frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Accidentally Turing-Complete

https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complete.html
25•bschne•1y ago

Comments

panstromek•1y ago
Nice list. Some of those are arguably not accidental, TypeScript type system seems kinda obvious to be turing complete when it tries to describe dynamically typed langauage.
WalterGR•1y ago
x86 MOV instruction: “The mov-only DOOM [game] renders approximately one frame every 7 hours, so playing this version requires somewhat increased patience.”
a_cardboard_box•1y ago
Rule 110 is only Turing-Complete if you have an infinitely large array of cells, and are able to initialize it with an infinite repeating pattern. If I'm not mistaken, HTML+CSS can only do a fixed-sized array.

With a Turing-Complete language, if a program runs out of memory on one machine, you can run the same code on a bigger machine without modifying it, and it can use the additional memory. With fixed-length rule 110, you need to modify the code if you want to use more memory.

256_•1y ago
This is addressed in the second paragraph of TFA:

"Stuff which is somehow limited (stack overflows, arbitrary configuration, etc) is still considered Turing complete, since all "physical" Turing machines are resource limited."

In my opinion, worrying about infinite memory, in regards to Turing completeness, makes the task of implementing computation much less interesting.

Also, I'm pretty sure CSS only does one generation (or a finite number of them) before stopping anyway.

256_•1y ago
Logic in Doom is particularly interesting to me. Apparently you can fit ~64k logic gates in a map (using the method described). From [1]:

"As the DOOM engine was not designed to be an interpreter, there are some constraints on our programs written against it. The biggest one is how large our programs can be. Since each gate uses at least one tag, we can use this as a metric to derive an upper-bound on the size of a program. As the DOOM engine uses 16-bit tags, this means we can have, at most, 65535 gates. This is not a particularly large number. We may be able to implement a very small CPU but this limit will be hit pretty quickly I believe."

The z80 had ~8,500 transistors. The 8086 had ~29,000 (checking Wikipedia). You could get far fewer if you use a 1-bit microarchitecture, I'm sure. I think there was a DEC (PDP?) computer that used that trick to have a really low transistor count, but I don't remember what it was called.

The real problem is RAM; for this you may as well cheat and modify Doom's code to add a RAM chip, and I/O while you're at it.

You could create a CPU in Doom implementing an architecture for which a C compiler exists, capable of compiling Doom, and run it in the CPU in Doom. For "reasonable" speed you'd have to do more than one simulation step per frame render (in the host Doom). If you ran it for long enough maybe you could get a full frame of Doom in Doom.

[1]: https://calabi-yau.space/blog/doom.html

karmakaze•1y ago
Doom running in TypeScript static type checker[0].

> half trillion lines of types totaling 177 terabytes ran through the type checker around the clock for 12 days to get the first frame

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43184291

karmakaze•1y ago
My favorite one is Conway's Game of Life. It's perhaps the least surprising one, but it's also the most visually appealing. Really like this video that leads up to making the Game of Life in itself[0]. It's something you can show a non-technical person and they can get a sense of how crazy it is that something so simple can do anything.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk2MH9O4pXY

A TypeScript Server Just Outran Rust's Hyper

https://geastack.com/blog-typescript-server-outran-hyper
1•k3030•1m ago•0 comments

Rust code faster than SOTA libraries by asking agents to make the code faster

https://minimaxir.com/2026/09/agentic-iteration/
1•sdoering•4m ago•0 comments

Pedagogy in the Times of AI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2a1J0UPeL4
1•tarunvelli•5m ago•0 comments

Firmware Freedom

https://playtaurus.com/blog/firmware-freedom
2•arbayi•7m ago•0 comments

Lex Friedman Brings Back Strategery

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/21/strategery-friedman
1•Tomte•11m ago•0 comments

How HN: ScribeToAny – Free Audio and Video to Text Transcription

https://scribetoany.com/
1•hypercube67•13m ago•0 comments

Flomo: A two-person notes app from China that bought a product from ByteDance

https://www.sinosphere.app/p/flomo-two-people-one-text-box-and
1•Nyloc1•17m ago•0 comments

