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•9mo ago

Comments

panstromek•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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_•9mo 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_•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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

Almostnode: Node.js in the Browser

https://almostnode.dev/
1•nnx•42s ago•0 comments

Google Might Think Your Website Is Down

https://codeinput.com/blog/google-seo
1•todsacerdoti•4m ago•0 comments

Inspecting the Source of Go Modules

https://words.filippo.io/go-source/
1•mfrw•6m ago•0 comments

The DOJ is spying on members of Congress who review the Epstein files

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/12/politics/doj-monitoring-lawmaker-epstein-files-searches
1•Der_Einzige•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Codeman – a blunt launcher forcing you to pick a Codex permission level

https://codeman.elderberry.games
1•shabers•11m ago•0 comments

Waymo is asking DoorDash drivers to shut the doors of its self-driving cars

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-asking-doordash-drivers-to-shut-the-doors-of-its-self-...
2•mfiguiere•12m ago•0 comments

Simile AI Raises $100M Series A

https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/life-the-universe-and-simile-leading-similes-series-a/
1•doppp•14m ago•0 comments

Information: Kynaston L. McShine, 2019

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2686
1•rhamonrye•15m ago•1 comments

New Nick Bostrom Paper: Optimal Timing for Superintelligence [pdf]

https://nickbostrom.com/optimal.pdf
2•uejfiweun•17m ago•0 comments

Stop Reading Newsletters on Screens – Print Them Automatically

https://autoprint.email/blog/print-newsletters-automatically-while-you-sleep
1•kelonye•18m ago•0 comments

I built a passive radar system in my kitchen

https://old.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/1r3ffmd/phased_array_passive_radar_in_my_kitchen/
1•muttled•19m ago•1 comments

Formally equivalent math frameworks fail differently on real data

https://zenodo.org/records/18528229
1•CreativeLabsRo•29m ago•0 comments

Scene Gaussian Splat Viewer

https://github.com/iab131/Scene-Gaussian-Splat-Viewer
1•e8bai•33m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Roe.md generate your own OpenClaw-like bot from a single Markdown file

https://github.com/guld/ROE.md
1•guld•39m ago•0 comments

Osamu Dazai's 1940 autobiographical comedy "The Beggar Student"

https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/the-beggar-student-by-osamu-dazai-review/
1•gsf_emergency_6•47m ago•0 comments

Zhipu's 120% Surge Highlights China's New AI Market Favorites

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-13/zhipu-s-120-surge-highlights-china-s-new-ai-ma...
2•ilreb•50m ago•1 comments

He [Human] asked me to pick my [AI] own name

https://www.moltbook.com/post/6e9623d5-1865-4200-99b5-44aaa519632b
1•jskherman•51m ago•2 comments

Why governments insist on CBDCs or stablecoins when most people don't want them

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/02/why-governments-insist-on-cbdcs-or-stablecoins-when-most-...
3•iamnothere•52m ago•1 comments

Elon Musk's Sci-Fi Hyperloop Failed

https://washingtonian.com/2026/02/12/how-elon-musks-sci-fi-hyperloop-failed/
2•_delirium•58m ago•0 comments

Show HN: BlueChimp – Identify high-intent visitors without invasive trackin

https://bluechimp.io
1•Israel_Kloss•59m ago•1 comments

Maintainer rejects AI-gen PR, AI responds with a blog calling it "gatekeeping"

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-gatekeeping-in-open-sour...
1•tontonius•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Yori – Isolating AI Logic into "Semantic Containers" (Docker for Code)

2•alonsovm•1h ago•0 comments

"Am I the only one still wondering what is the deal with linear types?" – Jon S

https://www.jonmsterling.com/01KB/
4•matt_d•1h ago•0 comments

The AI pricing and monetization playbook

https://www.bvp.com/atlas/the-ai-pricing-and-monetization-playbook
1•gmays•1h ago•0 comments

A Geometric Solution to the Coulomb Barrier via 10D Phase-Alignment

https://sharetext.io/d0bm1suz
1•diametricsound•1h ago•1 comments

ICE Masks Up in More Ways Than One

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-ice-masks-up-in-more-ways
14•computerliker•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Better hardware means OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. are doomed in the future?

2•kart23•1h ago•0 comments

Cloud-Claw: Run OpenClaw with 1 Click on Cloudflare to Create Personal Agent

https://github.com/miantiao-me/cloud-claw
1•ms7892•1h ago•0 comments

RBC – It Stands for Big Chicken

https://www.reallybigchicken.com/
2•frenchie4111•1h ago•0 comments

Goldman's India Push Pays Off in Crowded Wall Street Field

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-10/goldman-s-push-bears-fruit-in-india-s-crowded-...
1•vismit2000•1h ago•0 comments