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Fluxion: A Propagator-Based Reactive Web UI Framework in Common Lisp

https://glenneth.org/content/posts/2026-04-25-fluxion-reactive-web-ui-common-lisp.html
1•tmtvl•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Learn/Practice Sudoku strategies web app

https://sw-fun.github.io/sudoku/
1•softwarewright•2m ago•0 comments

98% of What Claude Code Does, I Never See. The 0.27% It Stops for Is the Point

https://grith.ai/blog/98-percent-of-claude-code-i-never-see
1•edf13•3m ago•0 comments

WTF is going on with R7RS Large? 2026 edition

https://crumbles.blog/posts/2026-09-04-r7rs-wtf.html
2•mepian•3m ago•0 comments

Avoid adding new library to project: 10-year retrospective

https://pvs-studio.com/en/blog/posts/1408/
2•birdculture•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Context Engine – Be an AI-native company or get killed by one that did

https://contextengine.com/
1•hey-fk•4m ago•0 comments

What Should Programmers Do While the AI Writes Code?

https://medium.com/@scott.batson_76410/what-should-programmers-do-while-the-ai-writes-code-a2ce2e...
1•syumei•4m ago•0 comments

Libjpeg-turbo, libvips ban use of generative AI

https://github.com/libjpeg-turbo/libjpeg-turbo/commit/5966050641633f9298b03f6b99a625067b22a91c
1•larsmaxfield•5m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Browser tools that repair GEDCOM files and write them back unchanged

https://gedcom.tools/
1•kulesh•5m ago•0 comments

Discord's trending games list this week and what it says about player taste

https://discorder.tools/blog/discord-trending-games-this-week/
1•souvic•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MeScript, music programming language inspired by Lisp

https://quadracollision.com/mescript/
1•vegnus•6m ago•0 comments

Check the Probability of Truthfulness

https://liepredictor.com/
1•alfredmalmros•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Petrichor – Native offline music player for macOS

https://petrichor.page/
1•kushalpandya•6m ago•0 comments

The Asymmetric Disarmament of AI Security

https://eddiemissri.substack.com/p/the-asymmetric-disarmament-of-ai
1•pelosm•7m ago•0 comments

Can you learn programming by building with AI? (poll)

https://textlog.cc/post/3183
2•stagas•8m ago•0 comments

BGGP6 Recap – Binary Golf Association

https://tmpout.sh/5/18.html
1•vismit2000•8m ago•0 comments

Yahoo wanted rent for two decades of ghost email. I cleared 21.7 GB instead

https://www.mailroomclean.com/blog/why-i-built-mailroom
1•rafik24•9m ago•0 comments

Square Turns - Merging chaos with symmetry

https://adnanbaysal.github.io/square-turns.html
1•vismit2000•9m ago•0 comments

Microsoft announces Project Zenith, a clutter-free Windows to entice developers

https://www.engadget.com/2251018/microsoft-announces-project-zenith-clutter-free-windows-experience/
2•SanjayMehta•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Vise – Deterministic gates for AI refactors

https://github.com/NakliTechie/vise
1•naklitechie•12m ago•0 comments

Where did Ted Unangst's website go?

1•paedubucher•14m ago•2 comments

Why can't a tech-savvy China make its food safe?

https://economist.com/china/2026/09/03/why-cant-a-tech-savvy-china-make-its-food-safe
1•andsoitis•14m ago•0 comments

The AI That Does Things. Any OS. Any Platform

https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw
1•manishmicrosaas•14m ago•0 comments

25% of all websites now use Cloudflare as CDN

https://w3techs.com/blog/entry/25_percent_of_all_websites_now_use_cloudflare_as_cdn
3•MarionG•14m ago•2 comments

Will My Homemade Ekranoplan Fly? DIY Flying Boat [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawr2QRdO4U
2•skibz•15m ago•0 comments

Apple: A Message to Our Customers (2016)

https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
2•tosh•16m ago•0 comments

Cloud Bill Billionaire

https://www.loganbesecker.com/Apps/Cloud-Bill-Billionaire.html
2•YAReader•18m ago•0 comments

OpenAI Astra and Recurrent Depth / Looped Transformers [Seb Raschka] [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT4n-z_4QJU
2•mdp2021•19m ago•1 comments

Hacker-yardage: Make golf yardage books using OpenStreetMap and USGS Lidar data

https://github.com/npilk/hacker-yardage
1•npilk•21m ago•0 comments

The Dark Side of Mindfulness

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/meditation-willoughby-britton-downsides/688474/
1•paulpauper•21m 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