The Xkcd thing, now interactive

1092 points - today at 10:56 AM

Source

Comments

BoppreH today at 12:41 PM
I would suggest adding the /r/ProgrammerHumor version too: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1p204nx/ac...

The AI crank always cracks me up.

jfkimmes today at 1:16 PM
Here's a little more context about the author's motivation: https://mathstodon.xyz/@csk/116162797629337132
panzi today at 11:53 AM
Register the mousemove event handler on window, then you will still get the events when the mouse moves out of the window/frame while dragging and it won't be that buggy.
nine_k today at 11:26 PM
If I ever end up developing a package / dependency manager, I'll be strongly tempted to call it "jenga".
knowtheory today at 12:57 PM
I love that the initial state itself isn't stable.

The world keeps moving around us. Can't choose staying still.

PenguinRevolver today at 2:36 PM
I love that clicking the empty space and just doing nothing at all still causes the blocks to fall apart after some time.
andyjohnson0 today at 8:14 PM
This is wonderful.

The gravitational constant is maybe a little low for my taste, but I like that I can fling a block vertically up off the top of the frame and it reappears even 5+ seconds later. Things don't get ignored out of existence. Neat.

tempestn today at 10:45 PM
Accidentally discovered you can quantum tunnel blocks through the weak link to shore it up!
fallingmeat today at 11:55 AM
oh look at that. removing IBM enterprise apps really doesn’t break anything and the whole stack got lighter. science.
Nevermark today at 4:20 PM
As entropy increases, the stack rises.

But then, when trapped in a local maxima prohibiting growth, pressure builds as too many new layers attempt to shim themselves under existing layers, until inevitably the stack collapses somewhere.

Then new layers can restart generating new apex baby layers on a now higher foundation of fertile fragmented but compressed and stable new-legacy rubble. Another point-oh age begins.

And sometimes, the stack just falls apart because.

In between those extinction events, layers that spawn the most layers, and form opportunistic bridges over lateral layers, dominate and thrive.

Occasionally, some layers try to reorder themselves to optimize future growth. Or tunnel down to achieve stronger footing. But like the tower of Hanoi, the more layers involved, the more intractable the replanting and reordering. Meanwhile, other growth routes around them. Yet, many instances of these failed structures can be found in the depths.

zygentoma today at 9:59 PM
I love that the thing of itself is completely unstable once you click somewhere to start the simulation … :)
jascha_eng today at 1:11 PM
This is oddly fun to play with. Has that angry birds vibe
LoganDark today at 11:12 PM
I noticed that when I drag an object, the force appears to originate from the object's center of mass rather than from my cursor. So it feels a little weird.
aanet today at 11:44 AM
Too delightful. Like a reverse jenga tower you like to topple over.

Of course, glad to see it was another @isohedral project.

mezod today at 12:13 PM
this is the best thing internet since the last best thing in the internet
matzehuels today at 9:23 PM
love it, integrate it into https://github.com/matzehuels/stacktower please!
andrewflnr today at 7:01 PM
If you just let the simulation fall apart under its inherent instability, the thanklessly maintained project is often one of the last things to fall. That seems poetically correct.
seydor today at 2:18 PM
without touching the block, after a while it begins collapsing, which makes it an even better representation of infrastructure
throwawayk7h today at 5:26 PM
I would add some lerp-smoothing to the position of the cursor/touch, since it's a bit rigid. Click-drag-release often doesn't result in a fling but rather a sharp drop.

Lovely idea by the way.

foltik today at 3:57 PM
Very satisfying. I ripped out the load bearing piece and everything stayed standing except for the tiny pieces at the very top. Doesn't seem so bad according to the simulations, maybe we could use a good shakeup?
briansm today at 1:14 PM
Just to mention the original was cited in the most recent Veritasium video:

