3 HN users recommended this demo3 months2011–2024score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN people use it as a showcase of what fits in 64 kilobytes.
Chaos Theory is a 64k demoscene intro by Conspiracy and CNS that took second place at Assembly 2006, generating its graphics and music from a tiny executable.
“probably the coolest and most impressive one” (HN, 2011)
In case you haven't seen a 64k intro, "Chaos Theory" by Conspiracy is probably the coolest and most impressive one I've ever seen (fullscreen it in 720p for maximum awesomeness): [this video] I think it's probably one of the few I've seen that goes beyond being just impressive coding and actually seems to evoke the feeling of a post-singularity civilization, or something like that. The graphics and music are all generated on the fly from 64k of code. I think it actually uses the code compression from the linked article.
Impressive 64k intro generating graphics and music from code.
I don't get the fascination with Farbrausch. While I respect and admire the feat which I'm unable to pull of myself, there are comparatively much better realisations both in terms of art and technique. See the following 64k demos: - chaos theory - [this video] - turtles all the way down - sub dream [link] - the timeless — [link] - turtles all the way down - brain control - [link]
I work in embedded software and we fight for every megabyte of NAND flash. Multiple smaller executables add up, too. Reducing the binary size is usually more important than performance (and often more important than memory safety, if we are totally honest...). Personally, I hate bloated software just as much as slow software. It's crazy what you can do with 64 kilobytes, let the demoscene blow your mind: [this video] Would be awesome if compilers could do the same :)
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
3 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.