Why AI resembles a charismatic religious leader

https://theconversation.com/why-ai-resembles-a-charismatic-religious-leader-291831
4•billybuckwheat•18m ago•0 comments

I made ByeBlocked: hide blocked users

https://github.com/8ug8ird/ByeBlocked
1•8ug8irdchoom•19m ago•0 comments

EveryCli: Natural-language CLI assistant that runs 100% locally (Rust and ONNX)

https://github.com/HE11032006/EveryCli
1•Euloge•20m ago•0 comments

Apple Music to open concert venue in Battersea Power Station

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c607l2j2rj8ro
11•dabinat•23m ago•1 comments

Hacking a BYD [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TZFcyzGEiY
2•testrun•24m ago•1 comments

Live-Cell Imaging and the Limits of Structural Biology – Eric Betzig [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUB37QhWNkw
1•pillars•27m ago•0 comments

Microsoft, Google took down $66M marketplace selling VMs with pirated software

https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/microsoft-google-took-down-usd66-million-cybercrime-market...
2•theanonymousone•27m ago•0 comments

Agent Disco at the Edge

https://edgedisco.com/
1•nickjam•27m ago•0 comments

The secret Cold War bioweapons test that exposed millions in the Bay Area

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/cold-war-bioweapons-test-22425855.php
2•bcaulfield•28m ago•0 comments

Apache Fory JSON: High-Performance JSON Serialization for Kotlin

https://fory.apache.org/blog/fory_kotlin_json/
2•chaokunyang•30m ago•1 comments

Using Apache Fory JSON with Spring MVC, WebFlux, and Spring Boot

https://fory.apache.org/blog/fory_json_spring/
1•chaokunyang•31m ago•0 comments

Jev-powered writing without spaces

https://levmiseri.com/nospace/
1•levmiseri•32m ago•0 comments

PHP webserver that creates 1-click Redbean-like executables / zip files

https://github.com/Qbix/webserver
1•EGreg•40m ago•0 comments

JP Morgan CEO says hyperscaler AI spending could hit $1T in 2027

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/21/jamie-dimon-jpm-jpmorgan-indiaconference.html
1•pelcg•41m ago•0 comments

Nearly half of young people trust AI over a human for fact-checking, report says

https://news.sky.com/story/nearly-half-of-young-people-trust-ai-over-a-human-for-fact-checking-re...
4•austinallegro•41m ago•0 comments

The Linux process that even SIGKILL can't kill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLaLW84egMk
1•helios_eradon•43m ago•0 comments

StepFun teases Step 5 Preview, a 600B/27B MoE, open weights coming Oct 15

https://twitter.com/StepFun_ai/status/2101510462685003786
3•WavyPeng•49m ago•0 comments

Infinite Mac: Snow and a/UX

https://blog.persistent.info/2026/09/infinite-mac-snow-and-aux.html?m=1
1•ecliptik•50m ago•0 comments

OpenAI forms math advisory group as its AI resolves more than 100 open problems

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/21/openai-forms-math-advisory-group-as-its-ai-resolves-more-than-1...
3•sophymarine•55m ago•0 comments

X-ray light is like guitar music

https://www.tuwien.at/en/etit/etit-news/news/roentgenlicht-ist-wie-gitarrenmusik
1•geox•57m ago•0 comments

Tiny Startups Are Getting Even Smaller with Help from AI

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/startup-hiring-ai-staffing-8c626f75
3•rvz•58m ago•0 comments

The Untold Story of Larry Page’s Incredible Comeback (2014)

https://www.inc.com/nicholas-carlson/untold-story-larry-page-comeback.html
2•Jimmc414•1h ago•0 comments

Chinese paint cuts wall temperature by 25 degrees Celsius in summer test: report

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3367812/chinese-paint-cuts-wall-temperature-25-de...
6•Markoff•1h ago•3 comments