone track, I could
| totally imagine hearing it at a club. There's a lot of very
| impressive technical demos whose aesthetics are, well, specific
| to the demoscene. This is something more.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| yes yes
|
| another nice example of why the Demoscene is a great example of
| digital culture/art and is being submitted to UNESCO in a
| number of countries to be on lists of world cultural heritage
| (successfully already in Finland, soon Germany I think)
|
| http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| if you like that kind of demo, Lemmingoffence on youtube is a
| goldmine: https://www.youtube.com/user/lemmingiFIGation
|
| They are still very active and publish regularly.
| grishka wrote:
| Oh, it's the same guy who made this amazing thing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uU4BzSQQmY
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| And this, which is even more impressive:
|
| http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/index.php
| tyingq wrote:
| It's a little better experience via an online C64 emulator.
|
| Download the 256 byte demo:
| https://hd0.linusakesson.net/files/a_mind_is_born.prg
|
| Go to the emulator:
| https://c64emulator.111mb.de/index.php?site=pp_javascript&la...
|
| Scroll down to "drop file", turn off autoload, upload the demo ,
| turn on sound and fullscreen, then click the "load" button.
| guenthert wrote:
| That is awesome (both the emulator in JS and the demo), thanks!
| [deleted]
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| Thanks this a lot better than the compressed video on youtube.
| matthewsinclair wrote:
| Here's a direct YouTube link to a video of the demo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8&ab_channel=lftkr...
| tom_ wrote:
| Some more 256 (or fewer) byte demos:
| https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1935
| Aldipower wrote:
| "A Mind Is Blown Away" ;)
| [deleted]
| flenserboy wrote:
| Reminds me of the old Beagle Brothers one-liners published in
| their ads, though this is much more impressive, given the size.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros)
| mattstudio wrote:
| https://stevenf.com/beagle/jackzip.html
| RamRodification wrote:
| Linus is a cool guy. Check out the Chipophone. An 8-bit
| synthesizer built form an old electric organ
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1pchpDD5EU
|
| http://www.linusakesson.net/chipophone/
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| this gets posted in video or this same link often on here,
| anywhere from a year ago to 4 years ago
|
| here's some previous discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164907
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(page generated 2021-03-19 23:01 UTC)