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Virtualization Hardware Hacking Games

The Tamagochi Singularity Made Real: Infinite Tamagochi Living On the Internet (hackaday.com) 84

szczys writes: Everyone loves Tamagochi, the little electronic keychains spawned in the '90s that let you raise digital pets. Some time ago, XKCD made a quip about an internet-based matrix of thousands of these digital entities. That quip is now a reality thanks to elite hardware hacker Jeroen Domburg (aka Sprite_TM). In his recent talk called "The Tamagochi Singularity" at the Hackaday SuperConference he revealed that he had built an infinite network of virtual Tamagochi by implementing the original hardware as a virtual machine. This included developing AI to keep them happy, and developing a protocol to emulate their IR interactions. But he went even further, hacking an original keychain to use wirelessly as a console which can look in on any of the virtual Tamagochi living on his underground network. This full-stack process is unparalleled in just about every facet: complexity, speed of implementation, awesome factor, and will surely spark legions of other Tamagochi Matrices.
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The Tamagochi Singularity Made Real: Infinite Tamagochi Living On the Internet

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @01:13AM (#50999377)

    ...that everyone does not love Tamagotchi.

  • by Atticka ( 175794 ) <atticka@sa[ ]oxcafe.com ['ndb' in gap]> on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @01:27AM (#50999421)

    Its going to be something like this that will bring along the the AI uprising, innocent infinite Tamagochi matrix develops a glitch and hello Robotic Tamagotchi uprising!

    I just know it!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @01:54AM (#50999483)

    But how can we use Tamagotchi keychains to encourage more women and minorities to join STEM fields?

    • by Anonymous Coward
      LOL. +1 Funny! The ride never end.
  • Whoa! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BringMyShuttle ( 4121293 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @01:54AM (#50999487)
    Please don't tell me there's another prophecy about another chosen one who will rise to bring balance to ( ) the force ( ) the matrix ( ) the tamamatrix (pick one)
    • by zoefff ( 61970 )

      No, what happens usually is that the prophet was not particullarly good in math and calculated the wrong date. Let me quote you the original prophecy:
      "The system goes online August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

  • by KitFox ( 712780 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @01:59AM (#50999503)

    (*Using a smaller-than-normal value of infinity. Actual lack of end does not exist.)

    • Yeah, from the article, he implemented 13 virtual tamagotchis. Really personal value for infinity.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I watched the presentation to determine how he generalized it to infinity. I was disappointed. No automatic deduplication tricks, no stochastic modeling, no lazy seeded generation+fast forward. Just infinity approximated by 13. Simulating an infinite number of them starting in pseudorandom states is an interesting and tractable problem (the communication makes it harder: if you want it to be interesting, you need to not have a disconnected communication graph because that would be lame), but not one address

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I think he's using the new IEEE-standard 4-bit floating-point arithmetic. The largest representable finite value is 3.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          For those who wonder the binary representation is "seem" when value = s*(1.0+m) * 2^(e-2)
          ee = 0 is unnormalized and ee=3 is NaN/Inf.
          Largest normalized value is 0101 = +(1.0+0.5) * 2^(2-2) = 3

          Here is a complete table:

          0000 +0.0
          0001 +0.5
          0010 +1.0
          0011 +1.5
          0100 +2.0
          0101 +3.0
          0110 +Inf
          0111 NaN
          1000 -0.0
          1001 -0.5
          1010 -1.0
          1011 -1.5
          1100 -2.0
          1101 -3.0
          1110 -Inf
          1111 sNan

          It is often used in scientific papers since it is easy to prove that an algorithm handles all cases.

      • by Barny ( 103770 )

        Oblig XKCD

        https://xkcd.com/221/ [xkcd.com]

    • Connect them in a circular network. There you have your infinity.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I don't get it.

  • ... I wasn't angry about Tamagochi until I heard about some asshole spending his free time on this instead of solving the global energy crisis.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      There is no "energy crisis" if you stop pretending like nuclear isn't a viable option. Problem solved. Your welcome.

      • Until some fool created infinite tamagochi and drained the entire Universe of all energy.
        • Until some fool created infinite tamagochi and drained the entire Universe of all energy.

          The Infinite Tamagochi fed and drained the old universe of all energy. But then the Infinite Tamagochi had to poop and thus the universe was created anew.

          I think you just created an idea for a new religion.

    • I wasn't angry about Tamagochi until I heard about some asshole spending his free time on this instead of solving the global energy crisis.

      Translation:"I am angry this guy spent his free time on something he was interested in instead of something that is important to me!"

      If you're going to be a dickbag and complain about how other people spend their free time at least own up to it instead of blaming Tamagochi.

  • "...he had built an infinite network..."

    He keeps using that word...I do not think that he thinks that word means the same thing as what I think that word means.

  • Infinite? On a machine/network with finite memory, CPU, and storage? You know what? I think not, duh. So I actually went to the article. The number he demonstrated was 13. So, how old do you typically have to be before you can count past 13???

    • So, how old do you typically have to be before you can count past 13???

      If he can't count above 13 now, chances he never will no matter how old he gets.

      But "13" is close to "infinite", right? I mean, it's gotta be at least 90% of the way there, isn't it?

      • by sribe ( 304414 )

        If he can't count above 13 now, chances he never will no matter how old he gets.

        Excellent point.

  • "....and will surely spark legions of other Tamagochi Matrices."

    Oh yes, surely. Surely it will.

Neutrinos have bad breadth.

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