
Oh My Gosh, It’s Covered in Rule 30s - seszett
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2017/06/oh-my-gosh-its-covered-in-rule-30s/
======
symmetricsaurus
James Grime (of, perhaps, Numberphile fame) made a video about it [1].

He also talks about how it's supposed to be related to Conway's game of life
but is actually not (Conway's game of life is a 2D cellular automaton, while
rule 30 is 1D).

[1]: [https://youtu.be/aeyhnrZvQBE](https://youtu.be/aeyhnrZvQBE)

~~~
sova
Rule 30 is 1D? Could you please elaborate on what you mean?

~~~
LukeShu
The pictures you're looking at, one of the axes is time. One row "becomes" the
row below it. Each time-step iteration adds a row to the bottom, while the
rows above it are immutable (because they are in the past).

~~~
munificent
This leads to the natural follow-up question:

You can take a 2D automaton like Conway's Game of Life and turn time into a
_third_ dimension, giving you a single static volume. Has anyone tried doing
that and 3D printing it?

~~~
mcpherrinm
I found [https://www.wired.com/2014/10/3-d-printed-shoes-generated-
us...](https://www.wired.com/2014/10/3-d-printed-shoes-generated-using-
conways-game-life/) which seems cool

Perhaps easier than 3D printing would be stacked laser-cut acrylic sheets. You
could use transparent and partially opaque colors for dead and live cells,
which lets you see the interior 3D structures more clearly than purely opaque
3D printed structures. I think the optical quality would likely be a lot
better than anything I've seen 3d printed.

I'm interested enough in this idea to see if I can come up with some
interesting figures to make.

~~~
sova
Would be very cool. Even just an LED Matrix that showed the game of life in 3D
(time being the upwards/vertical step) would be cool

------
DonHopkins
The walls along 101 through a stretch of Menlo Park have error diffusion
dither patterns on them that I enjoy. Or at least it looks like an error
diffusion dither and not a cellular automata to me, because it seems like a
gradient, somewhat random, sparse, spread out, and not deterministic enough to
be a cellular automata rule.

[https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Menlo+Park,+CA,+USA/@37.586...](https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Menlo+Park,+CA,+USA/@37.5866956,-122.3351576,3a,60y,139.98h,73.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seu87WgEP76Ga7rNOYuN6mQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fa6b1117280ff:0xebbf998e5df289ab!8m2!3d37.4529598!4d-122.1817252)

Here's a few layers of cellular automata (anneal, life and brian) combined
with some error diffusion dithered heat flow, for your enjoyment (try clicking
and dragging and spinning the mouse wheel):

[http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/](http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/)

~~~
pvg
What exactly is going on in the second link?

~~~
DonHopkins
The doc's in the comments! ;)

[https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...](https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM6.js#L41)

