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

Ask HN: Jev but that returns an attention matrix over the input

1•aziis98•50s ago•0 comments

Show HN: Knewbee, a daily game about what you agreed to when you clicked "Agree"

https://knewbee.web.app/
1•root_theory•1m ago•0 comments

French public debt soars to 119% of GDP, highest level since 1946

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2026/09/29/french-public-debt-soars-to-119-of-gdp-high...
1•geox•2m ago•0 comments

On The Value of Doing a PhD in the Age of AI

https://web.mit.edu/phillipi/www/writing/PhD-in-age-of-AI.html
2•pbrowne011•2m ago•0 comments

Car is a smartphone on wheels. Here's who's listening

https://automatictransmission.khoury.northeastern.edu/
2•DeepLogin•3m ago•0 comments

Where's the "Intelligence Explosion"?

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/wheres-the-intelligence-explosion
1•anon373839•5m ago•0 comments

Next.js Protected Routes: Auth Middleware and JWT Guide

https://focusreactive.com/blog/nextjs-protected-routes-middleware-jwt/
1•katyadrozd•5m ago•0 comments

Stupid Over-Reliance on Palantir AI Helped Lead to US Bombing of Iranian School

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/09/29/reporting-confirms-stupid-over-reliance-on-palantir-ai-helped...
1•cdrnsf•5m ago•0 comments

OpenAI Halts New Model over Safety Worries

https://www.wsj.com/world/openai-halts-new-model-over-safety-worries-e0b12abb
1•MC995•6m ago•1 comments

Historical Stock Prices API: Python, JavaScript and Curl Quickstart

https://gist.github.com/financialdatanet/b10d23ecc07db310a99a3f214419e837
1•_FDN_•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: FullThrottle – F1 telemetry and session replays in the browser

https://fullthrottle.chiroyce.dev
1•chiroyce•6m ago•0 comments

The Memory Technician

https://smallwondersmag.com/piece/the-memory-technician/
1•bucket2015•6m ago•0 comments

What's Going on with the Air Quality in San Francisco?

https://blog.exe.dev/what-s-going-on-with-the-air-quality-in-san-francisco
1•bryanmikaelian•6m ago•0 comments

Is an Agentic Bank Run Coming?

https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/is-an-agentic-bank-run-coming
1•simonpure•6m ago•0 comments

The Linux Basics Cheat Sheet

https://devopscycle.com/blog/the-ultimate-linux-cheat-sheet
1•MrLA•7m ago•0 comments

Why browsers need a native API for open-weight models

https://medium.com/@kenzic/introducing-the-web-models-api-79321ceef436
1•kenzic•7m ago•0 comments

Google now ships "ads" with their Android system update?

2•y42•9m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What're You Reading?

2•dan-bailey•11m ago•2 comments

Building a certificate authority for the whole Internet

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-certificate-authority/
1•ewpratten•12m ago•0 comments

The Role of Theory in Biology

https://www.asimov.press/p/theory-biology
1•surprisetalk•16m ago•0 comments

How to Live Better?

https://dlgrv.github.io/HowToLiveBetter/en/
1•ErenayDev•17m ago•0 comments

A challenging, contamination-free LLM benchmark

https://livebench.ai/
1•wslh•17m ago•0 comments

Sculpting DTS support into a 2020 LG CX

https://jhm.nz/blog/dts-on-lg-cx/
2•rossng•18m ago•0 comments

Using Device Linking to Eavesdrop on WhatsApp and Signal

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/using-device-linking-to-eavesdrop-on-whatsapp-and-...
1•mdp2021•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Check whether a job posting is still real before you apply

https://unlisted.careers/ghost-jobs
1•rubatrejo•21m ago•0 comments

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q2 2026

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2026/
2•HieronymusBosch•22m ago•0 comments

Rust coreutils acknowledges copying of GNU GPL code

https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/0.12.0
2•cz8844•22m ago•1 comments

Show HN: GoDrop – one curl turns a file into a URL your agent can paste

https://godrop.sh/
1•fatihbaltaci•23m ago•0 comments

Optimising for fast builds with GHC [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmE6aa_I5TU
1•ibobev•23m ago•0 comments

Minecraft inside a particle accelerator is weird [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd5-1IXqiDQ
1•skibz•24m ago•0 comments