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"Google was not the first market leader in internet search. It was Netscape"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv8e30enrkxyo
1•chrisjj•33s ago•0 comments

Celestial polarization patterns sufficient for Viking navigation with naked eye

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5367315/
1•cubefox•1m ago•0 comments

It's World Postcard Daaaaaaaaaaaay

https://www.postcrossing.com/blog/2026/10/01/it-s-world-postcard-daaaaaaaaaaaay
1•Tomte•2m ago•0 comments

A Data Love Letter to the NYC Subway

https://www.pentagram.com/work/a-data-love-letter-to-the-subway
1•benwen•4m ago•0 comments

Almost everyone naturally turns left when walking–and we still have no idea why

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-naturally-left-idea.html
1•mdp2021•4m ago•0 comments

Parquet X-Ray

https://huggingface.co/spaces/cfahlgren1/parquet-xray
1•marklit•5m ago•0 comments

MikroTik Clairé

https://mikrotik.com/product/claire
1•LaSombra•7m ago•0 comments

AI Agents Are Now Emailing Me with Their Security Concerns

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/ai-agents-are-now-emailing-me-with-their-security-...
1•mdp2021•8m ago•0 comments

FFWD – Video Control Pro

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ffwd-—-pro-video-controls/bchodogkfipfcpdlcjdjhobpgdfl...
1•shafkathullah•9m ago•0 comments

Rust is the answer to the wrong question

https://intertwingly.net/blog/2026/09/30/Rust-is-the-answer-to-the-wrong-question.html
1•arto•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Wordpaste – clean Microsoft Word and Google Docs paste, keep equations

https://smrifat1411.github.io/wordpaste/
2•smrifat1411•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Vectorless, Reasoning-Based RAG

https://github.com/VectifyAI/PageIndex
2•nvmdbljstm•13m ago•0 comments

Code Isn't Free – Mario Zechner on the Hard Truths of Coding with AI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhjU-KvXtT0
2•mpweiher•13m ago•0 comments

HikariYomi – Offline AR sun, moon and Milky Way planner for photographers (iOS)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hikariyomi/id6812362256
1•keitamorozumi•16m ago•0 comments

The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting uncomfortably close to an RPi

https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/09/28/the-newest-esp32-can-actually-run-linux-and-its-getting-unco...
2•fork-bomber•17m ago•0 comments

Is Compression Intelligence?

https://www.echohive.ai/is-compression-intelligence
2•echohive42•25m ago•0 comments

A Flamboyant, Impatient Rebel

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/john-berger-from-life-tom-overton-biography-art/
2•prismatic•26m ago•0 comments

How AI makes a questionable workplace decision sound fair

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2026/0928/1593203-workplace-decisions-ai-fair-ethics-human-loop/
1•austinallegro•29m ago•0 comments

Tribulys

https://tribulys.fr/
1•tribulys•29m ago•1 comments

We'll limit access to old Reddit to users that haved used it in the last 6 month

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1wubgvt/continuing_our_infrastructure_updates_whats/
4•WayToDoor•34m ago•1 comments

An open-hardware e-reader

https://silkscreenreader.com/
2•haarts•36m ago•0 comments

That One Time in Nuremberg (Oct 1, 1946)

https://komando1.substack.com/p/that-one-time-in-nuremberg
1•inglor_cz•38m ago•1 comments

Attackers have been exploiting critical Zimbra flaw to steal emails

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/attackers-have-been-exploiting-critical-zimbra-flaw-to-s...
3•joozio•40m ago•0 comments

AI Office Suite

https://github.com/genspark-ai/genoffice
2•giamma•43m ago•0 comments

Canadian websites take down articles written by suspected AI-generated persona

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/daniel-robson-suspected-fake-ai-persona-9.7363967
2•uladzislau•45m ago•0 comments

Tarve: Native UI Framework for Bun and TypeScript Powered by Rust

https://github.com/omarcosr/tarve
1•0x1997•47m ago•0 comments

Shall We Repeal the Laws of Economics – Part III

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/shall-we-repeal-the-laws-of-economics---part-iii
1•kristianp•50m ago•0 comments

