alt.hn

2/9/2026 at 8:03:02 AM

1D Cellular Automata Playground

https://paraschopra.github.io/1d-ca/

by paraschopra

2/12/2026 at 7:36:48 PM

Cool! Would be nice to get some explanation for this though.

These are Wolfram's rules, though?

How are they sorted here? It's kind of sorted by number, but then there's discontinuities in the numbering?

Also I wonder... Most of them aren't doing very interesting things, maybe there's a way to detect trivial loops and filter those out? (Maybe compression, as mentioned here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46942864)

by andai

2/13/2026 at 4:38:19 AM

These are all 256 rules. Where do you spot discontinuities? Also, each rule does show compressibility and other metrics like entropy

by paraschopra

2/13/2026 at 7:52:37 AM

Well, I didn't know there were 256 rules, I don't know how that works, and I'm one of the luckier ones who has heard about this stuff (but not much)!

My point: add some context please, either as a top level comment, or much better, on the actual page.

As a stopgap solution for others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science

by andai

2/13/2026 at 4:23:12 AM

This is awesome, and is something I've been working on small demos for.

The stats are cool, could use definitions - especially for Entrophy, as that confuses most and can be defined arbitrarily, although the central tenet is basically the ability for the output to be GZIP vs random output.

by Jerrrrrrrry

2/13/2026 at 4:38:51 AM

Definitions are there if you hover on them.

by paraschopra

2/13/2026 at 2:49:28 PM

i seem to be missing something crucial, how do i interpret the truth table? assuming green means "becomes white", trying to step through rule 1 i get different results

by janez2