The Xkcd thing, now interactive | Hacker News Reader

The Xkcd thing, now interactive

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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.

The shark biting the cable is what gets me

I like that the hand crank is going counter-clockwise

Crap, I saw it as clockwise. (Furious reversal of effort…)

Oh wow! :)

Thank you for the laughs. I needed that!

given the events of the last few days, one could add a Shahed drone too.

Can someone help me understand the single brick at the very bottom under Linux? What is it representing?

The cables at the bottom of the ocean.

Undersea cables. With a shark biting one.

The undersea cables actually connecting the entire internet. Sometimes sharks just take a bite of them, they're reasonable well protected but it's enough damage to cause outages and disruptions.

It's the single pin under everything because there are a limited number of those cables especially in some regions so a single shark can take out the entire internet for some countries.

http://www.mirceakademy.com/uploads/MSA2024-6-6.pdf

I feel like having them as a single brick is a bit hyperbolic, since undersea cables are pretty redundant in most of the world. Get rid of one and traffic just routes around it. Ships have been routinely destroying cables in the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea in the past couple of years without causing significant disruptions.

The whole Internet was designed for precisely this use case. If there is an outage, the distributed system will try to find another path. No actual central point of failure. As you say, the single brick is hyperbolic. But yea, those sharks can certainly be disruptive at times.

Well that depends on how much traffic that cable was supporting, how much free capacity is available on other cables heading to the same area, how much additional latency the rerouting will add and how sensitive to latency the rerouted traffic is doesn't it?

Only mildly. There's not huge amounts of dark capacity just sitting around waiting to take over so if a major fiber connection goes down the remainder will get congested with the extra capacity. It won't cascade like a power outage but the remaining lines will slow down.

"most of the world" is doing a seriously large amount of heavy lifting in this sentence.

There are many regions that are served by a single line, more than you think.

Even "well connected" places have fewer cables than you expect, and the frustrating thing is that you don't know that you can route around an issue until you try.

BGP is really resilient, which is great, but if your path is not clear then you'll only realise it when the failover doesn't happen, you'll think there's a redundant path.

Do satellite networks not move the needle in terms of capacity/reliability now?

No. They're not setup to be a principal route between two nations and most satellite networks until very recently didn't even route messages through other satellites but instead retransmitted them to a ground station with access to hardline internet. Even Starlink mostly does this still because it's way cheaper and easier.

You can see an unofficial tracker [0] of the Starlink downlink network and see how outside of some rural areas your data is only moving a few tens of miles away most of the time before it's sent down to a ground system. Their sats have 3 200 Gbps laser communicators for intra constellation routing which is pretty small for the task of replacing fiber optic links.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1805q6rlePY4WZd8QMO...

God, those nicknames. The Algo of Power GW (gateway?) the Pew Pew GW? Elon chose these.

It's all so pick me. Like his insistence that he's a top level gamer.

I never understand why questions like this get downvoted around here.

They don't, you just have to wait longer than an hour for an accurate rating

Only a little bit. Just clicking around, a new Hawaii cable is supposed to have 24 Fiber Pairs and 18Tbit per Fiber Pair at the end of this year. If you lose several tbits of bandwidth, you're going to have a hard time making it up with satellite.

For small island countries and such, satellite capacity may be sufficient; and it is likely helpful for keeping international calling alive even if it's not sufficient for international data. But when you drop capacity by a factor of 1000, it's going to be super messy.

Conceptually, it's the difference between your wifi versus running a single fiber to each room in your house. The difference in bandwidth is multiple orders of magnitude.

This is never going to change because from a physical perspective free radio is a shared medium while each individual fiber (or wire) has its own private bandwidth.

The capacity of satellite networks is minuscule compared to that of undersea fibre optics.

Plus still have to contend with the space sharks.

Looks like an undersea cable to me

One of DNS pillars should be replaced by BGP.

And NTP, if I recall correctly.

When was that?

When was BGP? Or when was NTP?

I think it was a joke based on NTP being a time protocol.

whoosh

Apparently it is impossible to find the time or place to add them.

The "Whatever Microsoft is doing" bit was always my favorite.

The depiction of Microsoft as "angry birds coming to indiscriminately fuck everything up" is absolutely on point for Microsoft in 2025/26

AWS definitely lives above unpaid developers. In fact they should probably be the bird flying straight at the unpaid developers as they force yet another company to move to a closed license to survive.

You don't think AWS is internally built on massive amounts of open source?

That's what it would mean to place them above unpaid developers in the illustration, yes.

