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AI Pauses

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-173-ai-pauses
1•gmays•20s ago•0 comments

ChatGPT app store falters six months after launch

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-03-30/chatgpt-app-store-falters-six-months-after-launch
1•mmarian•43s ago•0 comments

Locally running World Model that turns images into playable environments

https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1ub2kmt/comment/oswjlhg/
1•abhisoflucidml•1m ago•0 comments

New reCAPTCHA uses hand gesture verification

https://docs.cloud.google.com/recaptcha/docs/hand-gesture-verification
1•negura•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: RSVP is a Go library for HTTP server graceful shutdown

https://github.com/jbarham/rsvp
1•jbarham•5m ago•0 comments

Apple confirms AirPort Utility app is going away soon

https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/22/apple-confirms-airport-utility-app-is-going-away-soon/
2•ilreb•7m ago•0 comments

The anxiety of the perfect loaf: the illusion of culinary precision

https://iza.ac/posts/2026/06/intuitive-cooking/
1•infinitewalk•7m ago•0 comments

iOS is terrible for medium priority notifications

https://bphilip.uk/blog/2026-06-22-ios-is-terrible-for-medium-priority-notifications/
1•shaokind•8m ago•0 comments

The Curious Career of "The American Dream"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/29/the-curious-career-of-the-american-dream
1•littlexsparkee•8m ago•0 comments

General, automated WordPress-to-WordPress sync is unsolvable

https://adamadam.blog/2026/06/10/general-automated-wordpress-to-wordpress-sync-is-unsolvable/
1•christefano•8m ago•0 comments

Younger generations are aging faster biologically, raising early cancer risks

https://www.empirical.health/blog/biological-aging-early-cancer-risk/
2•brandonb•10m ago•0 comments

JaredFromSubway MEV bot hacked in $15M crypto theft

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/jaredfromsubway-mev-bot-hacked-in-15-million-crypt...
1•ilreb•10m ago•0 comments

China nears launch of mBridge as alternative to Swift

https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/china-nears-launch-of-mbridge/
2•toomuchtodo•10m ago•1 comments

The Full Claude Desktop Experience on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry

https://claude.com/blog/the-full-claude-desktop-experience-on-aws-google-cloud-and-microsoft-foundry
2•hackerBanana•11m ago•1 comments

GM installs robots at flagship EV factory after laying off 1,300 workers

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/gm-installs-robots-at-flagship-ev-factory-after-laying-off-130...
2•ilreb•12m ago•0 comments

Arguzz: Testing ZkVMs for Soundness and Completeness Bugs

https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10819
1•azhenley•13m ago•0 comments

Liskat a free, open, ad-free Skat experience

https://github.com/nic-kup/liskat
1•iNic•13m ago•0 comments

Meta Exposed Data Internally from Its Controversial Employee-Tracking Program

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-accidentally-let-employees-access-each-others-keystroke-data/
5•ceejayoz•21m ago•1 comments

Actium

https://goactium.com/
1•pete_patterson•22m ago•0 comments

Bohemia Interactive: Cold War Assault Remastered Source Code on GitHub

https://github.com/BohemiaInteractive/CWR
1•dewey•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Never Go to a PM Meeting Again

https://www.quickapproveai.com
1•xvok•25m ago•0 comments

Software Engineers Face an AI 'Identity Crisis,' VC Partner Says

https://www.businessinsider.com/software-engineers-face-an-ai-identity-crisis-vc-partner-says-2026-6
1•simonpure•26m ago•1 comments

Open Source US Kei Truck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlZlyp55dww
2•ishtanbul•26m ago•0 comments

Why most AI evals would miss the Linear sales email failure

https://tenureai.dev/writing/why-most-ai-evals-would-miss-the-linear-sales-email-failure/
4•jflynt76•26m ago•0 comments

The quiet grief of adult friendship

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/civil-irony/the-quiet-grief-of-adult-friendship/
2•herbertl•31m ago•1 comments

Magnifica Humanitas as Glossed Manuscript

https://magnifica.unlatent.ai/
1•bazzmt•31m ago•1 comments

The Market's AI Fanfare Is Running into a Harsh Political Reality

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-markets-ai-fanfare-is-running-into-a-harsh-political-reality-b919...
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•31m ago•0 comments

NIST Releases Technical Findings on What Caused 2021 Collapse of Miami Surfside

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/06/nist-releases-technical-findings-what-caused-2021-p...
2•stmw•32m ago•1 comments

Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/ai-apps-students-cheat.html
2•droidjj•33m ago•3 comments

Still Water Colors: interactive Three.js pigment art

https://sand-morph.up.railway.app/still-water-colors
1•echohive42•33m 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