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On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)

On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)

Tom Wildenhain
8 HN recommenders · discussed 2017–2025
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About this video

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.

Why it appears in the archive

HN repeatedly names it as one of the funniest and best talks, a favorite example of absurd computation.

AI-generated summary and labels from the source dataset; verify important details against the video. Source & credits.

From the Hacker News discussion

aeleos · 2018-01 · strong rec

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] [VIDEO]

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stanlarroque · 2018-02 · strong rec

I can only think of one of the greatest videos[0] on Youtube when I read about unusual Turing complete systems. [0] [VIDEO]

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K0SM0S · 2020-01 · strong rec

I think this drives your point with incredible wit: “On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)” by Tom Wildenhain[1]. (5 minutes video) [1]: [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]

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floatboth · 2018-01 · rec

On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint [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)

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codepie · 2018-02 · rec

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" ( [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]

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kgrizzle · 2018-09 · rec

Reminds me of a related project presented at SIGBOVIK demonstrating the Turing completeness of PowerPoint. It is also art. [VIDEO]

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bschne · 2019-06 · rec

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. [VIDEO] 2. [LINK]

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alpaca128 · 2020-12 · rec

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] [VIDEO]

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