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Show HN: Bitwise Liminal – A Short Film in 256 Bytes of Code

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Re: Show HN: Bitwise Liminal – A Short Film in 256 Bytes of Code

#33

Post by dang »

Recent and related:

Cross My Heart – A Frogger Demake in 256 Bytes of HTML/JS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39336677 - Feb 2024 (44 comments)

Normally we downweight follow-up submissions (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) but since (a) the submitter is the author in this case, and (b) the work is amazing, I've made it a Show HN instead (per https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) and left it up.

Re: Show HN: Bitwise Liminal – A Short Film in 256 Bytes of Code

#34

Post by sowbug »

ivan_ar wrote: post #27
sowbug wrote: post #25

Stuff like this makes me believe that the entirety of life really could be encoded in DNA. I've read that if you gzipped the human genome, the file would be about 4MB, which intuitively seems too small to represent a human. But if this behavior can emerge from 256 bytes, then clearly my intuition is off.

Is a misconception that DNA is enough by itself to replicate a living being, there are biological bases in the embryon that need to be pass down from the parent as biological infraestructure for the new being to form.

You're absolutely correct, just as you'd be correct to observe that these 256 bytes require a fairly complex software platform running on fairly complex hardware.

And all these things, including us, operate within the fabric of the universe, whose complexity is only beginning to be understood.

Re: Show HN: Bitwise Liminal – A Short Film in 256 Bytes of Code

#36

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

sowbug wrote: post #25

Stuff like this makes me believe that the entirety of life really could be encoded in DNA. I've read that if you gzipped the human genome, the file would be about 4MB, which intuitively seems too small to represent a human. But if this behavior can emerge from 256 bytes, then clearly my intuition is off.

4MB are enough to discriminate between 2^(3.2 * 10^7) possible states. Suppose you have a decompressor that can interpret a percent of a percent of a percent of a percent of those states as functional lifeforms. There are about a trillion species on the planet[1]; let's say there are a trillion times as many potential species that don't currently exist and a trillion variations within each. And then let's multiply by another trillion for good measure. Wolfram Alpha tells me[2] we've left a margin of error of roughly* ten to the ten million.

[1]https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138446

[2]https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i2d=true&i=Divide%5BPower...

*'roughly' in the sense that a mountain range is roughly coarse sandpaper, but too round not to round to

Re: Show HN: Bitwise Liminal – A Short Film in 256 Bytes of Code

#40

Post by adtac »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #36
sowbug wrote: post #25

Stuff like this makes me believe that the entirety of life really could be encoded in DNA. I've read that if you gzipped the human genome, the file would be about 4MB, which intuitively seems too small to represent a human. But if this behavior can emerge from 256 bytes, then clearly my intuition is off.

4MB are enough to discriminate between 2^(3.2 * 10^7) possible states. Suppose you have a decompressor that can interpret a percent of a percent of a percent of a percent of those states as functional lifeforms. There are about a trillion species on the planet[1]; let's say there are a trillion times as many potential species that don't currently exist and a trillion variations within each. And then let's multiply by…

Even a SHA-256 hash would leave 10^31 margin of error. The "percent of a percent of a percent of a percent" part is sweeping a lot under the proverbial rug here ;)
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