Eternal Struggle

502 yurivish 110 8/31/2025, 7:04:03 PM yoavg.github.io ↗

Comments (110)

francisduvivier · 11h ago
Some people here were asking for it so I quickly vibe forked a speed control slider for farming some karma here on Hacker News:

https://francisduvivier.github.io/eternal-struggle-with-spee...

Code: https://github.com/francisduvivier/eternal-struggle-with-spe...

wvbdmp · 11h ago
Not to alarm anyone, but when I ran this, the black ball eventually joined the dark side and the whole thing ended up black. I’m sure this doesn’t mean anything for the greater universe.
soneca · 11h ago
This happened to me in the original site. I think it happens when the white and black balls collide at the exact same spot of the border.
francisduvivier · 4h ago
I think it's just a tunneling bug that happens when the point that make up the wall get messed up a enough. Almost never happens anymore in the v2[1] that I added. This one also allows you to see these points.

[1] https://francisduvivier.github.io/eternal-struggle-with-spee...

temp0826 · 10h ago
A little matter-antimatter asymmetry never hurt anyone
Cthulhu_ · 4h ago
Here we have it, an internet toy demonstrating how this asymmetry occurred. I expect physics papers soon.
temp0826 · 2h ago
Nobel prizes for everyone!
raspasov · 8h ago
The opposite can also happen (where the whole thing goes white).
nialv7 · 2h ago
black-white here doesn't mean bad-good. they just mean opposites, different aspects of things. I think wikipedia does a pretty good job explaining it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
bilbo-b-baggins · 11h ago
Metaphor for American politics.
camillomiller · 2h ago
Had the same experience and derived an absolutely unexpected bout of deep existential anxiety from it. Going to touch grass now.
gedy · 10h ago
"I am.. Tetsuo."
Hendrikto · 4h ago
> vibe forked a speed control slider

Very on brand, it does not work correctly. I can turn the speed up but not back down again.

francisduvivier · 4h ago
Yes true :D, I kind of just want to blame gpt-5 mini for it and that's one of the bad things about the bad coding, I immediately loose part of the sense of ownership and responsibility. I don't feel like I made it, I just managed it.

Now to be honest I saw this bug, but I decided to just release it anyways because I also already had the v2 in the works which incidentally already had this issue fixed.

pmontra · 37m ago
Of course we want to make a ball faster than the other one and let it win the struggle.
rnotaro · 11h ago
This vibed coded implementation is buggy.

If you go to 64.00×, it can't slow back anymore.

francisduvivier · 10h ago
Well that's fixed in the V2 with even more vibe coding:

https://francisduvivier.github.io/eternal-struggle-with-spee...

patates · 3h ago
I think next level would be custom shapes, custom starting areas, more colors, ability to change physics (add gravity?), and user interacting (being able to help a fellow struggling entity -a ball in this case-, when it gets worse).

Someone put this into an AI super duper thinking max edition, sprinkle some MCP on top and see what happens lol

nandomrumber · 48s ago
Rapidly converging on Conways Game of Life
ks2048 · 10h ago
Watching it at 100x is cool - you can just watch the border wiggle around (at this speed you may as well not even draw the balls).
ks2048 · 11h ago
Yes, going to 32x also won't let you back down to 1x. (16x and lower - yes).
rhubarbtree · 4h ago
Interesting data point on the vibe coding front, as this is very buggy. Doesn’t bode well for releasing an agent on a non-trivial problem!
narrator · 7h ago
It looks like it converges to a normal distribution curve with white being the area under the curve.
loandbehold · 4h ago
Why not other way around?
brcmthrowaway · 6h ago
At fast speed I see a trail of the circles. What gives?
patates · 3h ago
something about monitor refresh rate perhaps?

https://www.testufo.com

maxlin · 7h ago
Thanks :D I did really want to know what kind of shape it would tend towards over time.

Running 100x for some moments, the white part got pincer maneuvered by the black and I ended up with the whole circle becoming black. Don't know what to think of that lol

MrJohz · 13h ago
The cool thing about this is that it's self-balancing - if either side gets larger than the other due to random chance, the ball in that side will have more space to bounce in, and therefore bounce less often, slowing its growth. Meanwhile, the ball in the smaller side will bounce more often in its smaller space, making up the ground.
amelius · 1h ago
It seems there is a parallel with physics: two pressurized chambers with equal pressure and a membrane separating them. The odd thing here is that there is only one molecule in each of them.
SonOfLilit · 13h ago
There are stableish equilibria that are not 50-50, e.g. one color having a donut around the other color that has a donut hole.
istjohn · 13h ago
Yes, because it's not actually area that balances out but mean time between bounce against the black/white boundary.
aoeusnth1 · 7h ago
That's not a stable equilibrium if the hits have a large enough effect with respect to the movement of the balls. The internal circle will create disturbances against both sides of the inner circle, but the outer ball will have to travel a longer distance to move from one side to the other to counter them.
n2d4 · 13h ago
Now the question remains, are there stableish equilibria that are 50/50? Splitting it into two half-circles sounds like an equilibrium at first glance, but I'm not convinced it is, as only a tiny bit of random luck seems to make it become a "horseshoe" pattern instead.

