Guest post by Everybody knows how big of a sandbox Minecraft is, but this is taking it to the next level: somebody has built a complete 8-bit RISC processor in Minecraft, capable of running custom software:
Sammyuri has reportedly spent seven months constructing an enormous–and enormously complicated–computer processor that exists virtually within the Minecraft engine. Although another Minecraft mod allows players to run the Mario 64 engine within Minecraft, sammyuri’s creation, called the Chungus 2, exists on an entirely different scale. The Chungus 2, which is short for Computation Humongous Unconventional Number and Graphics Unit 2, may be the single largest and most complex processor built in Minecraft as of writing.
He even wrote an assembler so you can program it yourself.
Surprising no one has yet add a comment about this similar strategy of ingeniously conjuring up a processor out of bits to last week’s Google Project Zero revelation and explication of the NSO group’s Pegasus zero-click iMessage exploit! Wonder if they were drinking from the same well, ha!
I saw something just like this many years ago…. People build sophisticated things all the time and nobody bats an eye, but because the circuits are built in a popular game people take notice, haha. Personally I’d find it more novel if a computer were built in a game that contained no logic circuits at all, but just by abusing the in-game physics. For example, it could be theoretically possible for a mario game world to be turing complete using NPCs and you could build a real computer with input and output using only in-game mechanics.
Somebody will build a blockchain inside Minecraft and then mine inside Minecraft using the same tools as any player would.
AER,
Hahaha….as much as I’m not a big fan of cryptomining, it would earn an obligatory clap from me 🙂
As the old saying goes: “Someone has probably figured out the solution to the P=NP problem by now, it’s just that the solution is hidden inside the firmware of a dishwasher controller or inside the subroutines of an air-conditioner calibration application.”
kurkosdr,
I never heard that, pretty funny though.
Assuming quantum computing can be proven to scale, then that’s a solution albeit not a classical one. I’ve studied the problem myself. It would seem that we should be able to answer this factual question and yet it’s deceptively complex, every time you think you’re getting close there’s a catch. It would be quite amusing if there was a simple solution all along that everybody missed.
BTW I am starting to think Microsoft bought Minecraft because it fulfills the same “scratching an itch” need that open-source development does, and as such it competes with it for developer time 🙂