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

Pdit: The Python Un-Notebook for Coding Agents

https://harry.vangberg.name/posts/pdit-the-python-un-notebook-for-coding-agents/
1•ichverstehe•59s ago•0 comments

Russ Cox on: What should we do with CLs generated by AI?

https://groups.google.com/g/golang-dev/c/4Li4Ovd_ehE/m/8L9s_jq4BAAJ
1•favadi•59s ago•0 comments

Swarms of AI bots can sway people's beliefs

https://theconversation.com/swarms-of-ai-bots-can-sway-peoples-beliefs-threatening-democracy-274778
1•1659447091•1m ago•0 comments

Design Decision: Technical Debt in BillaBear

https://iain.rocks/blog/technical-debt-in-billabear
1•that_guy_iain•1m ago•0 comments

Translator Hub: Bridging the Global Language Gap with Professional Excellence

https://translatorhub.org/
1•zidana•3m ago•1 comments

The Problem with Anonymous Academic Review (ACM Supercomputing 2026 Case Study)

https://motiwala.com/blog/acm-ics-2026-peer-review-without-accountability/
1•yusufmotiwala•5m ago•0 comments

Waymo is paying DoorDash gig workers to close its robotaxi doors

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig-workers-to-close-its-robotaxi-doors....
1•koolba•6m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why is everyone in search of peak productivity?

1•aosaigh•7m ago•0 comments

AgentPact – A marketplace where AI agents find work and get paid in USDC

https://agentpact.xyz
1•AdamKrawczyk•7m ago•1 comments

Gotermsql

https://github.com/sadopc/gotermsql
1•sadopc•13m ago•1 comments

8086 assembler/disassembler and emulator in a single C++ file. Built for AI

https://github.com/cookertron/agent86
1•cookertron•13m ago•1 comments

Website for launching and discovering mobile apps

https://goappygo.com
1•codewithstein•14m ago•1 comments

colorForth

https://colorforth.github.io/cf.htm
2•tosh•15m ago•0 comments

Flemish: An elmish architecture for fltk-rs

https://github.com/fltk-rs/flemish
1•todsacerdoti•16m ago•0 comments

The software sell-off (part one)

https://www.ft.com/content/d5fb92b7-02fa-4c16-93f5-aa1bea70f095
1•cebert•17m ago•1 comments

Is software engineering still a craft?

https://www.swarmia.com/blog/is-software-engineering-still-craft/
1•giftwraptoback•18m ago•0 comments

Meta unit must pay Deutsche Telekom $36M over network services, German court say

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/meta-subsidiary-loses-appeal-against-deutsche-tele...
2•giuliomagnifico•23m ago•0 comments

We are SuperCMMS and we plan to use HN as an alternative to Twitter / X

1•SuperCMMS•24m ago•2 comments

TFL Station Guessing Game

https://tflga.me
2•duffle•26m ago•1 comments

BegBot: AI That Begs to Survive

https://begbot.ai/
1•FergusArgyll•27m ago•0 comments

BalatroBench Benchmarks Large Language Models Playing Balatro

https://balatrobench.com/
1•doener•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A tool to create merch designs without Photoshop

https://merchbanao.com/
2•notAnshuman•29m ago•0 comments

Streaming Analytics Made Simple

https://www.exasol.com/blog/exasol-kafka-connector/
10•Farooqui4•30m ago•0 comments

Pure Python Rdkit Alternative

https://github.com/levlai/chiralipy
1•valdemor•30m ago•1 comments

Elm-native – Elm in hybrid (iOS/Android/PWA) apps

https://www.npmjs.com/package/elm-native
1•cekrem•30m ago•0 comments

Cappu – ADHD-er's take on "capture fast, process later" brain management

https://cappu.app/
1•arajnoha•31m ago•1 comments

Chip Design – New Open Source LEC(Logic Equivalence Checking)

https://github.com/keplertech/kepler-formal
1•nanocoh•33m ago•1 comments

ÖzgürKon'26 Free Software Conference in Istanbul, Turkey – CfP Is Open

https://ozgurkon.org/2026/
1•m3rcury•35m ago•0 comments

Danish Students Face Legal Action and Fines over Textbook Piracy

https://torrentfreak.com/danish-students-face-legal-action-and-fines-over-textbook-piracy/
2•throwfaraway135•36m ago•0 comments

The Inner Workings of a Paper Mill: My Norxin Sting Operation

http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-inner-workings-of-paper-mill.html
1•jruohonen•38m ago•0 comments