On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN repeatedly names it as one of the funniest and best talks, a favorite example of absurd computation.
What it is
A short SIGBOVIK 2017 presentation by Tom Wildenhain showing that PowerPoint animations are Turing complete, with a working Turing machine built in slides. The talk is delivered deadpan as a serious research result.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec aeleos · 2018-01 · on “HDR Photography in Microsoft Excel (2017) [video]”
This is very similar in style to my favorite presentation and paper of all time, titled On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint [0]. The research, presentation and paper were all created inside of powerpoint and it is probably the greatest thing ever made. If you enjoyed the above video you will definitely enjoy this. [0] [this video]
Strong rec stanlarroque · 2018-02 · on “Age of Empires 2 Scenario Editor Is Turing Complete”
I can only think of one of the greatest videos[0] on Youtube when I read about unusual Turing complete systems. [0] [this video]
Strong rec K0SM0S · 2020-01 · on “The “No Code” Delusion”
I think this drives your point with incredible wit: “On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)” by Tom Wildenhain[1]. (5 minutes video) [1]: [this video] (Nerding out should always be hilarious like that!) [2]: Recording of a guest lecture he gave for the Esoteric Programming Languages course at CMU. (~1h) [LINK]
Recommends floatboth · 2018-01 · on “Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?”
On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint [this video] Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper [LINK] HDR Photography in Microsoft Excel?! [LINK] Zebras All the Way Down [LINK] Solving Layout Problems with CSS Grid and Friends [LINK] Console Security - Switch [LINK] Let's move SMM out of firmware and into the kernel [LINK] Bringing Linux back to server boot ROMs with NERF and Heads [LINK] Sharing the Chisel [LINK] (looks like the actual conference video wasn't released)
Recommends codepie · 2018-02 · on “Lessons from Optics, the Other Deep Learning”
The former paper appeared in SIBVOIK 2017 ( [LINK] ), where you can find other such papers. My personal favorites are "On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint" ( [this video] ) and "Automated Distributed Execution of LLVM code using SQL JIT Compilation" > Following the popularity of MapReduce, a whole ecosystem of Apache Incubator Projects has emerged that all solve the same problem. Famous examples include Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, Apache Pikachu, Apache Pig, German Spark and Apache Hive [1]
Recommends kgrizzle · 2018-09 · on “3D engine entirely made of MS Excel formulae”
Reminds me of a related project presented at SIGBOVIK demonstrating the Turing completeness of PowerPoint. It is also art. [this video]
Recommends bschne · 2019-06 · on “3D engine on MS Excel without VBA (2018) [video]”
For another completely insane but kind of fun way to abuse an office application, see "On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint" [1]. (Gwern has a whole list of accidentally/surprisingly turing-complete things at [2]) 1. [this video] 2. [LINK]
Recommends alpaca128 · 2020-12 · on “Ask HN: Best Talks of 2020?”
If you liked the Game of Life running a Game of Life simulation you might enjoy the YT video[0] showing someone's functioning raycasting engine within the game world of Factorio using thousands of machines and parts provided by the game. It blew my mind. What I also found quite amusing was the PowerPoint presentation demonstrating the Turing-completeness of PowerPoint animations[1]. I'll never get tired of this kind of tinkering walking the line between genius and a healthy portion of crazy. [0] [LINK] [1] [this video]