~~~
pvg
Sweet, thanks. Without digging up the book, am I reading this right that this
isn't a memoized algorithm like Hashlife, it's just that Javascript got that
stupidly fast?

~~~
DonHopkins
JavaScript got unexpectedly inconceivably stupidly fast. That code is not at
all optimized (except that it tries to use efficient algorithms), and is very
data driven and dynamically parametrizable with dictionaries, yet somehow it
still runs really fast! JavaScript optimization is the new moon shot.

It can emulate the CAM6 hardware, which uses look-up tables pre-computed from
FORTH (now JavaScript) functions, which don't need to be optimized because
they're run once over all possible inputs to generate the table, instead of
for every cell of every frame.

The trade-offs of hardware and software have changed a lot, and it's more than
fast enough, so I optimized for readability and flexibility. It can run
CAM6-compatible (but limited) lookup table based rules (for von Neumann, Moore
and Margolus neighborhoods), and also run arbitrarily complex and multi-
layered rules in JavaScript, that compute the cell value directly.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_neighborhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_neighborhood)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_neighborhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_neighborhood)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cellular_automaton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cellular_automaton)

The rules can be parameterized by dictionaries (including stuff like like
simple numeric parameters, or arrays of convolution kernels, or additional
lookup tables) that you can tweak while it's running.

(The CAM6 lookup table isn't related to hashlife -- it's simply indexed by
concatenating all the bits of the neighborhood together to make a binary
number indexing into the table of next states -- that's what the CAM6 hardware
did directly at 60 frames a second, on a 256x256 matrix, of 8 bits per cell.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam-6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam-6)

CAM-6 Forth source code:

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/code/tomt-cam-forth-
scr.txt](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/code/tomt-cam-forth-scr.txt)

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/code/tomt-users-forth-
scr.txt](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/code/tomt-users-forth-scr.txt)

Rudy Rucker writes about his CAM-6 in the CelLab manual:

[http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap5.html](http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap5.html)

Computer science is still so new that many of the people at the cutting edge
have come from other fields. Though Toffoli holds degrees in physics and
computer science, Bennett's Ph.D. is in physical chemistry. And twenty-nine
year old Margolus is still a graduate student in physics, his dissertation
delayed by the work of inventing, with Toffoli, the CAM-6 Cellular Automaton
Machine.

After watching the CAM in operation at Margolus's office, I am sure the thing
will be a hit. Just as the Moog synthesizer changed the sound of music,
cellular automata will change the look of video.

I tell this to Toffoli and Margolus, and they look unconcerned. What they care
most deeply about is science, about Edward Fredkin's vision of explaining the
world in terms of cellular automata and information mechanics. Margolus talks
about computer hackers, and how a successful program is called “a good hack.”
As the unbelievably bizarre cellular automata images flash by on his screen,
Margolus leans back in his chair and smiles slyly. And then he tells me his
conception of the world we live in.

“The universe is a good hack.”

[...]

Margolus and Toffoli's CAM-6 board was finally coming into production around
then, and I got the Department to order one. The company making the boards was
Systems Concepts of San Francisco; I think they cost $1500. We put our order
in, and I started phoning Systems Concepts up and asking them when I was going
to get my board. By then I'd gotten a copy of Margolus and Toffoli's book,
Cellular Automata Machines, and I was itching to start playing with the board.
And still it didn't come. Finally I told System Concepts that SJSU was going
to have to cancel the purchase order. The next week they sent the board. By
now it was August, 1987.

The packaging of the board was kind of incredible. It came naked, all by
itself, in a plastic bag in a small box of styrofoam peanuts. No cables, no
software, no documentation. Just a three inch by twelve inch rectangle of
plastic—actually two rectangles one on top of the other—completely covered
with computer chips. There were two sockets at one end. I called Systems
Concepts again, and they sent me a few pages of documentation. You were
supposed to put a cable running your graphics card's output into the CAM-6
board, and then plug your monitor cable into the CAM-6's other socket. No,
Systems Concepts didn't have any cables, they were waiting for a special kind
of cable from Asia. So Steve Ware, one of the SJSU Math&CS Department techs,
made me a cable. All I needed then was the software to drive the board, and as
soon as I phoned Toffoli he sent me a copy.

Starting to write programs for the CAM-6 took a little bit of time because the
language it uses is Forth. This is an offbeat computer language that uses
reverse Polish notation. Once you get used to it, Forth is very clean and
nice, but it makes you worry about things you shouldn't really have to worry
about. But, hey, if I needed to know Forth to see cellular automata, then by
God I'd know Forth. I picked it up fast and spent the next four or five months
hacking the CAM-6.

The big turning point came in October, when I was invited to Hackers 3.0, the
1987 edition of the great annual Hackers' conference held at a camp near
Saratoga, CA. I got invited thanks to James Blinn, a graphics wizard who also
happens to be a fan of my science fiction books. As a relative novice to
computing, I felt a little diffident showing up at Hackers, but everyone there
was really nice. It was like, “Come on in! The more the merrier! We're having
fun, yeeeeee-haw!”

I brought my AT along with the CAM-6 in it, and did demos all night long.
People were blown away by the images, though not too many of them sounded like
they were ready to a) cough up $1500, b) beg Systems Concepts for delivery,
and c) learn Forth in order to use a CAM-6 themselves. A bunch of the hackers
made me take the board out of my computer and let them look at it. Not knowing
too much about hardware, I'd imagined all along that the CAM-6 had some
special processors on it. But the hackers informed me that all it really had
was a few latches and a lot of fast RAM memory chips.

~~~
pvg
Fascinating. It makes it sound like the board had... video input/passthrough
of some sort?

~~~
abecedarius
I think I remember that was in the book, that you could configure it to
include video input in the CA neighborhood.

DonHopkins, great work! I wrote a JS engine inspired by the same book too, not
so fancy: [https://github.com/darius/js-
playground/blob/master/ca.js](https://github.com/darius/js-
playground/blob/master/ca.js) but you can edit JS code live to change the
rules and such: [http://wry.me/hacking/ca.html](http://wry.me/hacking/ca.html)
I should make it use fatter pixels like you did.

------
wallnuss
The only sad part of this story is the design was meant to celebrate John
Conway and his Game of Life [1] (Conway actually was a lecturer at Cambridge,
when he introduced GoL).

[1] From 2014: [http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/infrastructure/single-
vie...](http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/infrastructure/single-
view/view/cambridge-science-park-station-to-incorporate-game-of-life.html)

~~~
szemet
_cladding which is derived from John Horton Conway 's 'Game of Life'_

Strange that no one was there to tell them they are wrong. Anyway, how could
they get it wrong in the age of Internet? Every bit of information about 'Game
of Life' is one click away... :( Agree - that's sad...

~~~
damnyou
Do you really, really, really think the architects didn't do their homework?
Can you think of no other possible explanation they went with rule 30 and not
GoL?

