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Posted by Alen123 11 hours ago

Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states(everycube.alen.is)
198 points | 65 commentspage 2
ostacke 2 hours ago|
Reminds me of https://everyuuid.com/
monxer 3 hours ago||
This is pretty cool. Same concept (and I would assume implementation) as https://everyuuid.com/

Implementation details can be found here: https://eieio.games/blog/writing-down-every-uuid/

sensecall 6 hours ago||
Wouldn't it be cool to click and then see the quickest solution and it rotates in front of you, or a sequence of moves to solve.
Aoi_Asahina 2 hours ago|
[dead]
nzealand 8 hours ago||
It took Ernő Rubik four years to develop the cube.

He immediately scrambled it, then spent the next month figuring out if it could be solved.

Luckily no one told him there were 43 quintillion valid combinations.

avandekleut 8 hours ago|
Solved theoretically? I figure you could at least intuit that reversing all the moves in the scramble in reverse order would solve it.
nzealand 3 minutes ago|||
He spent the next month coming up with an algorithm to solve it, not knowing if such an algorithm was even possible.

After he sold the puzzle, he traveled around to various conferences, to prove it could be solved.

zamadatix 7 hours ago|||
The above makes everything sound very intentionally done towards the end result. He came about making the cube for finding ways to tackle the engineering challenge of building a device which moves in such levels if freedom, ended up scrambling it, and then spent a month figuring out how to treat the scrambled state as a puzzle to be solved. Messing with it gave him insight into just how complex a puzzle it was and the rest goes from there.
netvarun 10 hours ago||
Wow, this was really fun to play around with! Amazing execution and launch!

Quick feedback: it’d be great if the page updated when the URL changes, so you can explore different positions without reloading.

Right now, if I change the URL/hash of the cube position (eg: incrementing by 1 https://everycube.alen.is/?view=3d#5319001606686939024 ), the app doesn’t update and I have to open the new URL in a separate tab to see the new position. [Chrome 150 on Mac OS X 10.15.7]

Alen123 9 hours ago|
just shipped a fix, the app now listens for hash/URL changes and updates the view without needing a reload. thanks for catching this!
cr125rider 10 hours ago||
I love this. Excellent weird internet thing.
kazinator 6 hours ago||
OK. So I put the slider into a random middle location. Then I zipped it back all the way left as fast as I could. Still not up to competitive speed cubing level! Shucks, golly, gee.
richstokes 8 hours ago||
First thought; this could be turned into a really cool password generator
m4tthumphrey 4 hours ago||
This is very satisfying to play with, top work!
purplemoonx 8 hours ago|
How did the kid who could solve the Rubik's Cube in under 1 min not become an algorithm designer - some genius backend dev?

I blame guitars.

All these kids got bad ass at playing Wonderwall, PHP was just slightly less cool than playing Wonderwall. So for 2-4 years they were sidetracked.

Playing Wonderwall at parties.

But if they had went straight from solving Rubik's Cube in 1 min to O(1) time complexity in a REST endpoint like peak 2-way communications (WebSocket, GRPC) these fuckers would be optimizing LLM embeddings at this point.

Karpathy? No, I want Steve from the Chess club who could recite any J.R.R. Tolkien writing, who has a Runescape character worth $4 million. Fuck LeCunn. Where's Steve?!

STEVE! I'm sorry I laughed at your Pokemon collection. I'm sorry Steve! I'm fucking sorry! PLEASE COME BACK

eurleif 8 hours ago||
With all due respect to Steve, under 1 minute isn't that impressive. You can get there just by doing the beginner's method (a handful of different move-sequences) rapidly. The people who really study Rubik's Cube algorithms in depth can do it in a few seconds.
purplemoonx 7 hours ago|||
Hahah what are you doing here???

I had a friend - David - he could do it insanely quick. He's basically who I am thinking of in my post since he was also a genius at guitar, and could play beautifully. And he taught me basic PHP.

We spent a lot of time on your site on random Friday nights (him playing guitar) hahah, good times.

More of a yo-yo guy myself. I could walk the dog, pendulum, what-have-you. Around the world if I'm feeling saucy

Also: Gross, wtf happened to it???? If you can't say publicly, just blink 3 times

tonyedgecombe 5 hours ago|||
I remember a TV program showing someone breaking the one minute record for the first time. I could already do it at that point, I'm sure many others could as well.
purplemoonx 4 hours ago||
I'm starting to realize I'm the only one who couldn't.

I think that's why I failed that Leetcode that one time - it was never in the cards

opan 7 hours ago|||
>How did the kid who could solve the Rubik's Cube in under 1 min not become an algorithm designer - some genius backend dev?

Somebody else figured out the algs. The speedcubers just rote memorize them and then practice becomes mostly about execution. (Oversimplifying a little, but I have gotten sub-60 myself with the Roux method a few years ago)

Interestingly I've never managed to pick up programming but learned the cube pretty well (as an adult), and my programmer friend can't seem to figure out the cube at all even with me giving him extra help on top of linking materials I learned from. I suspect it's a very different skillset and we're both weak in one area.

purplemoonx 7 hours ago||
Yeah goes to show why Leetcode is such a problem for so many very good developers.

It's a different kind of thinking.

That said, if that "clicked" for you, you may find yourself surprisingly good at backend - algorithmic thinking shines in crypto, search, and LLMs. Get into Python or Node if you haven't for some random idea (ever wanted to make a web contact form or something?) - the LLMs will set you up for success. If you figured out Rubik's Cube, you will 1000% get it because I know you have the patience and learning ability.

----

There is one algorithm I saw recently on Youtube, the bro pops one of the little cubes off and "cheats" by turning it around manually.

I consider this to be "freestyling" with the Rubik's Cube. Wtf is that all about?

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