"The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoag03mSuXQ

(at about the 9:50 mark)

cnees today at 6:28 PM
Challenge: Rearrange the blocks into a stable configuration without losing any offscreen
louisbourgault today at 12:38 PM
Really cool! To be honest, when I clicked on this I had a hope that it would be possible to add things to the stack like the ongoing memes of just putting different things in there (maybe live with other people as a collaborative editor).
1e1a today at 12:20 PM
It looks like the stroke/border is not taken into account in the physics simulation.
poolnoodle today at 8:30 PM
The physics remind me of Little Inferno
snalty today at 5:48 PM
This reminds me of one of my favourite flash games, Fantastic Contraption, for some reason.
deleted today at 12:29 PM
c_hastings today at 5:05 PM
That was a lot of fun actually. I used one block to wreck all the others. Thanks for sharing.
barddoo today at 3:23 PM
Increase friction
bbx today at 1:30 PM
I was expecting it to open the FFmpeg website at the end.
msuvakov today at 6:56 PM
zavg today at 4:05 PM
I would like to have online multiplayer version of Jenga game based on these mechanics
jasonjmcghee today at 3:09 PM
Played with it on the phone. So satisfying.

I know the time it takes to get something to feel this good.

Really fantastic work.

AshamedCaptain today at 3:20 PM
Liked those small Box2D playboxes from decades ago, wonder where all that went.
normie3000 today at 12:59 PM
It's like open source Angry Birds.
BoneShard today at 3:43 PM
On an unrelated note, AI completely changed economics of https://xkcd.com/1205/

Previously I'd postpone some tooling since I'd lost more time on it (unless it's something I wanted to learn anyway), but now I'm all in.

merryocha today at 2:09 PM
I knew exactly what this would be before even clicking it. Someone had to make it!
jibal today at 9:11 PM
Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858577
egorfine today at 12:46 PM
We absolutely need a "whatever Microsoft is doing" object in that.
venusenvy47 today at 1:42 PM
Is this website intended to break HN on Android? I've never had a website lock up the HN app like this. I couldn't back out, and I was stuck in a loop when the app restarted on the same page.
9dev today at 2:03 PM
I hope Randall reads HN and sees this, he’d love it.
lwhi today at 1:06 PM
Who are the big blocks that survive the collapse though?
shadowgovt today at 8:14 PM
It's adorable. One small criticism: instead of being stored as initial conditions with no internal forces, if the tooling allows for it it should be stored as the "relaxed" state with internal forces. As it stands, the first interaction with it causes the whole model to 'bump' because everything is actually just kinda hovering in space with no physics simulation happening and only the first interaction causes physics calculations to start.
bitwize today at 7:18 PM
Ooooh, that's fun to make topple. I kind of want to launch an Angry Bird at it.
inanutshellus today at 2:00 PM
Feature request - be able to change the text and re-share it.

Half the fun of this xkcd is referring to it in context of whatever just went haywire.

lencastre today at 5:47 PM
needs angry birds version

or not, it’s great as is BTW

CivBase today at 1:58 PM
It'd be really cool (and probably useful) if someone could figure out a way to generate diagrams like this for any software project.

You'd first need to figure out a way to generate a complete dependency tree. For each box, I interpret its height as a measure of its complexity and its width as a measure of the support it receives. The hardest part would probably be figuring out a way to quantitatively measure those values.

palad1n today at 1:32 PM
THIS IS THE BEST THING EVAR!
tobylane today at 12:29 PM
I'd like a medal for clearing the screen of all debris. What's that you say, some of it is still useful? oh
_nivlac_ today at 12:37 PM
Now we just need a generated version of this based on a package.json!
westurner today at 6:02 PM
"The Red Wheelbarrow" (1923) by William Carlos Williams https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelba...
dmitrygr today at 6:02 PM
I think you may have set friction too low
efilife today at 11:52 AM
If only it wouldn't collapse by itself after clicking anywhere (clicking seems to activate physics) this would be 10/10
MagicMoonlight today at 1:59 PM
The blocks feel a little bit too slippery
harvie today at 3:17 PM
No title text, No respect...
josefritzishere today at 1:25 PM
This is very real.
crokie123 today at 12:18 PM
What’s the Nebraska project?
JimmaDaRustla today at 6:02 PM
funny, but poorly coded because there's not friction coefficient it seems - just clicking into the applet, everything eventually just falls over
bddicken today at 4:23 PM
epic
wink today at 12:45 PM
the weird physics are mildly infuriating. still funny though
evolextra today at 4:36 PM
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