~~~
veli_joza
Maybe they didn't want gun patterns for safety reasons :) But seriously,
static patterns work better for medium that is architecture. I just find it so
ironic that Wolfram thought this is homage to HIS work. Does he ever mention
Conway in any of his texts?

~~~
scrumper
He didn't say once in the entire article that he thought it was a homage to
his work. He simply said it used his favorite rule. Everything he writes is
about the beauty of this part of the 'computational universe', about giving
the architects credit for choosing a pattern which blocks on average 50% of
the light, about how they could potentially have extended the work to use more
of the pattern. It's a very interesting article with very little of SW's
infamous blow-hardiness in it.

In other words, no "Wow Cambridge honored me and my amazing automata!", lots
of "These patterns I've loved for years are on a building and that is really
exciting."

------
temp246810
This is the quintessential hacker news post, IMO.

A topic that on the surface seems run of the mill (a train station)

Technical in its essence

Authored by someone notable (in this case really notable, which is not a
requirement)

My comment on the other hand, not in the spirit of the discussions on HN but I
like to celebrate good posts when I see them.

------
kaundur
If anyones interested I wrote some JS to view states 0 to 255 in canvas.
[http://www.kaundur.com/jekyll/update/2016/10/31/cellular-
aut...](http://www.kaundur.com/jekyll/update/2016/10/31/cellular-
automaton.html)

------
GlennS
Anyone know the origin of the 22,000 BC pattern? I had no idea anyone was
making such impressively detailed masonry that far back.

The Sumerian columns with geometric mosaics are pretty cool too.

------
ncw33
Brilliant spot! I hadn't read that in the local papers - there was simply
criticism of the 'boxy' design. I live right by that station, and used it for
the first time this weekend (only a few days after it opened) and my wife and
I commented on the attractive appearance of it.

Despite some controversies (are there enough ticket machines, enough toilets,
enough train services, and so on...) Cambridge North is going to become a
popular station.

------
GuiA
So... who're the architect(s) for the station? How did they go about laying
the tiling on that facade, programming the CNC to cut the pattern in the
aluminium, etc.? Sounds like there are probably some interesting people behind
it all.

~~~
logicallee
In _A New Kind of Science_ , Wolfram made the bold conjecture that the whole
universe might be a cellular automaton. So there doesn't necessarily have to
be a designer: it could just be part of the fabric of the universe itself,
just as he breathtakingly predicted! I mean, he wasn't really thinking of
train stations when he wrote that, it's not exactly the validation he would
have liked... but I think at this point he'll take what he can get :)

-

EDIT: downvotes but I thought this was funny :)

~~~
amelius
Did Wolfram give any clue about how e.g. relativity may emerge from a cellular
automaton?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think he might have. It's been a long time since I read his book, but see
here: [https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/chap-9--fundamental-
physi...](https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/chap-9--fundamental-physics/).

I also remember reading elsewhere that e.g. speed of light (as a finite
information speed limit) limit emerges straight out of casual networks
generalized to be continuous instead of discrete.

------
mturmon
You can make some pretty fun tilings out of Penrose tiles as well. My wife and
I made a ceramic-tile headboard out of the Penrose P2 tiling (an aperiodic
tiling) that looks quite lovely - the tiles, being handmade, avoid sterility.
Like the patterns in the OP, they have recurring themes, but don't fully
repeat.

~~~
rurban
Penrose tilings would look much better, yes. They are proven to be aperiodic.
Penrose' alma mater was St.John's in Cambridge but then he switched to be
professor at Oxford, in the south. So they cannot really put Penrose tilings
on a Cambridge station. There's huge rivalry between those two cities.