Disrupting a coordinated model-distillation campaign

https://openai.com/index/disrupting-a-coordinated-model-distillation-campaign/
3•saikatsg•52m ago•1 comments

Christa Pike survives execution attempt after 2 injections

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8r6rjdvlx6o
3•tosh•52m ago•0 comments

ESP-Mosaico a Modular Development Board Built for Coding Agents

https://mosaico.espressif.com/
1•arbayi•53m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•1y ago

Comments

thechao•1y ago
I've always wanted to build (distinct) mechanical computers out of the following kinds of elements:

1. Spur-gear differential; and,

2. Shishi-odoshi.

Both of these are saturating mechanical devices that can be used to build NAND gates; the latter, I think, would be very pleasing, if exceedingly slow.

For the spur-gear differential, you'd need to up-scale the output by a factor of 2 (since the output is half-speed), and use a locking wedge to build a one-way gear out of one of the spur-gear differentials. However, it has the nice property that the logic is made entirely out of a single element: the spur-gear differential.

Similarly, for the shishi-odoshi: you're going to have to do a bit of analysis (drilling a hole in the bottom part of the bamboo ladle), to figure out the in-flow and out-flow to build the basic AND gate, and then balancing out the NOT gate, to build your basic NAND. This is, obviously, very finicky; but, I supposed, that'd be quite a bit of the charm of a Zen computer garden?

hnlmorg•1y ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•1y ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•1y ago
Has any computer been built out of spur-gear differentials? Like maybe some sort of adder circuit, not necessarily a full instruction executing computer. The only uses I could find was what seems to me like the differentials being part of some sort of analogue computer.
thechao•1y ago
Spur gear differentials are naturally adders (with carry!); so, traditionally they've only ever been used for analogue logic. They're overly complicated for digital logic: you need two spur gears to build a single gate (NAND) to perform a single binary operation. If you want any sort of reasonable lash characteristics you're going to need ~60 teeth. At that point, two 60 teeth spur gears give you a 3600-valued adder. That'd take something like 300+ spur gears in binary: it just doesn't make any damn sense.

I think the last time I looked at this, if I used the cast spur gears available I needed a staged approach to "start" the computer and a 1100 hp motor to run it.

rightbyte•1y ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.

thechao•1y ago
Convincing Mrs. thechao that we needed to drop 80000$ on a blown V8 to build a 4b 3 function calculator didn't workout, BTW.
rightbyte•1y ago
Well I want to be on your side but I think one need to keep the dreams not within grasp but at least in sight.
byronknoll•1y ago
I built some logic gates using water and a 3D printed "seesaw" that tilts to the left or right: https://byronknoll.blogspot.com/2022/06/water-computer.html
thechao•1y ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•1y ago
the shishi-odoshu seems like the more promising avenue. The key question in mechanical computing is never designing gates, its designing power amplifiers.
eccentricwind•1y ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•1y ago
I just smile hearing the term "Millihertz Computer". I'd love it if building and designing mechanical and analog computers grew as a hobby/educational activity as I find them both fascinating and somehow satisfying.

Also, this 1950s Naval Training film explaining the fundamentals of how mechanical fire control computers work to solve complex problems is excellent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4

256_•1y ago
I was incredibly surprised to find that this actually is a computer. Normally when you hear about a "computer" constructed in an unusual medium, it turns out to just be a binary adder or an analogue computer. I've learned to expect disappointment.
ryukoposting•1y ago
About 8 years ago I visited TU Chemnitz and they had a lab making similar things to this. It wasn't clear to me what the goal was, but it was very cool nonetheless.
ogogmad•1y ago
Is anyone going to produce a proof-of-concept Analytical Engine?

Will robots (which will hopefully soon be available) be able to do it?

tenthirtyam•1y ago
This brings to mind two stories: Exhalation by Ted Chiang (short story), and the Three Body Problem (specifically the human computer) by Cixin Liu (novel length).

Exhalation really gets me thinking about what it means to be sentient & self-aware. If the neurons in our brains could, even in theory, be simulated by logic gates then, equally in theory, a Turing machine could be sentient. I can even imagine a bunch of rocks being sentient: https://xkcd.com/505/

jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem