frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Show HN: KerfScript Programming Language for Laser Cutting

https://kerfscript.mylasertools.com/models/
1•jmlk•3m ago•0 comments

Linux Mint Developing New Apps for Terminal and System Monitoring

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-October-2026
2•mikece•4m ago•0 comments

Anthropic orders AI tool Claude to stop remaking video games

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/anthropic-appears-to-have-ordered-ai-tool-claude-to-sto...
1•llm_nerd•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a crawler that finds personal websites by a /.well-known/josh

https://joshternet.org/
1•TheWoollyBully•4m ago•0 comments

Wanted: Robot-Dog Walkers. $20/Hour. No pooper scooper required.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/technology/robot-dog-walkers.html
1•bookofjoe•5m ago•1 comments

A Link Between Childhood Imaginary Friend and an Uncanny Feeling Later in Life

https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-curious-link-between-your-childhood-imaginary-friend-and-an...
1•wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB•7m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What are your go-to free/open-source alternatives to $20/mo AI SaaS?

1•varunkalakal•9m ago•0 comments

We Built Uncatalogued with Rust and Raycast 3D for the Game Boy Advance

https://www.simplexcode.net/blog/uncatalogued-rust-gba-architecture/
1•ippan•15m ago•0 comments

Malware uses LLMs to rank victims by how much they're worth

https://blog.talosintelligence.com/appraisal-by-ai-model-driven-victim-prioritization-in-the-volt...
3•khalidkhair•17m ago•0 comments

Gemini Code vs. Claude Code – A cautionary post-mortem ($800 in 12h)

https://n.aspencreekbs.com/RZo9ksiKqtTiTLy6b0xiKj2j
1•cshutchinson•18m ago•0 comments

Open and Closed Loop Benchmarking

https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/10/25/open-and-closed-loop-benchmarking.html?focus=1
1•eatonphil•18m ago•0 comments

Reddit to lock content behind logins to fight scrapers

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/reddit-to-lock-content-behind-logins-to-fight-scra...
5•pluc•22m ago•0 comments

The Future of the Firm

https://openai.com/index/the-future-of-the-firm/
3•FloDo•24m ago•0 comments

An AI Agent Injected Drugs into a Live Mouse's Brain

https://www.wired.com/story/an-ai-agent-did-brain-surgery-on-live-mouse/
1•Brajeshwar•25m ago•0 comments

College will only cost $20 a month

https://idiallo.com/blog/college-will-cost-20-dollars
2•Brajeshwar•25m ago•0 comments

Why VPNs Are Worth Defending

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/why-vpns-are-worth-defending
1•Brajeshwar•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Enclyra – 3-4B local models that do real work on an 8 GB Mac, offline

https://www.enclyralabs.com
1•enclyra•25m ago•0 comments

An Attack Vector No One Talks About

https://words.sebastian.graphics/posts/25
1•kasumispencer2•26m ago•0 comments

Shaun Maguire on X: "People don't understand SpaceX" / X

https://twitter.com/shaunmmaguire/status/2116260821080973679
2•bilsbie•27m ago•0 comments

How Trump Is Dismantling America's Scientific Research Machine

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/31/climate/how-trump-is-dismantling-americas-scientific-research-...
4•contemporary343•28m ago•0 comments

Gta.js, a reimplementation of the 1997 GTA engine in JavaScript and WebGL

https://www.bram.us/2026/10/22/gta-js/
2•ulrischa•36m ago•0 comments

The dangerous science behind the Queen of Crime

https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/29/science/agatha-christie-science-pharmacist-poison
1•throwaway81523•36m ago•0 comments

Mastodon 5.0: A Closer Look

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/10/5.0-a-closer-look/
4•birdculture•37m ago•0 comments

Sysinfo: Fixing performance to retrieve process GPU usage

https://blog.guillaume-gomez.fr/articles/2026-10-30+sysinfo%3A+fixing+performance+to+retrieve+pro...
1•vinhnx•38m ago•0 comments

MoneyPouch – self hosted expense tracker

https://demo.moneypouch.app/session/new
8•kenyounot•46m ago•2 comments

Goal Pilot AI – Turn goal into AI-generated daily action plans

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ropixo.goalpilotai&hl=en_US
1•victorofficial•47m ago•0 comments

We've Stopped Dreaming

https://hyperstition.cc/weve-stopped-dreaming
2•Bluestein•48m ago•0 comments

Bitcoin Core discloses TCP out-of-memory vulnerability

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2026/10/28/disclose-tcp-oom/
2•torutofu•48m ago•0 comments

The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/10/28/the-ai-cost-of-javascript-frameworks/
3•zwarag•54m ago•0 comments

Using Video Games to Teach Kepler's Laws and Orbital Dynamics

https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/pte/article/64/8/700/3407647/Using-Video-Games-to-Teach-Kepler-s-Laws-and
2•surprisetalk•57m 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