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

Netflix Moves Toward Open Source Flink Autoscaler for 30k Streaming Jobs

https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/09/netflix-flink-autoscaler/
1•theanonymousone•3m ago•0 comments

Why getting your hands dirty is good for you

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260904-how-getting-your-hands-dirty-boosts-your-health-withi...
1•HatchedLake721•3m ago•0 comments

Quantum-Drive-Solver high-performance, memory-efficient optimization engine

https://github.com/blueray313164-a11y/Quantum-Drive-Solver
1•Bluestein•4m ago•0 comments

TLS fingerprinting: How Cloudflare spots your scraper before the HTTP request

https://igorkozlowski.substack.com/p/tls-fingerprinting-what-websites
1•igor-lemon•5m ago•0 comments

See live tracking data for the city buses in Ahmedabad, India

https://gods-eye.esdy.cc/
2•amanverasia•5m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: How to spend $100? (Claude vs. ChatGPT)

1•SiebeBaree•5m ago•0 comments

Antiquated HTML Snippets and Artefacts

https://vale.rocks/posts/html-relics
2•patadune•9m ago•0 comments

Home Hardware, Part 1: My Control4 Revenge Arc

https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/home-hardware-part-one/
1•tosh•11m ago•0 comments

Chinese tech giants Huawei and Xiaomi launch new foldable phones ahead of Apple

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/chinese-tech-companies-huawei-xiaomi-launch-new-foldable-phone...
1•ksec•12m ago•0 comments

Finite time blowup with smooth forcing term for the incompressible porous medium

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/finite-time-blowup-with-smooth-forcing-term-for-the-inc...
1•robinhouston•13m ago•0 comments

Ultra Instinct Claude Code

https://github.com/infiniV/ultra-instinct-claude-code/blob/main/llms.txt
1•Bluestein•14m ago•0 comments

The SaaS Subscription Trap: How "Forgot to Cancel" Became a Business Model

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-saas-subscription-trap-how-forgot-to-cancel-became-a-busine...
1•soltanov•17m ago•0 comments

Slime moulds and the bitter debate over the nature of intelligence

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/08/this-is-dangerous-slime-moulds-and-th...
1•tosh•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Wirebot – talk to your Codex in messengers

https://wirebot.ai/codex
2•sadfun•19m ago•1 comments

TrustFinder: Deep Search AI

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.popyakter.cheaterbusterai&hl=en_US
1•pranto12345•19m ago•0 comments

1.5M lines of code: Software becomes a key factor in Porsche's new Formula E car

https://e-formula.news/news/formula-e-news/formula-e-news-detail/1-5-million-lines-of-code-softwa...
1•xeonmc•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I made Artle – a quick, daily art guessing game

https://artle.eu
2•steinvakt2•20m ago•0 comments

Try DuckDB v2.0-Alpha

https://duckdb.org/2026/09/02/try-duckdb-20-alpha
1•tamnd•20m ago•0 comments

Maak.el: Lisp machine command runner in Emacs, infinitely extensible and Scheme

https://codeberg.org/jjba23/maak.el
1•jjba23•23m ago•0 comments

PicWish – AI photo editing for product images

https://picwish.com/
1•VolaRmb•24m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: CLI vs. GUI, what's your preferred way of using coding agents?

1•pranshuchittora•25m ago•0 comments

The Computer Moves In (1983)

https://time.com/archive/6699317/the-computer-moves-in/
1•glimshe•27m ago•0 comments

Arguments in Favor of AI Fair Use

https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/arguments-in-favor-of-ai-fair-use
2•jger15•29m ago•0 comments

Prolog knowledge base over HTTP/JSON API, with an OpenAPI description

https://github.com/Christopher22/charon
2•triska•29m ago•0 comments

A Digital Duty of Care for Australia

https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/department/media/publications/digital-duty-care-australia-devel...
1•falsepolymath•30m ago•1 comments

Use the Canvas API to speed up image uploads without losing EXIF data

https://ptrchm.com/posts/why-pixelpeeper-image-uploads-feel-fast/
1•pchm•34m ago•0 comments

Which platform to use for idea validation?

https://proventrips.com
1•rohitnrll•34m ago•1 comments

Howold.me – Fast, no-nonsense exact age and life stats calculator

https://howold.me/en
1•kickmunkeez•35m ago•2 comments

the appeal

https://sunilpai.dev/posts/the-appeal/
1•tosh•35m ago•0 comments

Ghost Imaging: Who Needs a Double Slit Anyway?

https://sciencespectrumu.com/who-needs-a-double-slit-anyway-47b903579252?sharedUserId=r.hendriks
1•armchairquantum•36m ago•0 comments