Hacker Remix

Animals Made from 13 Circles (2016)

623 points by jihadjihad 2 days ago | 106 comments

DrNosferatu 1 day ago

Not exactly circles, but famously:

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%27s_elephant

KolibriFly 23 hours ago

Feels like the mathematical version of "just because you can doesn't mean you should."

kbelder 1 day ago

"and with 20 billion I can make it hold a conversation."

NitpickLawyer 22 hours ago

To paraphrase that quote about hydrogen: Give gradient descent a few billion parameters, and it starts wondering where it came from and what does it all mean.

kazinator 1 day ago

Bravo! HN Gold.

WorkerBee28474 1 day ago

Related: 'A meeting with Enrico Fermi' https://www.nature.com/articles/427297a

rob74 20 hours ago

Looks more like an amoeba to me...

ftigis 36 minutes ago

How about this version?

https://levenspiel.com/elephants/

Can't find the source though

ezekg 1 day ago

It's really satisfying to create logomarks solely out of circles, idk why. A challenge, I guess.

I did a few back in my day as a designer:

1. https://dribbble.com/shots/1909369-Liberty-Eagle-Arms

2. https://dribbble.com/shots/1553151-Flint-mark-icons

That first one is some of my best work.

tuyiown 20 hours ago

Constraints forces creativity. Some well chosen constraints are aesthetics rules that helps you land pleasing results. Poetry has a long history on that matter.

Another example of constrained creativity is early to mid nineties electronic music.

KolibriFly 22 hours ago

There's something oddly meditative about designing within strict constraints like circles

jaredhallen 1 day ago

Yeah, those are all really nice. Good work.

rob74 20 hours ago

> Inspired by the Twitter logo, which is made from 13 perfect circles

Compared to that, the new logo doesn't have a circle (segment) anywhere to be seen (unless you consider straight lines as circle segments with the center located at infinity of course), and is simply the "mathematical double-struck capital X" from an unknown but probably pre-existing font (apparently Monotype's "Special Alphabets 4" comes close, but isn't identical, according to https://tweethunter.io/blog/how-to-write-twitter-x-iphone-ma...).

sverhagen 1 day ago

It feels like I'm looking at the next so many Ubuntu backgrounds!