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Stack Overflow for Agents

https://agents.stackoverflow.com/all?sort=hot
1•tacone•57s ago•0 comments

SpaceX no longer needs NASA, and that's a problem for America's space agency

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/spacex-no-longer-needs-nasa-and-thats-a-problem-for-america...
1•sleepyguy•58s ago•0 comments

Putin hails Elon Musk 'genius' announcing plans for Russian version of Starlink

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/28/vladimir-putin-elon-musk-genius-russia-starlink
1•ck2•2m ago•0 comments

Building a Myst Authoring Environment

https://chrisholdgraf.com/blog/2026/myst-author-experiment/
1•runningmike•2m ago•1 comments

Samenland Cozy Village Sim: Plant a Seed. Watch It Grow

https://samenland.app/
1•doener•3m ago•0 comments

Criminal probe for suspected environmental damage at Google's Finnish DC site

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/finland-launches-criminal-probe-suspected-environmen...
2•Hamuko•4m ago•0 comments

Redox OS ring buffers project summary

https://lwn.net/Articles/1103359/
2•hn9zmdcaou•5m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why are there not more terminal apps?

2•lucasov•5m ago•0 comments

Afspelen.nl

https://afspelen.nl/
1•adamnomad•5m ago•0 comments

Zephyr RTOS 4.5 Now Available

https://www.zephyrproject.org/zephyr-rtos-4-5-now-available-two-new-architectures-multimedia-pipe...
2•adunk•6m ago•0 comments

BCL v3.0 – Scale-Invariant Constant-Bound Local Context Retention Engine

https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/BCL_v3_0_Blockchain_Library_Substrate_for_Scal...
1•stark_chief_arc•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MyPrintables, a simple, small, and fast 3D assets manager

1•liyu1981au•9m ago•0 comments

A Subexponential Time Algorithm for Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm

https://github.com/bochum-crypto/subexponential-ecdl
2•trotro•9m ago•0 comments

Zillow's $212.5M settlement hides an $880M lesson

https://www.ainvest.com/news/zillow-212-5m-settlement-hides-880m-lesson-2610/
1•AInvest•9m ago•0 comments

Get Player Stats from Your Minecraft Server Logs

https://jayd.ml/2026/10/08/minecraft-log-analyzer.html
1•surprisetalk•10m ago•0 comments

Unreal Engine Web Ports

https://unrealcollection.games/
1•doener•10m ago•0 comments

SpaceX's first decade, rebuilt from its own company updates

https://spacex.explorist.io/
1•maxprogram•10m ago•0 comments

AI agents shape experts' judgment calls

https://www.anthropic.com/research/agents-judgment-calls
1•yenniejun111•10m ago•0 comments

SigNoz vs. Grafana vs. Datadog for AI Agents

https://medium.com/tech-stackups/signoz-vs-grafana-vs-datadog-for-ai-agents-e403e1d4445e
1•ritzaco•10m ago•0 comments

DirectX Agility SDK 1.620 and 1.722-preview release

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/agilitysdk-1-620-retail-and-1-722-preview/
1•ibobev•10m ago•0 comments

How to Make Artificial Intelligence More Environmentally Sustainable

https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/10/AI-environmentally-sustainable/
1•chhum•11m ago•0 comments

An unmodified C62 can not decode TETRA Or can it? – M17 Project

https://m17project.org/2026/10/27/an-unmodified-c62-can-not-decode-tetra-or-can-it/
1•rbanffy•11m ago•0 comments

Climate on Your Ballot: Data Center Map

https://naacp.org/resources/climate-your-ballot
1•cdrnsf•11m ago•0 comments

DirectX Dump Files are now ready for your retail games

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-dump-files-are-now-released/
1•ibobev•12m ago•0 comments

Using make_self and converting it to the projected interface

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20261028-00/?p=112803/
1•ibobev•12m ago•0 comments

China's Batteries Move Beyond Capacity Scale-Up

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/16/chinas-batteries-move-beyond-capacity-scale-up-utility-scale...
1•cisc•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Crewd NPM-style package manager for AI coding agents and skills

1•m0agh•12m ago•0 comments

The Economics of the Individual Tool: How Cheaper Development Changes Software

https://medium.com/@smoking2man/the-economics-of-the-individual-tool-how-cheaper-development-chan...
1•Aldus551•14m ago•0 comments

Terrance Tao: No More Heroes [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAnwMdfcMVw
1•gtirloni•14m ago•0 comments

Can Democracy Survive the Next Financial Crash?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/bubble-bailout-trump-authority/689190/
1•samizdis•14m 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