There's a recent update: https://x.com/Hesamation/status/2028289544676630739?s=20

Here's a little more context about the author's motivation: https://mathstodon.xyz/@csk/116162797629337132

Oh cool, a product of Waterloo's Craig Kaplan, most famous for his work on the discovery of the einstein monotile

> In my online undergraduate P5.js course, students are about to begin the module on motion and physics, including a bit of physics simulation using Matter.js.

When did things get specialized this much?

Looking through the website of the course, it's not really a general computer science course - it "explores the use of graphics in art, design and visualization contexts" and is part of the digital art program. Quite a reasonable tech stack, for that purpose I think.

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.

Was about to comment the same. It's a common mistake/gotcha.

Possibly dumb question, but does that still hold inside p5js?

p5 is just a wrapper that adds the setup() and draw() functions, so yes

Come on, HN, you can't let this information stay under the front page for 13 hours and everyone's like "ah yes of course". Please don't register the mousemove event handler on window, that old school hack never really worked and was obsoleted 10 years ago when the pointer API became standard.

Things are much nicer now and the problem is entirely avoided by using pointer events: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/set...

I love that the initial state itself isn't stable.

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

Interesting! It's stable on my machine. I wonder if this is due to floating-point differences.

On my machine, the initial state isn't simulated. It only begins simulation when I touch it. At which point, the weight causes the bottom blocks to intersect each other significantly.

For me, bottom blocks stay still while those on the very top fall down.

If I open it, click on the background to activate the physics and just keep the tab open, pretty much all of the blocks that can collapse do eventually collapse.

The Nebraska guy’s block remains surprisingly stable, even when the whole thing above it collapses. Very symbolic.

Maybe that's what I'm seeing.

One more pedantic nitpick: when a block gets wedged between two blocks at an angle, it gets slowly pushed out, although there is a lot of weight resting on the top block. That would be realistic only (maybe) if the blocks were made of ice, but not for other materials...

Another reason not to let ice on the internet.

Coefficient of friction is way too low.

I‘m guessing it‘s somewhat framerate-dependent.

That's the javascript effect.

Nah that's just the effect of turning on the simulation. The initial version isn't the same as the first steps because there's no weight. If you look closely after you click the blocks overlap slightly.

Something similar happens all the time in games when you go from a static version of something to the higher level of detail version with physics enabled, if the transition isn't handled gracefully or early enough you can get snapping.

Just like real life. Sit still, touch nothing, and watch everything fall apart all on its own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Someone replied to the thread with a cool improvement. Don't want to spoil it for you, check it out for yourself:

https://chaos.social/@lenaschimmel/116167272004626199

I love that clicking the empty space and just doing nothing at all still causes the blocks to fall apart after some time.

Since it's going to collapse anyway, it's fun to table flip everything using the botton block.

oh look at that. removing IBM enterprise apps really doesn’t break anything and the whole stack got lighter. science.

Did you actually manage to remove a block without everything collapsing (eventually)? Then you must have an incredibly steady hand, it's nearly impossible to do as far as I can see. Which can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the state of the tech stack, I guess...

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.

One naiive solution could be to cloc the dependency and use the size as the height, and fetch number of github contributors as width

Ask and you shall receive: https://stacktower.io/

bro. it asks for the ability for some random github user to literally take over your private repositories.

Yeah, if it weren't for that, I think this would blow up. Plus, even if you get past that, if you try a larger project, it times out after 1 minute and gives up. But it's a pretty awesome idea!

hey! I built this, I know its really scrappy, I just don't have enough time currently to make right by users. I'm on it though... stay tuned

You’re 100% right to call that out. The current GitHub OAuth scope is too broad

I’m changing this ASAP to least-privilege and I’ll publish a clear explanation of scopes + data handling. In the meantime: please run the local/CLI path if you want zero-trust.

Damn dude. That’s awesome! I saw the permissions it wanted out of every org I’m a part of (including some big open source orgs) — I’d probably find myself booted out of those orgs if I accepted that. They def get a notification on every authentication like that and take potential impersonation seriously.

Oh cool. That's a promising start.

I don't know if the "The Nebraska Guy Ranking" this project uses is very useful, though. In particular the "depth" criteria doesn't make much sense to me, since it assumes the more foundational a dependency is, the more robust it must be. This seems to run counter to the point of the original comic where the "Nebraska Guy" piece was the fragile block holding up the entire tower.

This project also doesn't attempt to measure or visualize the complexity of a project. Theoretically a more complex project would require more support than a simple one, so I think that's an important metric to capture.

Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858577

without touching the block, after a while it begins collapsing, which makes it an even better representation of infrastructure

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.

Too delightful. Like a reverse jenga tower you like to topple over.

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

This is oddly fun to play with. Has that angry birds vibe

this is the best thing internet since the last best thing in the internet

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)

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.

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.