(That assumes that the simulation is randomized of course, which doesn't seem to be the case for the one in the link posted here.)

Animats · 12h ago
It's amazing how stable it is. It's been running in a background tab for a hour now, and it still has the yin/yang look.
Liron · 12h ago
I think the balls stop when the tab isn't focused
dotancohen · 10h ago
That's in another two months.
poopsmithe · 6h ago
Yeah, definitely run it in the foreground. Mine became completely black in about 3 hours.
amelius · 1h ago
But you can say the same thing about a circle with a straight line as separator.
teamworketernal · 13h ago
I was cheering on the black circle's tunneling project when they both got caught in a rapid-fire spiral and the black one glitched through to the other side.

https://imgur.com/a/dhCSNmi

panarchy · 11h ago
I think it misinterpreted what kind of tunneling you were cheering on.
volemo · 13h ago
The darkness has come upon the world!
cocoto · 12h ago
Had the exact same bug! Not so rare I think.
camtarn · 12h ago
Hah! I was wondering if that was possible.
alyxya · 13h ago
I watched it for an hour, and at some point the black ball crossed the boundary onto the black side, so eventually the whole circle became black.
SarahC_ · 2h ago
The coming of Satan is foretold!
drob518 · 12h ago
It went to the dark side.
hk__2 · 13h ago
dang · 9h ago
We'll put that link in the top text as well. Thanks!
keepamovin · 1h ago
That is so cool! That is art in motion and a philosophical statement. Well done, man! That is beautiful and brilliant.
SkipperCat · 14h ago
An excellent piece of artwork! Really captures the meaning of Yin Yang, at least to me.
sabellito · 13h ago
Got a horseshoe shape running at 50x for 60 seconds:

https://imgur.com/a/b6b2IDx

andoando · 11h ago
Same, if one of them punches through in one place, that hole shapes the angle of the bounces and reinforces itself and the other side fills in around the hole.
Insanity · 13h ago
I guess it’s supposed to start on mouse move (based on skimming the source code).

On a phone it doesn’t seem to trigger unless I changed the background so I spent a minute just staring at the symbol without anything happening lol :D

chunkles · 13h ago
If you tap on the ying-yang it starts.
bqmjjx0kac · 12h ago
Hmm, not on iOS Safari.
Insanity · 11h ago
Yup that’s the browser I am using as well.
throwaway314155 · 10h ago
change the background
Insanity · 8h ago
Yup.. read my original comment :)
kingforaday · 7h ago
You can press 'p' to show the points on the curves.

  function keyPressed() {
    if (key === 'p') SHOW_POINTS = !SHOW_POINTS;
  }
clocker · 11h ago
reminded me of this one that ends at some point

https://ask5.github.io/gold-wars/

dmos62 · 2h ago
I'd phrase it "eternal adventure".
Lerc · 12h ago
I made a game on this principle many years ago. Two players with turn left,turn right, thrust and fire. You can only exist in your own space, shooting at the walls dug holes of your colour.

You had a bunch of critters scattered around the map trying to get home and you had to make paths for them while stopping your opponent from getting their critters home.

mikedelfino · 9h ago
Shouldn't each circle be pulling in its own color instead of pushing the other one out? Right now it looks like they're expanding the opposing color, when you'd think they'd be rooting for themselves.

No comments yet

PlunderBunny · 10h ago
Sometimes I see the 'border' move slightly where a ball hasn't hit it. I wonder if there's a fixed number of points in the border, and it's recalculating the border to eliminate points?
federico-peconi · 13h ago
so simple yet so deep!

anyone willing to provide a math-proof like argument on why the shape seem to stick to the YY curve indefinitely as the "eternal" name suggests?

Should it always be this way or is there at least one bad initial bouncing configuration for which chaos can take place and we loose the YY curve?

Does not seem that obvious to me.

thejohnconway · 9h ago
People are responding to you saying that it doesn't retain the yin-yang shape, but I've been watching for a while on 64x speed, and the yin-yang shape is one it repeatedly returns to.

I'm not even a dimwitted individual with an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology, but I can see what's happening intuitively. When one of the balls makes an indent large enough, that indent focusses the bounce from the circular edge which reinforces the indent further. This leads to a semi-stable shape where one of the balls is bouncing around a horseshoe and the other in a tunnel. However, if one side of the horseshoe becomes pinched small enough that ball is less likely to enter, that side of get eliminated, and you have a yin-yang.

More simply, the round edge seems to encourage tunnelling, and any asymmetry in the tunnelling is yin-yang-ish.

crazygringo · 12h ago
It doesn't. It quickly just becomes a random curve after a few minutes at normal speed if you leave it open.