But how could they fuck up Conway with Wolfram tilings? Wolfram went to
St.John's in Oxford and then moved to California. No Cambridge there. Conway's
alma mater was in Cambridge and then he became professor in Princeton, USA.
Penrose has the same affiliations as Conway, the only problem is that Penrose
stayed in the UK and went to Oxford.

~~~
jamessb
There is a 'Penrose Paving' outside the new Mathematical Institue in Oxford
(the Andrew Wiles building), which opened in 2013.

There's a video of Roger Penrose talking about it [1], and a time-lapse of it
being laid [2].

[1]:
[https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/865](https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/865)

[3]: [https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/about-us/our-
building](https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/about-us/our-building)

------
dannyking
I made a set of ten cellular automata posters for my office wall y'all might
like! Let me know if you'd like me to send out some high res versions.

[https://imgur.com/a/cz7V2](https://imgur.com/a/cz7V2)

~~~
jacquesm
Those are beautiful.

~~~
dannyking
Thanks! Made them using Processing.org then printed them in high resolution
for the wall. Turned out really nicely!

------
peeters
I'm pretty new to CA, so I found this really useful in giving some necessary
background to the algorithm and what a "rule" is:
[http://natureofcode.com/book/chapter-7-cellular-
automata/](http://natureofcode.com/book/chapter-7-cellular-automata/)

------
jsat
Fantastic post. Opened me up to some mathematics I didn't know about. But
please Wolf, these pictures are tiny.

------
flavio81
One of the most coolest posts i've seen lately.

I did not know such patterns were also present in antique art. I guess one
learns a cool thing every day !

~~~
LoSboccacc
Well look into Ancient Greeks they were already relating beauty and math. Hard
to say where it came out first but they started noticing patterns in music and
from there to associating art to mathematical proportion was a short step

------
laszlokorte
the fashion online shop asos.com also uses a pattern that looks like a
cellular automaton for it's packaging:

[https://twitter.com/laurenadams7/status/632178492503912448](https://twitter.com/laurenadams7/status/632178492503912448)

------
fjfaase
Maybe, the should have used one of the many repeating Rule 30 patterns:
[http://www.iwriteiam.nl/Rule30.html](http://www.iwriteiam.nl/Rule30.html)

------
sova
Uncanny and amazing

------
graycat
Very nice!

------
alkonaut
We get it - cellular automata. This would have been an interesting article if
he had tracked the artist/architects, interviewed them and asked them how
_they_ ended up with these patterns, what tools they used etc.

Instead it's the same endless blabber about the damn automata we have heard
for the last 20 years.

~~~
jdironman
Why do multiples of '512' using the Wolfram alpha automata panels show dark
gray canvases?

(For example, 512,1024,2048, etc...)

[https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/sw-
blog/capanels](https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/sw-blog/capanels)

------
Will_Parker
I've long been a fan of Wolfram's ideas. But I wish he could write a single
thing without most of it being about: how great he is, and how he has
supposedly made the most progress in history with a cognitive step from
already explored cellular automata. It's not even that I'm that bothered by
the arrogance, it's just repetitive and boring.

~~~
Radim
Wolfram reminds me of Richard Feynman, in that sense.

The first time I tried to read "Surely You're Joking" as a kid I had to put it
down -- the incessant "ME! ME! ME!" dripping from every page was a little too
much.

I've since mellowed down and can read Feynman or Wolfram without any issues. I
even enjoy that style now :-)

~~~
dean177
What were you expecting from a biography?

~~~
dickbasedregex
Some humility mixed in with his bragging? Seems like a fair ask.

------
posterboy
That the author would focus purely on his PoV fits with what I read about the
author's character. I was reading and wondering why he wouldn't inquire and
link to an official statement.

~~~
Dylan16807
> That the author would focus purely on his PoV fits with

"this being a casual blog.", I believe is how that sentence is supposed to
end.

~~~
posterboy
a 1000 word article doesn't quite strike me as casual.

~~~
Dylan16807
The length seems pretty typical to me. Most of the text actually goes to
explaining pictures.

------
mtgx
A somewhat relevant "theory of everything" in a TED video from 8 years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy4t_zAJJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy4t_zAJJ4)

------
eternalban
This guy really thinks he invented cellular automata.

------
lanbanger
Just a shame there are no direct trains to or from London to Cambridge North,
eh?!

~~~
justincormack
There are. Even some reasonably fast ones, the fast train I got from London to
Cambridge was stopping there next stop just the other day.

------
11thEarlOfMar
How many human beings on the planet could have seen that pattern, realized it
was familiar, and then figured out what it was? It's like an inside practical
joke, or, the ultimate Easter Egg.

~~~
Retra
Lots of people. That's why Wolfram kept getting requests to identify it.
That's why the building was designed with that pattern. It's not like there's
anything particularly obscure here.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Hmm. This is a train station, yes? What % of people transiting the station see
that pattern and think, 'Oh, that's a cellular automata.'. Clearly more than
zero, and perhaps it's not considered obscure by HN readers, but likely a
very, very small % of passengers will recognize what it is. Wolfram himself
seemed to be surprised.

~~~
Retra
I guess I just got the sense from your post that it would take a
1-in-6-billion person to recognize the pattern rather than something more
realistic like 1-in-ten-thousand.

