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Spider monkeys pool their knowledge to find the best fruit

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-spider-monkeys-pool-knowledge-fruit.html
1•pseudolus•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MinimalistNotes – Offline-first notes app, no account, free forever

https://minimalistnotes.com
1•pghqdev•8m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Books to learn 6502 ASM and the Apple II

3•abkt•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Compressor – native Android video compression using Media3

1•JoshAtticus•10m ago•0 comments

From world police to local fortress

https://eurodivergent.bearblog.dev/from-wold-police-to-local-fortress/
2•Dansvidania•12m ago•0 comments

Resend is boring. It's also one of the most exciting products in tech

https://kimmoihanus.com/posts/007-resend-is-boring-also-most-exciting-product-in-tech
2•ihmissuti•12m ago•0 comments

AI Generated Tests as Ceremony

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2026/01/26/ai-generated-tests-as-ceremony/
2•birdculture•14m ago•0 comments

Archyl – The modern platform for C4 model documentation

https://www.archyl.com/
1•eko•14m ago•1 comments

Anthropic launches interactive Claude apps, including Slack, other tools

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/anthropic-launches-interactive-claude-apps-including-slack-and-...
2•pseudolus•15m ago•0 comments

Rebuilding Europe's Sovereignty (Brux Conference)

https://bruxconference2026.com/
2•aiz0Houp•16m ago•0 comments

Why altcoin season may not happen in 2026 as Bitcoin keeps control

https://thebitgazette.com/why-altcoin-season-may-not-happen-in-2026-as-bitcoin-keeps-control/
1•CapricornQueen•17m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How do teams maintain understanding of large, long-lived codebases?

1•Parbhat-Kapila•17m ago•0 comments

DeepSeek Engram hits 97% on NIAH using DRAM instead of HBM

https://www.techaffiliate.in/blog/deepseek-engram-ai-memory-breakthrough-explained-2026
1•Aditya_kachhawa•18m ago•0 comments

'Ralph Wiggum' loop prompts Claude to vibe-clone commercial software $10/hour

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/27/ralph_wiggum_claude_loops/
3•pseudolus•19m ago•1 comments

Standard.site – One schema. Every platform

https://standard.site/
1•mefengl•20m ago•0 comments

For the Love of Troff [pdf]

http://www.schemamania.org/troff/for-the-love-of-troff.pdf
1•signa11•22m ago•0 comments

Zszrun Trading Red Flags: When Slippage and Spikes Don't Look Market-Driven

2•Kangaroo_•25m ago•0 comments

I made my own Git

https://tonystr.net/blog/git_immitation
3•TonyStr•27m ago•0 comments

Add custom tools to Claude Code with YAML (no MCP required)

https://github.com/hexcreator/claude-code-extensions
1•xxayh•27m ago•0 comments

Should you restart or cold boot a Mac?

https://eclecticlight.co/2026/01/27/should-you-restart-or-cold-boot/
2•chmaynard•28m ago•0 comments

Technology in 1776

https://www.a16z.news/p/technology-in-1776
2•7777777phil•29m ago•0 comments

Anthropic raised trademark concerns, so Clawdbot ended up renaming

2•necatiozmen•31m ago•3 comments

As Tech Chiefs Woo Trump, Silicon Valley Seethes over Minneapolis Shootings

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/technology/ice-minnesota-protests-tech.html
1•m-hodges•34m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Actionbase – A database for likes, views, follows at 1M+ req/min

https://github.com/kakao/actionbase
2•em3s•34m ago•1 comments

Subconscious Could Be in Tune with the Solar System

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70114132/moon-affects-humans-minds/
1•keepamovin•34m ago•0 comments

Autonomous Aquatic Robot Is Smaller Than a Grain of Salt

https://www.wired.com/story/autonomous-aquatic-robot-smaller-than-a-grain-of-salt/
2•ColinWright•35m ago•0 comments

Clawdbot forced to rename by Anthropic – GitHub broke, X handle stolen by bots

https://twitter.com/steipete/status/2016068265391354181
1•joozio•37m ago•1 comments

Sam Altman said OpenAI planning to 'dramatically slow down' its pace of hiring

https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-said-openai-plan-dramatically-slow-down-hiring-ai-2026-1
2•tanganik•38m ago•1 comments

Portabase 1.2.3: backup/restore tool, now with MongoDB and a new storages

2•rambokdev•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Code Review Lab – Practice spotting vulnerabilities in code

https://www.codereviewlab.com/
5•parasimpaticki•39m ago•2 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•9mo ago

Comments

thechao•9mo 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•9mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•9mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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•9mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•9mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•9mo 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•9mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•9mo 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_•9mo 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•9mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/