For obvious reasons it tends to stay half white half black (if one half gets smaller its ball will bounce faster) but the shape and its orientation varies randomly.

adtac · 9h ago
wow not even yin-yang can escape entropy or the heat death of the universe
stephenlf · 13h ago
I think it’s just random chance. I haven’t run any simulations or anything, but I suspect the YY curve is no more stable than any simple 50-50 split. I bet over large timespans the YY curve straightens out just from entropy.
geor9e · 13h ago
It doesn't. Seems to be like a lava lamp until one ball breaks thru. See the other comment with the console command to edit the speed.
panarchy · 14h ago
$10 on black
otherayden · 9h ago
To speed it up, run

['whiteBall', 'blackBall'].forEach(color => { data[color].v.x *= 5; data[color].v.y *= 5 });

In dev console :)

darkstarsys · 13h ago
Cool! It would benefit from better physics though, maybe supersampling the position in time especially when moving fast. Each ball can't push to its edge fully, for instance.
jama211 · 14h ago
I’m really keen to see what this looks like after significant time but I’m not going to leave it open on my phone for ages just to find out haha. Clever idea!
personalcompute · 14h ago
navigate8310 · 10h ago
I'm curious about using an S3 endpoint and that too in public. Aren't you worried if someone hammers your URL and drain credits?
fxwin · 13h ago
https://i.imgur.com/cf1wOwL.png after a few minutes of running it at 240 frames per second :D
cmertayak · 13h ago
I desperately needed that :D
xav_authentique · 13h ago
You can execute this in the devtools console:

data.whiteBall.v.x = 5; data.whiteBall.v.y = 5;

data.blackBall.v.y = 5; data.blackBall.v.x = 5;

cdrini · 13h ago
Wow! Careful Icarus, going too fast makes it go kind of wild and started freezing the site :P

data.whiteBall.v.x = data.whiteBall.v.y = data.blackBall.v.y = data.blackBall.v.x = 10;

obventio56 · 13h ago
Also frameRate() with 120 or higher will make it go a bit faster. But it seems like there is a limit. I'm not familiar with p5.
waltbosz · 9h ago
I want to see a real world version that uses one of those magnetic sand sculpture tables. https://sisyphus-industries.com/
4ndr3vv · 1h ago
It'd be interesting to see how the visuals change when you're viewing the path, rather than a filled area.

Not seen one of these tables with two balls in... You'd probably need quite a lot of height to offset the linear sliders so didn't collide with each other.

axblount · 13h ago
Does some interesting things if you up the ball speed to 20. The boundary breaks down.

  data.blackBall.v = data.whiteBall.v = createVector(0, 20);
cocoto · 13h ago
Mine broke even without speeding up things, the black ball is now working together with the white ball.
amelius · 13h ago
What would a 3d version of this look like?
lgas · 9h ago
More spherical.
mensetmanusman · 13h ago
What happens at the limit of infinity!
blue_light_man · 8h ago
You are already at limit of infinity.
smusamashah · 13h ago
Something similar was shared before, but it wasn't this shape, just plain old rectangle style.
MarcelOlsz · 14h ago
Cool now I'm not going to get anything done. Thanks OP. PLEASE add a speed control so I can speed it up to it's logical conclusion and move on with my day.
alwa · 13h ago
I too am impatient to learn the logical conclusion of “eternal struggle.”
MarcelOlsz · 6h ago
It can't be that eternal.
romaaeterna · 13h ago
An edge point's probability of being hit should be proportional to the length of every path leading to that edge point. An area closer to many short black paths and many long white paths will show black expansion (and vice-versa). So I suspect that any variation of the central line from a straight bisection of the circle should get hammered out over time.
fxwin · 13h ago
you can run frameRate(x) in your browser's console to speed it up a bit - might be limited by your monitor's refresh rate though
riku_iki · 13h ago
you can keep tab open and check in few weeks.
cmertayak · 13h ago
Please let us know what happens.
riku_iki · 11h ago
Its interesting that my is converging into straight line dividing circle half/half, unlike other examples in the comments.
joshdavham · 13h ago
Is there any interesting mathematics associated with this system?
hlava · 13h ago
Are there any initial conditions that converge to a line?
dvh · 13h ago
I see that you haven't seen alphaPhoenix' video about reverse game of life. I highly recommend it.
makepanic · 13h ago
You can press P to toggle the edge point visibility.
swayvil · 13h ago
How on phone?
cluckindan · 13h ago
Now that we have the simulation, what is the closed form solution?
swayvil · 13h ago
It's cool.

It would be better if there was only 1 kind of edge instead of 2.

I refer to the broken edge and the circle edge.

AlexCoventry · 12h ago
Manicheanimation
throwaway314155 · 10h ago
The most self evident piece of work/art I have ever seen and yet there's so many comments explaining why it works and how it's interesting...
ycombinete · 4h ago
To me it's working backwards though. i.e. the black ball is creating more whitespace and visa versa. It's not immediately evident to me why that would be the case.
jomarry · 12h ago
I cant perfectly cause i dont know how to control. . I dont have any loptop for use to creat it. I use my phone
barbazoo · 13h ago
I laughed really hard at this :)