I think there's a severe problem with this implementation. By using wrapping, I can't write "boobs" and have everyone else read my graffiti without them having having the same zoom wrapping point.
This problem is traditionally solved by attempting to teach the aliens how to decode the pattern inside the pattern itself. For example a rendering might look like
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x _ _ x _ x _ x x x _ x _ x _ _ x _ x _ x x x _ x _ x _ _ x
x _ _ x _ x _ x _ _ _ x _ x _ _ x _ x _ x _ x _ x _ x _ _ x
x _ _ x x x _ x x _ _ x x x _ _ x x x _ x _ x _ x _ x _ _ x
x _ _ x _ x _ x _ _ _ _ x _ _ _ _ x _ _ x _ x _ x _ x _ _ x
x _ _ x _ x _ x x x _ _ x _ _ _ _ x _ _ x x x _ x x x _ _ x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
The idea is that the aliens can figure out first that these opening and closing sections have periodicity 30, and because they are so repetitive they do not contain the actual data bits, but then there is a central section which does contain complexity.
So then they will hopefully alight upon the idea of looking at the code two-dimensionally, and adjust their browser width until the lines all line up, at which point they get the custom message.
How long did you spend crafting this comment? Be honest.
I could imagine doing that with Vim, but I don’t think I could do it in less than ten minutes. And then I’d get sidetracked about whether to represent empty checkboxes with _ or - or a Unicode box.
IIRC these messages usually have their dimensions equal to primes, to help the aliens a little bit - for example the Arecibo message was 1679 = 73 * 23 bits. We're hoping the aliens have the sense to recognize a product of two primes.
Slightly, yes! The Arecibo message was 73×23 bits, with the hope that the aliens would break lines after 23 bits. But,
i f . t h e s
n e i l a . e
s . l i k e .
o r t s u o b
p h e d o n .
w . r e d r o
e . a r e . k
c s . a d n i
r e w e d . o
a . e h t . n
r e c i b o .
e g a s s e m
. a n y w a y
and that's to say nothing of spiraling orders etc.
You could sorta kinda claim that most OLED displays are not rectangular [1], since only green is at full resolution, with blue and red being at a partial resolution, by sharing those sub pixels between "logical" pixels.
Note for anyone confused, this is about AMOLED displays commonly used in phones and some OLED laptops from a few years ago.
W-OLED and QD-OLED have unconventional layouts compared to LCDs but every pixel has the complete set of sub pixels (RGB for QD-OLED, RGBW for W-OLED) so it looks more like this:
Just mentioning as while AMOLED phones being the majority of OLED displays seems plausible to me, it's likely not what people in this thread are picturing when they see OLED.
There's a link in the bottom-left corner, haven't checked, but reads like an accompanying reddit tool (since there's no real plugin system, guess it's a web app requiring credentials)
No, no, it's a feature. Your message has been cleverly hidden behind a modern day scytale cipher. Intended recipients must know the correct screen width.
You announced it on the FediVerse, where it has already been boosted almost 700 times as I write this 4 hours later, and it spread to Reddit within 2 hours of that, as you know because you replied to the Reddit post. There is definitely going to be an initial spike of activity, given those. (-:
Love seeing things go viral off the fediverse, it's not designed to push the end of the spectrum out and more organic examples like this might help bring another layer of user adoption.
Ironically, I was looking to see whether Hacker News and anyone else had picked it up, from the FediVerse post. Bing found the Reddit thread from "One Million Checkboxes" as the search query. It's the second search result as I type this.
If you have time, one cool suggestion for gamification would be to do a SHA-256 hash of the binary values of the checkboxes and display current hash and the lowest hash so far.
it's a tiny flask server, a bitset stored in redis, updates broadcast (too frequently! but i don't want to change it now) via websockets, and react-window to only render the checkboxes that are in view.
I'll do a writeup when i finish putting out fires!
Each time a checkbox is checked, a backend job asks ChatGPT to analyze the board state and write a script using Brainfuck that updates the checkbox states and runs it directly in production.
You said crypto but you forgot where running it in production writes the checkbox change event to the blockchain. Checkbox display states only get read from the blockchain, obvi. Otherwise how could it possibly be secure
Checkboxcoin will be a separate product though, that's for the funding
I don't think you can put out a fire like this. Should have tried some kind of webrtc and Kademilia network and crypto to eventually communicate all updates.
How else do you propose a toaster generate heat to make the toast? At least it's not the thermostat so it thinks the AC needs to constantly be running. So there's quite a bit of positive logic in the toaster decision
Just an idea, but make it an internet game. Have a level 2,3,4.
The question is under what circumstances should that game switch to the next version. The idea I had was if all 1Million boxes are unchecked, but this is the internet someone would make it their life’s mission to keep one box checked.
IDK, I think you hinted upon something fun that we all like, it’s the Twitch vs thing, where everyone can interact and our total capacity makes the experience. This is also like the reddit/r/place which was also very fun.
I think you have a genuinely interesting idea, how can you grow it, nurture and change it to hit the true itch of humanity?
Is it ok if I try to write a script to uncheck all the boxes? I don’t want to spam your server and ruin it for everyone if there’s no rate limiting.
(I wince mentioning this publicly; still have flashback trauma from when some HNer wrote a script to download as much data as possible from our Firebase and got a $1k bill overnight.)
Hi! Sorry it took me a bit to get to this, I've been hacking to keep the server up for the last several hours.
Lots of people are botting, I don't think there's anything wrong if you bot too. There's a tiny bit of client-side rate limiting and originally i had server side rate limiting too, but I got rid of that a while ago (I was cutting anything I could to speed things up).
I am very late to this but as of now I think it has cost me about $85, although that will go up a little more quickly once I go through the bandwidth buffer I have with digital ocean (shouldn't be too bad tho)
I love some stats and details on this, what kind of traffic are you seeing etc. Do you have a way to determine how many boxes in your visitor checks/unchecks? 97% of your pictures from Hacker News etc. Congrats on the hit!!!! Fun playing with it!!!
this is....more popular than i expected. the server's gonna be having some problems for a while