[wgetch]

There is, perhaps surprisingly (or not), already a relevant XKCD mentioning this feature while poking fun at the computational abominations that were already possible in Excel:

https://xkcd.com/2453/

On that note, TFA claims that the introduction of LAMBDA finally makes Excel Turing complete, unlike the kind of Turing machine simulators the stick figure is referring to in the XKCD comic...

> (In contrast, Felienne Hermans’s lovely blog post about writing a Turing machine in Excel doesn’t, strictly speaking, establish Turing completeness because it uses successive rows for successive states, so the number of steps is limited by the number of rows.)

[maest]

To be fair, no computer is an actual TM since memory is finite.

[quonn]

It can pause and ask you to temporarily attach another hard disk. Could be infinite as long as one can afford buying disks.

[jaza]

But the amount of raw material on the planet needed for manufacturing more disks is finite.

The amount of raw material in the universe is finite at a given point in time (it could be infinite over time, we don't know if time is infinite either).

I think we've already established (especially over the past year) that fiat money is infinite.

The Turing machine is a mathematical model. Infinity only exists in the world of mathematics. The physical world is by definition finite.

[IIAOPSW]

A paper clip machine scenario but instead it wants to turn all atoms into hard drives so it can keep running itself. A machine who's purpose is itself. A stupid orobus that will kill us all.

[gkop]

> The physical world is by definition finite

This isn't obvious to me, would you elaborate?

[jaza]

Is the universe finite?

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20200123104919A...

Sadly that thread will soon be gone due to the approaching Yahoo Answers apocalypse. Hopefully Internet Archive will save it!

[willhslade]

Take everything in the world. Every physical piece. Break it into the smallest slice you care to: (atoms, quarks, whatever). The count of those things is bounded. It's a huge number, but it's finite. Infinity is not a real concept, it's imaging that there is no number that can be bounded.

[sullyj3]

This demonstrate countability, not finiteness. If by "world" you mean universe, there's no guarantee that you can "take everything in it", because it might be infinite.

[Dangeranger]

Maybe, there are hypothesis’ that the Universe is infinite. The observable Universe is finite.

[anamexis]

Classic HN: from article on new Microsoft Excel feature to semantic debate on the definition of the universe in record time.

[aidenn0]

Right, all computers have a bounded amount of state, so they can only parse regular languages.