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AI and the Fall of Writing

1•Flundstrom2•2m ago•0 comments

Taliban Declares War on Smartphones

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/10/g-s1-132396/smartphones-taliban-afghanistan-ban
1•paulpauper•3m ago•0 comments

FCC Approves Test of Space Mirror to Light Night Sky Despite Outcry

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror.html
1•paulpauper•3m ago•0 comments

From A.I. To the Deep State, Michel Foucault Foresaw It All

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/books/review/michel-foucault-ai-tech-power.html
1•paulpauper•4m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Recommended technographic API?

1•Poomba•5m ago•0 comments

Can We Understand How Large Language Models Reason?

https://cacm.acm.org/news/can-we-understand-how-large-language-models-reason/
2•adunk•6m ago•0 comments

MaFrida v0.3.0 Is Out

https://github.com/theShinigami/MaFrida
1•shiroChef•8m ago•0 comments

Dead Process Mate – a menu-bar app to kill leftover Node/dev processes

https://github.com/BartosK97/dead-process-mate
1•bartosk97•8m ago•0 comments

Claude Code get 50% more weekly limit

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15910845-claude-code-may-july-2026-weekly-limits-promotion
3•alvis•9m ago•0 comments

Cosmic is quietly doing things GNOME and KDE still make you fight for

https://www.xda-developers.com/cosmic-hit-version-1-2-quietly-doing-things-gnome-kde-still-make-y...
3•naves•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Scramble Quest

https://scramblequest.app/
1•furyofantares•12m ago•0 comments

Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't

https://goughlui.com/2026/07/09/teardown-a-generic-7-port-usb-3-0-hub-that-wasnt/
1•speckx•13m ago•0 comments

I Put My Son in a Swamp

https://thepotato.tech/posts/i-put-my-son-in-a-swamp/
1•nickstinemates•18m ago•0 comments

The WiFi Certificate That Didn't Exist an Hour Ago

https://thepotato.tech/posts/the-wifi-cert-that-didnt-exist-an-hour-ago/
1•nickstinemates•19m ago•0 comments

The Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/ai-chatbot-writing-tic-negative-parallelism/687892/
1•tekdude•21m ago•0 comments

Apple's M6, M7 and M8 Chips Show How AI Is Reshaping the Company

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-12/apple-s-chip-plans-m6-m7-pro-m7-max-m7-ultr...
1•newusertoday•21m ago•0 comments

Against Usefulness

https://www.motivenotes.ai/p/against-usefulness
6•supo•23m ago•0 comments

Soulless – List of AI Artists Hiding on Spotify

https://soullessmusic.com/
1•ChrisArchitect•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Block dangerous Git and shell commands from being executed by agents

https://github.com/Dicklesworthstone/destructive_command_guard
1•adithyaharish•24m ago•0 comments

Dictation and Meeting App Sends to Apple Notes – Free and Local Models

https://voice.baselinemakes.com/
1•stevenhubertron•24m ago•1 comments

W11 Copilot tells you what's slowing down your PC, while using 1GB RAM itself

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/12/windows-11-copilot-ai-can-now-tell-you-whats-slowing-dow...
2•speckx•25m ago•0 comments

Programming thought experiment: stuck in a room with a PC without an OS

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9x15g/comment/c0ewj2c/
1•Tomte•28m ago•0 comments

AI-Powered Multi Tenant Platform

https://svoxx.com/int/en
1•kilincarslan•32m ago•0 comments

Rustnet: Per-process network monitoring with deep packet inspectio

https://github.com/domcyrus/rustnet
1•thunderbong•33m ago•0 comments

Claude Fable 5 access extended through July 19

https://xcancel.com/claudeai/status/2076351399999557669#m
5•Topfi•34m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Free AI travel destination search across Asia

https://asianexpats.com
1•developeron29•36m ago•0 comments

Restarting Germany's Reactors: Viability and Outlook [pdf]

https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/_files/ugd/ae75b7_bc5db590cf5a4ac6a4a0d6812a58ada6.pdf
1•throw0101d•38m ago•2 comments

The Four "Ions", or How to Provision CIAM Users (2023)

https://ciamweekly.substack.com/p/the-four-ions-or-how-to-provision
1•mooreds•38m ago•0 comments

Local-first image annotation–try it in the browser, no signup, nothing uploaded

https://thevision.works/demo
2•Wiseye•41m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SayItDev LLM and Speech capabilities with 0 dependencies and no models

https://github.com/innovatorved/sayitdev
3•innovatorved•41m 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