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The Infinity Man: Demis Hassabis, Colleagues and Rivals

https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/the-infinity-man
1•klelatti•35s ago•0 comments

Mark's Magic Multiply

https://wren.wtf/shower-thoughts/marks-magic-multiply/
1•luu•2m ago•0 comments

Give Your Agent a Canvas, Not Just a Chatbox

https://create0.ai
1•enha•4m ago•0 comments

The Great GPU Shortage: H100 Rental Prices Up 40%

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-great-gpu-shortage-rental-capacity
1•alecco•4m ago•0 comments

Due Diligence Framework Before Your Business Commits to Open Source

https://groundblue.gumroad.com/l/nlzhlx
1•elsadek•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I missed my terminal so I rebuilt email

https://tallyman.io
3•Mechse•7m ago•0 comments

AIYO Wisper – Local voice-to-text for macOS (WhisperKit, open source)

https://github.com/Aiyo28/aiyo-wisper
1•Aiyo28•10m ago•0 comments

What We Learned Building a Rust Runtime for TypeScript

https://encore.dev/blog/rust-runtime
1•vinhnx•12m ago•0 comments

Rust terminal projects in 3 years

https://blog.orhun.dev/800-rust-projects/
1•vinhnx•13m ago•0 comments

How AI Is Reimagining the Game of Golf–For Both Players and Courses

https://www.wsj.com/sports/golf/ai-in-golf-technology-impact-4122d0e1
2•thm•14m ago•0 comments

The tragedy of leisure

https://www.ft.com/content/b91b739e-2164-463c-a8e0-54b59650a9f9
2•pramodbiligiri•23m ago•0 comments

State of Utopia passes its first law

https://stateofutopia.com/laws/1/law1.html
1•logicallee•24m ago•2 comments

EU fingerprint and photo travel rules come into force

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39rkpe8mj2o
3•zeristor•24m ago•0 comments

Umeshism

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=40
2•yawboakye•24m ago•0 comments

Artemis II is competency porn

https://lizplank.substack.com/p/artemis-ii-is-competency-porn-and
2•jgrodziski•30m ago•0 comments

Why you need to replace your native macOS screenshot app?

https://snapkeep.webytes.net/
1•Mohamm6d•30m ago•1 comments

Automated Browser Testing with MCP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_automation
2•jacksonkasi•35m ago•0 comments

Kaze Emanuar: Illegal 3D Rendering Techniques (N64) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIUkoUEMf_g
1•tnelsond4•38m ago•0 comments

Picasso's Guernica (Gigapixel)

https://guernica.museoreinasofia.es/gigapixel/#3/63.11/-120.59
1•guigar•38m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LSM Trees: MemTable, Compaction, and the Amplification Triangle [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOC7jkN748w
1•rcron•38m ago•0 comments

France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

https://www.xda-developers.com/frances-government-ditching-windows-for-linux/
4•pabs3•40m ago•1 comments

Reverse Engineering File Format Steganography Chain of the TeamPCP Attack

https://husseinmuhaisen.com/blog/reverse-engineering-teampcp-telnyx-file-format-chain/
1•husseinmuhaisen•40m ago•1 comments

GazeFollow from Scratch

https://github.com/aldipiroli/GazeFollow_from_scratch/tree/main
2•tgnk2341•41m ago•0 comments

Incremental Compilation with LLVM

https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-04-08
1•birdculture•43m ago•0 comments

I built a skill manager for AI agents. The agents install the skills themselves

https://github.com/nattergabriel/reseed
3•eterer•44m ago•1 comments

I built a programming language in 6 days without writing a single line of code

https://github.com/Quynah/ape-lang
1•Quynah•45m ago•1 comments

Digital World Statistics in Real Time

https://anythingcounter.com
1•digitalofen•45m ago•0 comments

Pizza Tycoon Deluxe Bundle

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/6361/Pizza_Connection__Deluxe/
1•doener•59m ago•0 comments

Scoop: Microsoft Is Pausing Carbon Removal Purchases

https://heatmap.news/carbon-removal/microsoft-carbon-removal-pause
4•doener•1h ago•1 comments

Claude API Error: 529

4•anujbans•1h ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•11mo ago

Comments

thechao•11mo 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•11mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•11mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•11mo 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•11mo 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.
jcgrillo•11mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•11mo 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•11mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•11mo 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•11mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•11mo 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_•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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/