Show HN: There are over a thousand possible finger arrangements for your hands | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: There are over a thousand possible finger arrangements for your hands

students.tools

25 pointsxk4rim40 comments

https://students.tools/weight-to-objects/

This is a very handy tool. I have actively searched for something similar via google for a while now but never came close to anything good. This "toy" of yours is excellent

Thank you very much! Glad that you liked it! :)

"The piano's black and white keys were reversed into what we know today in Mozart's days."

Wow TIL, this looked way much cooler

Yeah, it's like a dark-mode piano. They still exist today but for the harpsichord.

Shape ID 0010000100 is blurry.

I enjoy how the IDs are descriptive. I don't like the nanny filter. It's culturally insensitive because it only blocks a hand symbol that's considered rude in one cultural context but not another.

For instance, shape ID 0011000110 would be considered rude in England, but it's not filtered.

It also reinforces the cultural power of the symbol, which is the opposite of what is probably intended. See: Streisand Effect.

Interesting. That's not the first time I get this suggestion. So what's the solution here? Should I just remove the filter?

Edit: I ended up removing the filter.

Thank you! I think you made the right decision.

We're on HN! People might find it more interesting to find out it's not just over 1000, but 1024 exactly. And I'll leave it for curious minds to think on it why that becomes obvious when seeing the problem from the right perspective.

you're actually blurring some of these images, huh? :D

Not anymore

It's actually 1021, after subtracting the 3 censored arrangements.

I just removed the censoring feature, enjoy

Cool thanks, time to show it to children.

what I'm curious about is the account who submitted this, a 3 month old account with no comments and only submissions from that particular website.

Are you affiliated with the website? Is the submitter affiliated with the website?

Based on the "Show HN:" in the title, I would assume so.

I don't remember seeing "show hn" in the title when I posted.

Hi. OP here. I'm the developer of the website.

Don't worry. I'm not a bot. I'm just very new here; this is my first comment (and this is my first submission to get that many comments).

I've decided to start engaging with HN from today. You'll see me post other links from other websites soon.

Let's think about UTF-HANDS. Unicode needs 21 bits that means every code points needs two gestures plus 1 additional bit. Rotating the palm of each hand toward body/away from body allows us 2 additional bits per gesture. So we could actually have variable length encoding: 0x000 - 0x3FF one gesture, the rest two gestures.

You haven't accounted for endianness yet. After all, your left is my right when we're facing each other. Perhaps orient hands vertically and the upper one is the more significant set of bits.

Also, for cases when one hand is unavailable, I propose a companion 6-bit encoding UTF-HAND where the multi-gesture sequences begin at 0x20.

This should be adopted into sign languages, it would make a more culturally diverse alternative to standard single-alphabet finger spelling :)

Just use trusty BOM first to announce whether you're left or right handed XD

It's also how Taco Bell can keep coming up with new menu items reusing the same set of ingredients.

I just discovered the Beefy 5-Layer Wrap.

Interesting. So if a restaurant has 10 customizable ingredients, they can mix them up to make 1024 meals.

Basically what Chipotle kind of is

It's a fun party trick, counting to 2^10-1 (1023) using your fingers! Kids counting 1-10 use, effectively, "unary notation".

One could count even higher if willing to put each finger into an intermediate state, as base-3 or base-4.

I find the contortions needed to do base 2 with my fingers too cumbersome. On the other hand, base 6 is really easy. Each hand only needs to do the usual 0-1-2-3-4-5 arrangement and you get to count from 0 to 35(6^2-1).

A middle ground that’s particularly easy to think about is chisanbop. Each hand shows a base 10 digit where thumbs are 5 and the others are 1.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop

TIL. Thank you very much for sharing this!

Was it intentional that when I clicked until I get two the first time, the hands greeted me with middles fingers?

The odds of this happening is ~2.23%

Yet somehow most of us still need two hands to count to ten.

You can additionally use your toes to count to 20. That will be 1,048,576 possible finger arrangements.

I can count to 21...

Those must be some flexible toes!

Thanks, just like respect, are not requested but are given…

Yep 2^10 = 1024

Yep i learned counting on my hands in Binary very fast as a kid. Pretty unimpressive skill in normal company it turns out however.

I calculated it using ∑{r=0 => 10}(10Cr) which is a bit of an overkill

Try 0010000100

Yeah, this is my favorite shape. #133

Needs “blood”

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