
Googling for "conway's game of life" gives a simulation in the results page - huskyr
https://www.google.com/search?q=conways+game+of+life
======
jonmwords
Here's the interview I published with the creator!
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-a-google-
engineer-b...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-a-google-engineer-
built-a-universe-in-an-easter-egg.php)

~~~
eranation
> So I made a demo and started showing my co-workers what it was and realized
> that some of them had never seen the Game of Life before.

So let me get this straight, there are Google software engineers, that passed
all the 3 month interview process which some considered the toughest in the
world, and they never have heard of conway's game of life.

this makes me feel a little better about myself now.

~~~
avbor
I find it interesting that your metric of smart is whether or not someone has
knowledge of the Game of Life.

~~~
brown9-2
The comment makes no mention of the word "smart", just that Google's interview
process is long and hard.

~~~
astral303
It's hinted at by saying that the author feels better about himself now
(implied superiority). Whether the particular trait that he feels superior
about is "smart" is left up to your imagination!

I heard about the game of life, but I couldn't tell you the rules or describe
it exactly. I never bothered to look into it. Judge away!

~~~
im3w1l
My interpretation would be that he saw Google-employees as omniscient
demigods, and now has a more realistic view.

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RossM
There appears to be a semi-persistent "Google" text - when I cleared out the
'G' it was recreated within 20 steps by the neighbouring 'o'. Can't possibly
be organic can it?

E: it seems to always appear like that; so probably not organic and I'm not up
for searching minified sources to verify.

~~~
alainbryden
It always appears like that because he's written it so that when the "Google"
cells are active, they appear darker than normal active cells. Whether these
cells get activated or not follow the normal rules of Conway's game of live.
So yeah, it's organic, but with a little trickery, the "Google" stands out as
the pixels in the area blink on and off.

You can confirm this by pausing the simulation and clicking on all the cells
in the region to switch them to the 'active' state:
<http://imageshack.us/a/img138/2751/71405409.png>

~~~
nrabins
It appears that there is some sort of spawning behavior near the darkened
"Google" tiles. I paused, turned off all the cells in the region (taking into
account wrapping from the other side) and let it go. Cells started activating
near the 'e'.

~~~
alainbryden
I can confirm this. I wiped all tiles and stepped ahead a hundred frames, but
nothing new appeared. As soon as I hit 'play' though, within a dozen or so
frames a few random tiles appeared in the vicinity and the area was soon
teeming with life again.

------
pixelbeat
Added to my list, thanks.

<http://www.pixelbeat.org/misc/google_search_easter_eggs.html>

~~~
Laremere
Search "number of horns on a unicorn", it gives a google calculator result of
1.

~~~
saraid216
It's basically an alias for 1.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+horns+on+a+unicorn...](https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+horns+on+a+unicorn+%2F+2)

I know there are a ton more phrases that work as calculator aliases, but I
can't think of any off the top of my head.

------
eranation
Predicting the next HN front page article in the near future: "Show HN:
weekend project - open source Google's conway's game of life"

~~~
jschuur
"Do you still want to be writing Game of Life easter aggs when you're 50?"

~~~
madrona
And the rebuttal, "Yes, I want to be writing Game of Life easter eggs"

------
tsahyt
What is it with all the Game of Life posts lately? There seems to be a new one
every other day. Not that it's a bad thing, I think the GOL is a marvellous
thing and the SmoothLife video was mesmerizing. I'm just wondering why they
all pop up at the same time?

~~~
eranation
I'm sure there is a "game of life" like biological algorithm that can explain
this and the flow of articles in the form of "X in GO" or "Don't use MongoDB"
or "Y in pure CSS"

e.g. perhaps people see what's top on HN (a legitimate article) and search on
the topic, and increase the probability of more posts in that topic, also,
psychologically, if A is popular, then when seeing something that looks like A
you might up vote it just by assuming it's popular too.

~~~
pirateking
A Game of Life type visualization of this algorithm would be interesting. It
might go something like:

    
    
      The seed of the system is a random cluster of N stories (cells)
      that represent the "front page".
    
      Each cell has votes and topics (Erlang, Apple, X in CSS, etc.).
    
      1. Any cell with fewer than N votes, 
         and fewer than two neighbors dies 
         (due to lack of interest and/or promotion).
    
      2. Any cell with two or three live neighbors,
         lives on to the next generation
         (riding along the front page wave).
    
      3. Any cell with more than three live neighbors,
         that share the same topic dies
         (due to overexposure of the topic).
    
      4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors,
         becomes a live cell with a topic shared by one of the neighbors
         (the spread of interest of a topic).
    
      After any generation, votes and stories can be added. 
    
      The low threshold of votes (N), is determined to be
      some percentage of all votes in the system.
    

Tempted to make this for fun now...

------
doki_pen
Is it my imagination or does it spell out google at some point?

edit: I've realized that certain blocks are darker blue in the shape of the
word Google.

------
huskyr
It's funny. I simply Googled for 'conway's game of life' after reading all the
posts here and was pleasantly surprised to find this nice easter egg. I
submitted it, and now it has been #1 for the past couple of hours :)

------
alecr
I've implemented Langton's Ant, another example of cellular automata, using
canvas aswell <http://alecraeside.com.au/projects/langtons-ant/>

------
carlob
First the knowledge graph, now the game of life animation.

It really seems Google is trying to be more and more like Wolfram|Alpha!

:)

~~~
saraid216
I just checked Wolfram Alpha and couldn't find the Javascript animation of
game of life. Could you link me to how you did it?

~~~
carlob
Every time you do a query on W|A you see a brief animation of the game of life
while the result is loading. I was referring to that.

(and my comment was meant tongue in cheek)

------
callil
I want this as a live-tile background for my phone. Beautiful

------
talfa
I am in Malaysia and it doesn't show up in FF or Chrome.

------
nsxwolf
Cool! A glider crawled all the way across my browser.

------
mck-
just spent 10 minutes staring at it full-screen.. beautiful.. my wife looked
at my twinkly eyes and asked befuddled: "what is this?"

How would you explain it?

~~~
rytis
Ha, my daughter asked the same question, so I tried explaining all 4 rules,
but she didn't seem to be very impressed. So I quickly googled, found this
<http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/> among the top result, and we went
through all 4 rules, experimenting. That was a lot more interesting,
especially when she found out about the 'objects'... :) So the page is
bookmarked now :)

~~~
mck-
Hehe, yeah, I tried explaining too, with all my passion, she just stared at me
and said: "I have a nerdy husband" -_-'

I'll give it another shot with that link, perhaps tomorrow :)

------
sdrgalvis
What a reminiscent moment :)

------
hashBlue
not for me

~~~
jbperry
If you are on a big screen, it might not be obvious. It's in the upper right
and it's very subtle.

~~~
moreati
Very, very subtle. I had to adjust the angle of the screen

~~~
morsch
It might be worth recalibrating your screen. This page ff. is a good start:
<http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php>

~~~
gknoy
It might also be dependent on the angle at which one is viewing the LCD -- on
my laptop at work, I often cannot distinguish some of the lighter shades, as I
have the screen at a glare-reducing angle.

