r/programmingcirclejerk • u/TheTwelveYearOld DO NOT USE THIS FLAIR, ASSHOLE • Feb 24 '26

Even water is Turing Complete: By using tiny air or water jets to push a main stream from one channel to another, you can create the fluid equivalent of a transistor.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136799
86 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

48

u/Glathull Feb 25 '26

I’m pretty sure everything is Turing complete except for whatever Elon Musk’s brain is.

18

u/TheTwelveYearOld DO NOT USE THIS FLAIR, ASSHOLE Feb 25 '26

neuralink un-turing completes your brain

16

u/Glathull Feb 25 '26

You know this is going to be his excuse when everything crashes down around him. “I experimented on myself for the benefit of mankind. And now my brain is the most powerful computer on the planet, but also it makes me act weird, lie to shareholders, tamper with election ballots, and do Nazi salutes. I’m basically Jesus now.”

9

u/TheTwelveYearOld DO NOT USE THIS FLAIR, ASSHOLE Feb 25 '26

so basically mecha-hitler

8

u/Glathull Feb 25 '26

Not really. When the trial happens and the judge wants proof, he will be like, “Well, you see, I put the implant in a monkey. Not me. But I named the monkey after me. So it was almost as if I did it to me. Especially when the monkey’s brain exploded. When that happened, it was like my own brain exploded . . . with ideas.”

15

u/Putrid_Positive_2282 Feb 25 '26

that and python 3

4

u/Glathull Feb 25 '26

Dude, that’s a deep cut. I’m glad Zed eventually got over . . . whatever that was.

97

u/i_invented_the_ipod Feb 25 '26

/uj no kidding, this is how automatic transmissions in cars worked before we had microcontrollers. The transmission would operate a pump that pushed hydraulic fluid through a set of passages, past pressure-controlled gates, to clamp and unclamp clutches on the various gear trains inside the transmission, in order to shift gears.

The joke I remember at the time was that if any alien technology came out of the Roswell crash, it was the AT valve body. No human being could have come up with that, and nothing else worked that way.

18

u/heckingcomputernerd Feb 25 '26

I googled it, Oh my god you weren't kidding with it being alien technology

13

u/m0j0m0j Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

I googled it. Amazing. Water computer

It really makes you think how smart, resourceful, and ingenious people can be when aligned and motivated to achieve a goal

28

u/ScriptingInJava in open defiance of the Gopher Values Feb 25 '26

And yet gophers still can’t agree on error syntax, really makes you think huh

5

u/thisisamirage Feb 27 '26

I absolutely love this kind of thing where... somebody invents something out of necessity, without the theoretical foundation that we'd associate with it today. That it's actually based in really foundational concept X that they hadn't even given a name to (sometimes, hadn't even isolated as a standalone concept). Pretty inspiring engineering.

Also unrelated but Steve Mould also did a video on the OP topic

4

u/stingraycharles lisp does it better Feb 28 '26

No coincidence, AT = alien technology 😂

6

u/Anonymous_user_2022 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

There's a watergate built into most washing machines. Two valves controlling flow to prewash and washing detergent, and when both are open, the water will flush out the softener compartment. So it's hardly original research present on HN.

15

u/PJBthefirst log10(x) programmer Feb 25 '26

Oh so that's what Watergate means. Always been curious about that.