Sweet, can I mint these as NFTs? I don't know how to multiply 43252003274489856000 by 50 USD but I think it could make me a lot of money, and I like money.
My scroll wheel covers about 12 states per inch of travel. Did the stubby pencil work and it would take about 9.5 years to scroll through them all if the wheel surface was moving at the speed of light.
My kids had a science battle in the basement last summer, which resulted in both their Rubik’s Cubes colliding mid air. They both exploded (the cubes, not the kids) and were reassembled at a “fix this before mom finds us” rush speed.
I think my favourite is this pattern my 9 year old makes on “Greeny” (that’s his pet name for the cube that now has 11 green squares) where all four top corners are red/white/blue.
Wow, this was really fun to play around with! Amazing execution and launch!
Quick feedback: it’d be great if the page updated when the URL changes, so you can explore different positions without reloading.
Right now, if I change the URL/hash of the cube position (eg: incrementing by 1 https://everycube.alen.is/?view=3d#5319001606686939024
), the app doesn’t update and I have to open the new URL in a separate tab to see the new position. [Chrome 150 on Mac OS X 10.15.7]
The above makes everything sound very intentionally done towards the end result. He came about making the cube for finding ways to tackle the engineering challenge of building a device which moves in such levels if freedom, ended up scrambling it, and then spent a month figuring out how to treat the scrambled state as a puzzle to be solved. Messing with it gave him insight into just how complex a puzzle it was and the rest goes from there.
Reminds me of that time when, as an undergraduate, my "team" entered a Problem Solving Competition and couldn't choose one of the two problems so we did both in parallel.
One of us wrote a program in BASIC on a Tandy 1000 that the rest of us estimated would take more than a google years to finish, but he wasn't be dissuaded and let it run the whole weekend.
I made an analysis that was mostly correct but was off by a factor of four because I mistook a radius for a diameter.
How did the kid who could solve the Rubik's Cube in under 1 min not become an algorithm designer - some genius backend dev?
I blame guitars.
All these kids got bad ass at playing Wonderwall, PHP was just slightly less cool than playing Wonderwall. So for 2-4 years they were sidetracked.
Playing Wonderwall at parties.
But if they had went straight from solving Rubik's Cube in 1 min to O(1) time complexity in a REST endpoint like peak 2-way communications (WebSocket, GRPC) these fuckers would be optimizing LLM embeddings at this point.
Karpathy? No, I want Steve from the Chess club who could recite any J.R.R. Tolkien writing, who has a Runescape character worth $4 million. Fuck LeCunn. Where's Steve?!
STEVE! I'm sorry I laughed at your Pokemon collection. I'm sorry Steve! I'm fucking sorry! PLEASE COME BACK
>How did the kid who could solve the Rubik's Cube in under 1 min not become an algorithm designer - some genius backend dev?
Somebody else figured out the algs. The speedcubers just rote memorize them and then practice becomes mostly about execution. (Oversimplifying a little, but I have gotten sub-60 myself with the Roux method a few years ago)
Interestingly I've never managed to pick up programming but learned the cube pretty well (as an adult), and my programmer friend can't seem to figure out the cube at all even with me giving him extra help on top of linking materials I learned from. I suspect it's a very different skillset and we're both weak in one area.
Yeah goes to show why Leetcode is such a problem for so many very good developers.
It's a different kind of thinking.
That said, if that "clicked" for you, you may find yourself surprisingly good at backend - algorithmic thinking shines in crypto, search, and LLMs. Get into Python or Node if you haven't for some random idea (ever wanted to make a web contact form or something?) - the LLMs will set you up for success. If you figured out Rubik's Cube, you will 1000% get it because I know you have the patience and learning ability.
Well if you want! I should preface...
The Rubik's Cube will get you laid quicker than the Python dev (these days)
There was a time you could show an offer letter and have babes dangling from your god damn nutsack, but that ship has sailed
With all due respect to Steve, under 1 minute isn't that impressive. You can get there just by doing the beginner's method (a handful of different move-sequences) rapidly. The people who really study Rubik's Cube algorithms in depth can do it in a few seconds.
