Talk:2916: Machine

rather late for an april fools comic innit? also there doesn't seem to be anything exciting in this one lol, none of the usual cool exploration easter eggs, as far as i could tell at least 172.71.178.76 16:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Erfaniom

We're exploring crowdsourced human creativity here, in a way, so it can be a lot more interesting then Randall's exploration comics, at least for me, because i did take two years of GCSE psychology and enjoyed it. 172.64.238.130

Just popped over using Chrome on Android and all I see is four "missing picture" logos spinning around, plus another down the bottom right... 141.101.68.193 18:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, followup: it behaves quite differently on the non mobile site. You get two entry points with red balls and yellow balls and you need to place the various gizmos to direct the balls to the correct exit point. Once enough have correctly passed to turn the red X into a green tick, you have the option to submit. If you do, once you have named your design it will be added to the grid with other submissions all of which exist to push red and yellow balls around. (if you come across "Memories of Ragnarok", that's mine) 172.71.134.207 18:27, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The number of inputs appears to vary between 1 and 4, each of a different color, with one color-coded output for each. Claire Kholin (talk) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

On the "machine" section, you see lots of "under construction cells". Perhaps this will develop as more are submitted. I notice the "under construction tape" has "DJIA" and "31415", perhaps a reference to "dow jones industrial average" and the first five digits of pi. Zeimusu (talk) 18:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Whenever someone submits a cell, it fills in one of the under construction cells. Claire Kholin (talk) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I wanted to add an image for each object, but do not have the necessary access, can someone who has access add the images that I linked in the table so they can be included? Claire Kholin (talk) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I found a discussion with some guy talking about the API at https://euphoria.leet.nu/room/xkcd/ ; this could be useful for the wiki.

[c+1] now time to try fucking with the api [c+1] https://incredible.xkcd.com/

 [userwithnoaccount] 404

[c+1] it seems there are numbered machines under incredible.xkcd.com/machine/x

 [c+1] returns a grid of individual machinlets
 [c+1] which are uids like 3a7af27c-5389-5dcb-b660-3feab6be2ceb
 [c+1] they're stored at urls like incredible.xkcd.com/folio/3a7af27c-5389-5dcb-b660-3feab6be2ceb
 [c+1] there appear to be 33 machines total
 [c+1] the json it returns seems to refer to these as "versions"
 [c+1] $ curl -s https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/21 | jq ".version"
       21
 [c+1] there is a machine/0, but it's all null
 [c+1] going to https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/current redirects to the current machine
   [c+1] $ curl -sL https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/current | jq ".version"
         35

[c+1] wait, is that the *total* number of mahcines? [c+1] i would've thought there'd be more [c+1] this whole think is rather esoteric [c+1] Written in rust, too: https://rapier.rs/ [c+1] Uh oh.

     https://i.hypercone.us/?v=8e283d
 [c+1] HMMM
       https://i.hypercone.us/?v=079f8f
 [c+1] it seems there is no limit
 [c+1] i've uploaded a ~50M title

172.70.57.146

Had quite a lot of fun, added a few 'successful' machines to the grid. Noted that whenever I try to use the Prism that (after a short delay) the comic-pane blanks and I need to refresh the page/get a completely new 'challenge' to start from scratch, so I'm just not using the prism at all (used most of the other items, in combination or 'just the one across the whole board', whichever seems most fun). But it doesn't seem to do what I'd like it to do, which is sort multiple colours from the same inflow into different outflow directions. Which would be very useful in a 'crossroads' situation, the general solution of directing them cross-path being too prone to random collisions. Also might be useful in the 'submitted machine grid', as I note that errors propagate, whereas adding a filter on all inputs would clean out (dispose of/send off to a valid gate?) the rogue balls. Anyway, gonna have to come back to this later when there's more time... Maybe then I'll even have something useful to add to the Explanation. 172.70.163.31 19:03, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The balls appear to be different weights. I just saw a machine that used fans to separate yellows from greens and blues in a sort of 'wheat from the chaff' manner to direct them to their correct outputs. I wonder what other hidden tricks are included. 172.68.1.159 19:40, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

They're not all accepted, though it makes you think they are. Or something else more complex is going on we haven't realized yet. I made a machine that was working reliably, submitted it, and saw it on the overall grid. Reloading from a different browser I found the same location of the machine, with the same surroundings, but my machine had been replaced. It's nowhere else on the grid either. The first browser still shows it (but not after a reload with a cache clear). I'm not sure if there's some kind of "save" event that needs to happen beyond seeing your machine in the broader one, or if all user collaboration is an illusion, or if the system changes its mind about us somehow.

Yeah, i've been seeing this too. Please tell me if you find any of my machines, images at https://i.hypercone.us/?v=22d562 , https://i.hypercone.us/?v=ad8e3a , and https://i.hypercone.us/?v=8d4d6a . I want to be one of the few to have added Catalan and Spanish to the grid. 172.71.134.164 20:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I've added some more observations to the page. Also, a guess which is too uncertain to put on the main page: The ball launcher for the yellows on the far left side misses a lot, and the yellow container isn't the one on the left. So I think the whole machine with crossing streams will result in the colors being sorted in their container order, and possibly have the streams combined and deposited at the bottom just above the containers. --172.71.147.100 21:07, 6 April 2024 (UTC)