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

Show HN: Evaluating Local LLMs as language translators for my app

https://lector.dev/eval/
1•3stacks•26s ago•0 comments

The scandal of two-tier degrees Extra time infantilizes students

https://unherd.com/2026/05/the-scandal-of-two-tier-degrees/
1•grimcompanion•49s ago•0 comments

The AI startup with no AI: Aussie boss jailed for misleading investors

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/australian-start-up-boss-who-faked-revenue-gets-nine-years-jail...
2•contingencies•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: StaleTrace – A temporal ledger that catches stale-state agent bugs

https://stale-trace.vercel.app/
1•zahraarman•3m ago•0 comments

Need guidance on Go-To-Market strategy

1•brainstorm23•12m ago•0 comments

Claude FM music for thinking and building [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRsQsTMvPNg
1•gjvc•13m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?

8•amichail•16m ago•11 comments

Ask every top AI at once. Compare. Pick the best

https://gangstaai.org/
1•MarkoRocko•16m ago•1 comments

Show HN: I built an extendable full document markup language

https://longform.occultist.dev
1•angrybards•16m ago•0 comments

Waved Studio – browser-native wavetable editor

https://wavedstudio.online/landing/
1•sp8m8•18m ago•1 comments

My 1992 view of the problems of computer programming in 1992

https://blog.plover.com/prog/fortran-i.html
2•Brajeshwar•18m ago•0 comments

Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/19/spacex-retirement-savings-elon-musk
9•ValentineC•21m ago•0 comments

Comparison of simulation environments for robot training data

https://www.humanoidsdata.com/articles/simulation-environments-robot-training-data
1•torayeff•22m ago•0 comments

François Englert (1932 – 2026)

https://home.cern/francois-englert-1932-2026/
1•nhatcher•24m ago•0 comments

How do flocking birds and schools of fish move?

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2026/june/how-do-flocking-birds-and-schools-of-f...
2•hhs•29m ago•0 comments

The Secret Revolution in Battery Technology: 3-D Printing

https://www.wsj.com/tech/battery-technology-3d-printing-c319ca9a
1•Brajeshwar•32m ago•0 comments

Nub: an all-in-one toolkit for Node.js

https://nubjs.com/blog/introducing-nub
1•eikowagenknecht•33m ago•0 comments

Fish oil supplements may not prevent Alzheimer's-related decline: study

https://news.keckmedicine.org/fish-oil-supplements-may-not-prevent-alzheimers-related-decline/
1•hhs•33m ago•1 comments

Government's websites are asking to be hacked

https://groundup.org.za/article/heres-how-insecure-governments-websites/
1•Jimmc414•35m ago•0 comments

PC-free YouTube streaming rig on a Pi 4, built for engraving coins

https://github.com/Coreymillia/YouTube-Pi4-StreamMachine
1•Teever•35m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Timestamp and provenance records for AI-assisted creative work

https://colossee.com
2•celestino_127•37m ago•0 comments

I need people to understand that Palantir is not an engineering marve

https://bsky.app/profile/chadloder.dev/post/3moo3wm25722q
3•doener•40m ago•1 comments

Job postings aren’t jobs

https://workshift.org/job-postings-arent-jobs/
4•hhs•41m ago•2 comments

New Air Force One is unveiled, a $400M plane gifted by Qatar

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-one-new-plane-trump-qatar/
2•naturalmovement•42m ago•0 comments

Superagers

https://pilot-protection-services.aopa.org/news/2026/june/01/superagers
2•dp-hackernews•43m ago•0 comments

More than chatbots: Why business AI agents are the next product battleground

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/science-and-technology/600928/more-than-chatbots-why-business-ai-agent...
3•billybuckwheat•44m ago•0 comments

When the ability to smell goes away

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2026/what-happens-brain-lose-sense-of...
1•Brajeshwar•51m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What Makes a Podcast Successful?

1•dimamik•55m ago•0 comments

Agentic Loops: Why the Best AI Coding Workflows Are Loops, Not Prompts

https://skilldb.dev/blog/agentic-loops-why-the-best-ai-coding-workflows-are-loops
2•dev_chad•56m ago•0 comments

Self-Improving Memory for Agents

https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/self-improving-memory-for-agents
2•gmays•57m ago•0 comments