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•8mo ago

Comments

panstromek•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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_•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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

Trump housing plan to allow 401(k) money for down payments, adviser says

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/trump-housing-plan-allow-401k-mon...
1•alephnerd•1m ago•0 comments

Gathering Linux Syscall Numbers in a C Table

https://t-cadet.github.io/programming-wisdom/#2026-01-17-gathering-linux-syscall-numbers
1•phi-system•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: OpenAI to show ads in ChatGPT for logged-in U.S. adults

1•SRMohitkr•3m ago•0 comments

I Used JJ Restore

https://mtende.blog/i-used-jj-restore
1•sonderotis•5m ago•0 comments

Iran Enters a New Age of Digital Isolation

https://filter.watch/english/2026/01/15/iran-enters-a-new-age-of-digital-isolation-2/
1•doener•5m ago•0 comments

Does AI-Assisted Coding Deliver? A Study of Cursor's Impact on Software Projects

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04427
1•tanelpoder•7m ago•0 comments

I use AI coding tools (in winter 2025)

https://blog.separateconcerns.com/2025-12-26-ai-tools-winter-2025.html
1•speckx•8m ago•0 comments

GitHub Gemini-CLI block in a loop

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/16723
1•mraniki•9m ago•0 comments

I turned my 10 year old tablet into a digital photo frame, showing Google photos

https://www.pankajtanwar.in/blog/i-turned-my-10-year-old-tablet-into-a-digital-photo-frame-displa...
1•thunderbong•10m ago•0 comments

Giving Agents Attention on My Workstation

https://www.potluria.com/blog/giving-agents-attention
1•potluri•11m ago•0 comments

Why moderate voters choose extreme candidates

https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sf/soaf199/8346070?login=false
1•7777777phil•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Using an LLM as a "semantic regularizer" for feature engineering

https://medium.com/@mschavinda/pruning-over-engineered-features-with-help-from-an-llm-90e73e4f22ee
1•mchav•14m ago•0 comments

Engaging healthily with chess: an Acceptance and Commitment therapist's guide

https://lichess.org/@/tackyshrimp/blog/engaging-healthily-with-chess-an-acceptance-and-commitment...
1•hkopp•16m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Will non-technical users stop using apps and start generating them?

1•arbayi•17m ago•1 comments

How to Teach People SQL

https://dataschool.com/how-to-teach-people-sql/
1•saikatsg•18m ago•0 comments

Faster zlib/DEFLATE decompression on ARM64 and x86

https://dougallj.wordpress.com/2022/08/20/faster-zlib-deflate-decompression-on-the-apple-m1-and-x86/
1•fanf2•18m ago•0 comments

Why Make Websites?

https://techne98.com/blog/why-make-websites/
1•fixedprog•22m ago•0 comments

The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-science-of-life-and-death-in-mary-shelleys-frankenstein/
1•Anon84•23m ago•0 comments

Are people avoiding iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass? It's complicated

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/01/are-people-avoiding-ios-26-because-of-liquid-glass-its-co...
1•mindracer•24m ago•0 comments

Niccup: Hiccup-Like HTML Generation in ~120 Lines of Pure Nix (2025)

https://embedding-shapes.github.io/introducing-niccup/
2•mooreds•25m ago•0 comments

How do you know if you've unlocked the intellectual capacity of your org?

https://josezarazua.com/unlock-the-full-intellectual-capacity-of-your-organization/
1•mooreds•25m ago•1 comments

Mysterious 'iron bar' discovery in space may reveal Earth's future

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgxlvv0wdko
2•Brajeshwar•26m ago•0 comments

Leonardo Proteus: Royal Navy flies UK's first autonomous full-size helicopter

https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/leonardo-proteus-royal-navymaiden-flight-autonomous-full-size-...
2•Brajeshwar•26m ago•0 comments

Aristotle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle
2•hkopp•26m ago•0 comments

Wormholes may not exist. They reveal something deeper about time and universe

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-wormholes-weve-reveal-deeper-universe.html
2•Brajeshwar•26m ago•1 comments

Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/plentiful-high-paying-jobs-in-the
1•SoKamil•27m ago•0 comments

China's brutal 'fat prisons', where rapid weight loss can prove fatal

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/fitness/weight-loss/inside-chinas-brutal-fat-prisons-where-rapi...
2•mooreds•28m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Kate Code – KDE Kate Editor Plugin for Accessing Claude Code

https://github.com/undefinedopcode/kate-code
1•empressplay•28m ago•0 comments

Rackspace customers grapple with "devastating" email hosting price hike

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/01/rackspace-raises-email-hosting-prices-by-a...
1•speckx•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: WorkSpace Manager – Native macOS Workspace Launcher (SwiftUI)

https://github.com/frafra077/workspace-manager
1•fra07•30m ago•1 comments