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

Chat never deletes – video evidence

https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/the-google-ai-overview-itself-describes-google-ai-studio-s-chat-d...
1•Bitu79•55s ago•0 comments

T-Mobile outage, no updates from the company

https://old.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/1v8bw52/t_mobile_outage/
1•darth_avocado•3m ago•0 comments

Using AI with a Critical Eye

https://www.loserbydesign.com/new-page-3
1•yehiaabdelm•4m ago•0 comments

Solving Fermat: Andrew Wiles

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/wiles.html
1•1970-01-01•7m ago•0 comments

The Myth of the 'Waterfall' SDLC

http://www.bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html
1•fanf2•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SilkDrop – MilkDrop port for web with live editor

https://silkdrop.vercel.app/
1•usernameis42•9m ago•0 comments

Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a "dead end" for rapid reuse

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/despite-recent-successes-rapid-reuse-of-starship-remains-a-...
1•greedo•10m ago•1 comments

Softmax Approximation for FPGAs Using Taylor Series and Pade Approximants

https://leetarxiv.substack.com/p/approximating-softmax-for-fpgas
1•birdculture•10m ago•0 comments

Pivotick is network graph library to facilitate pivoting

https://pivotick.github.io/Pivotick/
1•adulau•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Latest Q2 AI SaaS Trends Report

https://relvehq.com/ai-reports/2026-q2-the-state-of-ai-for-saas-companies-fullview
1•hamza_ali_shah•13m ago•1 comments

README, not

https://blog.yossarian.net/2026/07/16/README-not
4•lr0•14m ago•2 comments

Sam Altman says we are in the singularity: 'This is the moment'

https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-the-singularity-agi-prediction-anthropic-nvidia...
2•doener•15m ago•1 comments

Nvidia in Talks with OpenAI to Guarantee $250B Financing for Data Center

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-in-talks-with-openai-to-guarantee-250-billion-financing-for-da...
1•u1hcw9nx•15m ago•0 comments

Claude shared chats and Artifacts may have ended up on Google

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/27/psa-your-claude-shared-chats-and-artifacts-may-have-ended-up-on...
2•speckx•22m ago•0 comments

Waymo crashes 1/3 as much as a human driver, says IIHS – with some caveats

https://electrek.co/2026/07/25/waymo-is-2-3-safer-than-a-human-driver-says-iihs-with-some-caveats/
2•Bender•23m ago•0 comments

Octane – compiled and faster React from creator of Inferno

https://octanejs.dev
1•swe_dima•23m ago•0 comments

E-bike bans in schools highlight the growing debate over freedom vs. safety

https://electrek.co/2026/07/27/e-bike-bans-in-schools-highlight-the-growing-debate-over-freedom-v...
1•Bender•26m ago•0 comments

I mapped how 140 governments legally treat Bitcoin

https://thebitcoinact.xyz/bitcoin-legal-map
1•The_Bitcoin_Act•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nexmy – 100% offline Android finance tracker with local AI

https://nexmy.app/
1•BlackSharkDev•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A board game with opponents trained by self-play

https://mighty840.itch.io/samudra-manthan
1•sharang33•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Full complex text shaping and rendering on ESP32 with 320KB usable RAM

https://github.com/waruyama/flattype-cyd-demo
2•jansan•32m ago•1 comments

A political compass for AI where anyone can add their stance

https://theaicompass.io/?preview=default
1•uncommoncrawl•32m ago•0 comments

From ADHD chaos to IMPOSSIBLY productive and chill?

https://www.taskloco.com/
1•taskloco_nyc•34m ago•0 comments

RevelRaw – a Mac RAW editor that looks at the photo before suggesting presets

https://revelraw.com/
4•kernel_init•34m ago•0 comments

Dozens sickened in 17 states recalled eggs feared contaminated deadly bacteria

https://www.dailymail.com/health/article-16008335/dozens-sickened-recalled-eggs-salmonella.html
2•Bender•34m ago•0 comments

ThinkFull: A 22-specialist Claude Code skill, not an agent pipeline

https://github.com/SuperNotesOnline/ThinkFull
1•jazziejoy•34m ago•0 comments

Forth

https://xkcd.com/3277/
2•beardyw•34m ago•0 comments

Platform engineering 2.0 mitigates AI security and compliance risks

https://platformengineering.org/blog/how-platform-engineering-2-0-mitigates-ai-security-and-compl...
2•CrankyBear•36m ago•0 comments

UK's iconic Jodrell Bank telescope faces axe in science cuts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y6r9rdxygo
1•mellosouls•36m ago•1 comments

Anthropic changed a Claude Code default–how I insulated my framework

https://mauroepce.dev/blog/trust-boundaries-claude-code
1•oalders•37m ago•0 comments