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MPs demand answers on Fujitsu's inclusion in lucrative frameworks

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366646721/MPs-demand-answers-on-Fujitsus-inclusion-in-lucrati...
1•latein•3m ago•0 comments

True Cost of Cross-Border Payments: Correspondent Banking Myths vs. Reality

https://paybitz.io/true-cost-of-cross-border-payments-correspondent-banking-myths-vs-reality/
1•PayBitz•4m ago•0 comments

Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/enshittification-relies-on-broken
1•karakoram•6m ago•0 comments

Every Rendering Strategy Moves Complexity Somewhere Else [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SEZfLOvO8A
1•pierrephpguru•8m ago•0 comments

I built a Digital Human you can talk to

https://gokulakrishna.co/2026/08/03/i-built-a-digital-human-you-can-talk-to/
1•gkrishna•9m ago•2 comments

UK Graduate Job Openings Fall to Lowest Level Since Pandemic

https://www.ft.com/content/5391353e-3e03-4170-a289-497019a5d615
1•karakoram•10m ago•1 comments

An eBPF-Based Prometheus Exporter for Lustre Client

https://github.com/yuuki/lustre-ebpf-exporter
1•y_uuki•15m ago•1 comments

Inducing language models to assert their own consciousness restores human values

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28607
1•Mizza•17m ago•0 comments

Less Coffee, Better Sleep

https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_109_sleep2/
1•edward•18m ago•0 comments

PISIGuard: Protect your personal and sensitive info when you chat with AI

https://github.com/mohamed--abdel-maksoud/pisiguard
3•mohamed_am83•34m ago•1 comments

Show HN: SaaS payment integration in ~10 lines of code

https://github.com/paycan-app/paycan
3•mehraban•39m ago•0 comments

Steam Hardware and Software Survey: July 2026

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
3•uneven9434•39m ago•1 comments

The true power of regular expressions (2012)

https://www.npopov.com/2012/06/15/The-true-power-of-regular-expressions.html
1•uneven9434•41m ago•0 comments

The Semantic Web, syllogism, and worldview. (2003)

http://shirky.com/essays/the-semantic-web-syllogism-and-worldview/
1•fanf2•46m ago•0 comments

I created a playground for 110 database systems

https://clickhouse.com/blog/clickbench-playground
2•soheilpro•49m ago•0 comments

Implementing a Funding Rate Arbitrage Strategy with Minute-Level Backtesting

https://medium.com/@DolphinDB_Inc/profiting-from-perpetuals-implementing-a-funding-rate-arbitrage...
2•yiweileng•49m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Hacker News CLI

https://github.com/ViktorRingnes/hackernews
2•viktorringnes•49m ago•0 comments

When the Future Doesn't Need Us

https://borretti.me/article/when-the-future-doesnt-need-us
3•reasonableklout•52m ago•0 comments

Weighing the Business Case for Quality

https://allenpike.com/2026/finding-a-business-case-for-quality/
2•ingve•52m ago•0 comments

Show HN: We Fixed UniFi's Slow PPPoE Performance with PPPoE Half-Bridge

https://arcbox.dev/blog/unifi-pppoe-half-bridge-acceleration
2•uneven9434•54m ago•0 comments

Free Press Release Sites List

https://galaxyonknowledge.substack.com/p/what-are-press-release-sites-free
2•galaxyonknowled•58m ago•0 comments

Bonsai: Janestreet's UI Library

https://github.com/janestreet/bonsai
25•KolmogorovComp•58m ago•3 comments

Team America: Yen Police

https://www.ft.com/content/f6d563ee-9238-4f82-a848-79f2478326bd
2•JumpCrisscross•58m ago•0 comments

AI Is a Race Car, Not Autopilot

https://ryansouthgate.com/ai-is-a-racecar/
2•ry8806•1h ago•0 comments

AI slop blocked a real $200K macOS flaw

https://the-decoder.com/a-real-macos-flaw-worth-200k-went-unreported-because-apples-bug-bounty-in...
3•BlueBerry2001•1h ago•0 comments

The Java Story – The Official Documentary [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqGSg4b_cZA
2•chillax•1h ago•0 comments

CodeBot: Full details on our New AI for Delphi

https://blogs.remobjects.com/2026/07/30/codebot-the-story/
7•vintagedave•1h ago•1 comments

Most Australian teens on social media three months after under-16 ban began

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/07/31/asia-pacific/australia-teens-social-media-ban/
2•01-_-•1h ago•0 comments

1 in 4 people in Japan believes AI could replace friends and family: poll

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/02/japan/poll-ai-replace-friends-family/
7•01-_-•1h ago•1 comments

GLP-1s and their unknown impacts on human creativity

https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/should-we-all-take-glp1
2•prdgl_daughter•1h 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