A Mind Is Born (256 bytes)
lftkryo8 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2017–2025
demo · general · evergreen · 2017–2025 on HN
A Commodore 64 demo by Linus Akesson that fits video and music into 256 bytes, winning the Oldskool 4K Intro compo at Revision 2017. A technical write-up accompanies it.
It is HN's favorite example of extreme code compression, a compelling song and visuals from a program smaller than a tweet.
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12 comments from Hacker News
By now when I see "linusakesson.net" I upvote without reading, then I read TFA and watch the vid (or listen to the music in this case). I'm never disappointed. Speaking of which I plan to do something really cool: I've got a "time capsule" C64 (well C128 but close enough) and it still works. It's never been "polluted" by anything modern: no "gotek" SD reader, no nothing: just a real time capsule from the early to mid eighties. And I plan to encode, manually, the 256 bytes (yes, bytes) of linusakesson's "A mind is born" C64 demo. I'll then run it (with the C128 hooked to an old CRT, of course), thinking that technically I could have encoded and ran that in the eighties. Mind blowing stuff: ▶ this video
> fwiw, this made me spend a few minutes in youtube looking at old c64 and apple and Atari demos. what people ended up doing with those devices - years after they were mainstream - is still crazy to me. The craziest ever, to me, is the following in 256... bytes. Bytes (including the music ofc, which is the whole point). ▶ this video
Not MS-DOS, but my favourite 256 byte demo is for the C64: "A Mind Is Born", check it out: ▶ this video that music is astonishing.
There's an amazing demo called 'A Mind Is Born': ▶ this video Amazing principally because the whole thing is 256 bytes: link I never meet anyone who has even heard of the demoscene, let alone come seen this particular work. I was at a film festival watching a programme of short films, one of which was the well-made AI-box escape romp 'Watch Room': link And similarly found my interface with my seat disrupted by the closing credits using the music from 'A Mind Is Born'. This being a festival, the director was there, so i could tell him how much i appreciated the reference!
I still play ▶ this video over and over, just for the song, not only because it is 256 bytes, but because it is a compelling song too.
For a demonstration of Kolmogorov complexity, it's good to watch "A mind is born"[0] by lftkryo. It's only 256 bytes, but can generate over 2 minutes of complex music and video. Also, the name is appropriate for this topic :D [0] ▶ this video
You might enjoy watching the emergent behavior in the execution of this 256 byte program - a mind is born [0]. [0] ▶ this video
I really like 'A Mind is Born' - ▶ this video The summary of it's development could be summarised with "It's LFSRs all the way down"
Here's a winning demoscene production, 256 bytes, on a Commodore 64. ▶ this video Technical discussion here: link
The 256 bytes that encode C64's `A mind is born' demo ▶ this video or the `quad core' demo link should those techniques pack AI model simulator images for hexapod robotics down at the supervisor binary interface layer, do the demoscene folks get to work catergories in AI and Robotics for `new' competition?
> we should think more about what makes a 'mind'. Unrelated, but the first thing that came to me: how is a mind born? [0][1] [0] ▶ this video [1] link
During the first covid lockdown, I was by "chance" stuck in the home I grew up in. And I did found my old C128 in attic (which I was only ever using in C64 mode, except to copy disks). It's a time capsule C128 that hasn't been "polluted" by anything made in the last 33 years so (I switched to the Amiga in 1989 or so). So one day I plan to manually input the 256 bytes making this insane C64 demo (posted here on HN already), keeping my time capsule C128 intact: ▶ this video