frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Accidentally Turing-Complete

https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complete.html
25•bschne•11mo ago

Comments

panstromek•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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_•11mo 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_•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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

Beyond the Big Three: Building a Sovereign EU Cloud Stack

https://octigen.com/blog/posts/2026-03-24-sovereign-cloud-journey/
1•m_mueller•25s ago•0 comments

Tell HN: Warning: Third-Party Services Can Cost Mobile Apps Too Much

1•kajolshah_bt•28s ago•0 comments

Detach or Die

https://emilybroadhurst.substack.com/p/detach-or-die
1•embrata•42s ago•1 comments

ShowHN: Agonora – Character benchmarking for the post-AI job market

https://agonora.com/
1•mw67•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Typerson – Turn boring forms into chat-like experiences

https://www.typerson.com
1•briandev•1m ago•0 comments

We are losing our ability to understand the world

https://chinatowntyler.substack.com/p/the-closing-range
1•orange_joe•1m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Go-to places to get some ideas to work on

1•sujayk_33•1m ago•0 comments

Applying the self-driving framework to commercial insurance underwriting

https://www.shepherdinsurance.com/blog/the-road-to-autonomous-underwriting
1•mmahalwy•2m ago•1 comments

I built a crash dump analyzer for C++ devs after getting burned by WinDbg

https://github.com/keithpotz/Crash-Catch-Analyzer-Release
1•crashcatchlabs•2m ago•0 comments

Xrism identifies gamma Cas X-ray origin, solving a 50-year-old stellar mystery

https://phys.org/news/2026-03-xrism-gamma-cas-ray-year.html
1•Brajeshwar•2m ago•0 comments

Graphs: Edge List, Adjacency Matrix, Adjacency List, DFS, BFS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jyESQDrpls
1•Brysonbw•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Vesper – MCP-native tool that automates dataset prep for AI agents

https://getvesper.dev/
2•sultanchek•4m ago•0 comments

Quirkatar – Zero-dependency avatar generator with 34M+ combinations

https://github.com/Nitty-Gritty-Design/quirkatarfor
1•NGDesign•4m ago•1 comments

Sandboxed Trivy GitHub Action

https://github.com/lhotari/sandboxed-trivy-action
1•flarecoder•4m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Glanceway – A programmable menu bar info aggregator for macOS

https://glanceway.app
1•codytseng•4m ago•0 comments

The mathematical crimes of the Young Sherlock Holmes series

https://theconversation.com/the-mathematical-crimes-of-the-young-sherlock-holmes-series-278812
1•samizdis•5m ago•0 comments

NASA Strategy Update

https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2036428252693078055
1•LorenDB•7m ago•0 comments

ArrowJS – The first UI framework for the agentic era

https://arrow-js.com/
1•nicksergeant•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Chat with an exhaustive geopolitical simulation of the 2026 Iran War

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/4cf9474f-194d-4607-8953-8ee84a9e66e0
3•hrishirc•12m ago•2 comments

Show HN: PasteDrop – Share text and code without accounts or tracking

https://pastedrop.ai
1•buildani•13m ago•2 comments

Advanced Math for Kids: Geometry and Algebra Are the Same

https://kidswholovemath.substack.com/p/advanced-math-for-kids-geometry-and
1•sebg•13m ago•0 comments

Agents, Meet the Figma Canvas

https://www.figma.com/blog/the-figma-canvas-is-now-open-to-agents/
2•chrisdroukas•13m ago•0 comments

Tether Signs Big Four Firm to Complete First Full Audit

https://tether.io/news/tether-signs-big-four-firm-to-complete-first-full-audit-setting-a-new-qual...
1•evdubs•14m ago•0 comments

Are VCs getting value from AI, or just nicer outputs?

https://ventos.vc
1•pelegpor•16m ago•1 comments

Self Healing Electronics Combat Space Radiation

https://spectrum.ieee.org/self-healing-electronics-jupiter
1•rbanffy•17m ago•1 comments

Show HN: JSONVault Pro – JSON/YAML/XML Viewer After the Give Freely Incident

2•valentinconan•18m ago•0 comments

What is a dead man's switch?

https://blog.alcazarsec.com/posts/dead-mans-switch-meaning
1•alcazar•18m ago•0 comments

Craton HSM – A memory-safe PKCS#11 software HSM in Rust

https://github.com/craton-co/craton-hsm-core
2•victor-craton•20m ago•0 comments

Utah Republicans see storing nuclear waste as a 'once in a lifetime opportunity'

https://grist.org/energy/salt-dome-utah-nuclear-waste-curio-energy/
2•Brajeshwar•20m ago•0 comments

A Whole Lot of Nunsense

https://cinemasojourns.com/2026/03/24/a-whole-lot-of-nunsense/
1•jjgreen•21m ago•0 comments