I had a friend - David - he could do it insanely quick. He's basically who I am thinking of in my post since he was also a genius at guitar, and could play beautifully.
We spent a lot of time on your site on random Friday nights (him playing guitar) hahah, good times.
More of a yo-yo guy myself. I could walk the dog, pendulum, what-have-you. Around the world if I'm feeling saucy
At some point though, how many states is too many?
We have massive housing affordability and employment shortage problems, meanwhile here’s a tech elite flouting 4x10^9 states which he doesn’t pay taxes on and most of them will not even get used. Is that really fair?
Edit: also 2D https://www.github.com/AdamWhiteHat/RubiksCubeControlWpf
I think my favourite is this pattern my 9 year old makes on “Greeny” (that’s his pet name for the cube that now has 11 green squares) where all four top corners are red/white/blue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Stay_in_Hell
The numbers produced by permutations are astounding! Especially compared to the (much smaller) numbers in our actual physical universe.
Quick feedback: it’d be great if the page updated when the URL changes, so you can explore different positions without reloading.
Right now, if I change the URL/hash of the cube position (eg: incrementing by 1 https://everycube.alen.is/?view=3d#5319001606686939024 ), the app doesn’t update and I have to open the new URL in a separate tab to see the new position. [Chrome 150 on Mac OS X 10.15.7]
He immediately scrambled it, then spent the next month figuring out if it could be solved.
Luckily no one told him there were 43 quintillion valid combinations.
One of us wrote a program in BASIC on a Tandy 1000 that the rest of us estimated would take more than a google years to finish, but he wasn't be dissuaded and let it run the whole weekend.
I made an analysis that was mostly correct but was off by a factor of four because I mistook a radius for a diameter.
I blame guitars.
All these kids got bad ass at playing Wonderwall, PHP was just slightly less cool than playing Wonderwall. So for 2-4 years they were sidetracked.
Playing Wonderwall at parties.
But if they had went straight from solving Rubik's Cube in 1 min to O(1) time complexity in a REST endpoint like peak 2-way communications (WebSocket, GRPC) these fuckers would be optimizing LLM embeddings at this point.
Karpathy? No, I want Steve from the Chess club who could recite any J.R.R. Tolkien writing, who has a Runescape character worth $4 million. Fuck LeCunn. Where's Steve?!
STEVE! I'm sorry I laughed at your Pokemon collection. I'm sorry Steve! I'm fucking sorry! PLEASE COME BACK
Somebody else figured out the algs. The speedcubers just rote memorize them and then practice becomes mostly about execution. (Oversimplifying a little, but I have gotten sub-60 myself with the Roux method a few years ago)
Interestingly I've never managed to pick up programming but learned the cube pretty well (as an adult), and my programmer friend can't seem to figure out the cube at all even with me giving him extra help on top of linking materials I learned from. I suspect it's a very different skillset and we're both weak in one area.
It's a different kind of thinking.
That said, if that "clicked" for you, you may find yourself surprisingly good at backend - algorithmic thinking shines in crypto, search, and LLMs. Get into Python or Node if you haven't for some random idea (ever wanted to make a web contact form or something?) - the LLMs will set you up for success. If you figured out Rubik's Cube, you will 1000% get it because I know you have the patience and learning ability.
Well if you want! I should preface...
The Rubik's Cube will get you laid quicker than the Python dev (these days)
There was a time you could show an offer letter and have babes dangling from your god damn nutsack, but that ship has sailed
I had a friend - David - he could do it insanely quick. He's basically who I am thinking of in my post since he was also a genius at guitar, and could play beautifully.
We spent a lot of time on your site on random Friday nights (him playing guitar) hahah, good times.
More of a yo-yo guy myself. I could walk the dog, pendulum, what-have-you. Around the world if I'm feeling saucy
We have massive housing affordability and employment shortage problems, meanwhile here’s a tech elite flouting 4x10^9 states which he doesn’t pay taxes on and most of them will not even get used. Is that really fair?