If I ever end up developing a package / dependency manager, I'll be strongly tempted to call it "jenga".

If only it wouldn't collapse by itself after clicking anywhere (clicking seems to activate physics) this would be 10/10

> If only it wouldn't collapse by itself after clicking anywhere (clicking seems to activate physics) this would be 10/10

I think that's the other metaphor here.

It's not just standing on the tiny shoulders of one forgotten maintainer. The entire system only appears stable because we're looking at a snapshot of it.

In reality it's already collapsing.

but I came here for amusement, not existential dread.

Nobody expects ~the Spanish inquisition~ existential dread

Yeah. Seems like there is ~0 friction.

And that tiny thing is actually one of the last to collapse...

"The Red Wheelbarrow" (1923) by William Carlos Williams https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelba...

It looks like the stroke/border is not taken into account in the physics simulation.

This can be fixed by:

       for (let re of rects) {
         push();
         translate(re.body.position.x, re.body.position.y);
         rotate(re.body.angle);
    -    rect(0, 0, re.w, re.h, 2);
    +    rect(0, 0, re.w - 1, re.h - 1, 2);
         pop();
       }

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).

Ooh I didn't expect that make me grin and be satisfying at the same time.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I was expecting it to open the FFmpeg website at the end.

I had a similar idea inspired by xkcd:

https://suvakov.github.io/vibes/SlidingPuzzleChess/index.htm...

Increase friction

I love that the thing of itself is completely unstable once you click somewhere to start the simulation … :)

It's like open source Angry Birds.

Accidentally discovered you can quantum tunnel blocks through the weak link to shore it up!

That was a lot of fun actually. I used one block to wreck all the others. Thanks for sharing.

This reminds me of one of my favourite flash games, Fantastic Contraption, for some reason.

Played with it on the phone. So satisfying.

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

Really fantastic work.

Challenge: Rearrange the blocks into a stable configuration without losing any offscreen

I would like to have online multiplayer version of Jenga game based on these mechanics

Ooooh, that's fun to make topple. I kind of want to launch an Angry Bird at it.

I knew exactly what this would be before even clicking it. Someone had to make it!

There is so many xkcd things, I didn't know which it would be.

It's 2,347. There's also 927. And 538, and who can forget 386. 936 is also a classic. 1205 is a favorite, although AI changes the scales these days. As does 303. 1838 is another good one for when CC is "thinking". 1425.

Edit oh and Extrapolating out; 605.

And it's all a meta commentary on 915.

Liked those small Box2D playboxes from decades ago, wonder where all that went.

We absolutely need a "whatever Microsoft is doing" object in that.

love it, integrate it into https://github.com/matzehuels/stacktower please!

It's funny even when you touch nothing it still collapses.

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.

Plus "a dev typing real fast" from the XKCD Stack (https://xkcd.com/1636/) is now feasible.

funny, but poorly coded because there's not friction coefficient it seems - just clicking into the applet, everything eventually just falls over

Who are the big blocks that survive the collapse though?

Some BSD server somewhere which was last rebooted in 1994. No one is really sure where it’s physically located, but it keeps everything running.

And it still pings, of course

Of course.

https://bash-org-archive.com/?5273

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.

App?

There are a few HN readers out there, but none of them are official as far as I know.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.h...

I've been using it so long, I forgot that it is not official.

Im sure whatever’s happening isn’t intended but I did experience jankyness when trying to use the back button on Safari on iOS. It wouldn’t let me go back.

I hope Randall reads HN and sees this, he’d love it.

I'd be surprised if he didn't read HN at least occasionally

I think you may have set friction too low

The blocks feel a little bit too slippery

The physics remind me of Little Inferno

I'd like a medal for clearing the screen of all debris. What's that you say, some of it is still useful? oh

Now we just need a generated version of this based on a package.json!

THIS IS THE BEST THING EVAR!

What’s the Nebraska project?

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2347:_Dependency has some examples, one of which is actually from nebraska

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.

The source code is right there ... just change the background image to whatever you want.

Ha! ^_^

That text is literally the only thing hardcoded. It's inside a PNG, sourced in.

I get it though. Reproducing that cutesy "hand drawn" text would be a pain in the arse if you didn't just have the font.[1]

    [1] https://github.com/ipython/xkcd-font

This is very real.

needs angry birds version

or not, it’s great as is BTW

No title text, No respect...

epic

the weird physics are mildly infuriating. still funny though

That is the joke, I think. The game is to touch anything and try to not make the rest fall down.

Simply clicking on the empty background already makes things fall down.

Not sure. It's not it being unstable, it's small bricks moving bigger stuff to the side and maybe even upward. If I missed the joke I just don't find it funny.

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