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A Conversation with Ken Williams (Sierra Online / Cave) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KRK0nVoodE
1•sgt•2m ago•0 comments

API Impact Tracker – Know which API clients you'll break before deploying

https://github.com/aj9704845-code/api-impact-tracker
1•PeterDS•2m ago•1 comments

Annual Reboot: 52 Questions to Reflect and Reset

https://elacrain.com/writing/annual-review/
1•simonebrunozzi•4m ago•0 comments

1D-Pong Game at 39C3

https://github.com/ogermer/1d-pong
1•oger•4m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Is there a point to maintaining distant connections on social media?

1•Desafinado•6m ago•0 comments

70 person relay of Super Mario 64 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-VFPEh59k4
1•HelloUsername•7m ago•0 comments

WhatsApp Is Untrustable

https://toki.la/posts/whatsapp
1•todsacerdoti•7m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Moved to SF to build a startup. What next?

1•kvaranasi_•8m ago•0 comments

Mitigating the Billion Dollar Mistake

https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2026/01/11/mitigating-the-billion-dollar-mistake/
1•PKop•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A mobile-first React share sheet with native sharing

https://sharesheet.gwendall.com
2•ges•14m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Tips for getting the ROM for an old speech synthesizer?

2•ctoth•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Karmic Tail Calculator – A Destiny Matrix Patterns

https://karmictail.net
1•lion__93332•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I forced Apple to admit a "Product Issue" using AI and CIA principles

https://medium.com/@ryu360i/when-authorization-breaches-availability-analyzing-the-27-2kb-icloud-...
1•ryuzaburo•15m ago•0 comments

PluriSnake gameplay [Sun Jan 11, 2026 puzzle] – Beta available [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjd5HgbOhU
1•amichail•17m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: What was the best sci-fi book of 2025?

4•Erikun•18m ago•0 comments

I mapped out how debugging works during production incidents

https://nemorize.com/roadmaps/debugging-under-pressure
1•reverseblade2•19m ago•1 comments

Desperately Seeking Squircles (2018)

https://www.figma.com/blog/desperately-seeking-squircles/
2•kjeetgill•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Vibe Coding Hackathon

https://vibe.devpost.com
2•abdibrokhim•20m ago•0 comments

NCSA Mosaic 2.7, one of the first graphical web browsers

https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic
1•stmw•23m ago•0 comments

guys why does armenian completely break Claude

https://twitter.com/dyushag/status/1993143599286886525
17•ag8•24m ago•6 comments

Systematically generating tests that would have caught Anthropic's top‑K bug

https://theorem.dev/blog/anthropic-bug-test/
2•jasongross•25m ago•0 comments

Sampling at negative temperature

https://cavendishlabs.org/blog/negative-temperature/
11•ag8•26m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sunshine Optimist: Optimistic takes on daylight and sunset times

https://sunshineoptimist.com
1•willj•27m ago•0 comments

Worldview – persistent strategic context for Claude Code

https://www.extremeclarity.ai/worldview
1•faizanbhat•27m ago•1 comments

The Machinery of Terror

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-machinery-of-terror
1•chmaynard•28m ago•0 comments

QR Spaces – One QR and custom domain to share all your links

3•iamgaazi•28m ago•2 comments

The Subtle Injury – Being pretty good

https://tevonsb.com/thoughts/subtle-injury/
2•tevon•28m ago•1 comments

From fragmented code to consistent output with AI rules

https://www.stromcapital.fi/blog/cursor-rules
1•ronistrom•30m ago•0 comments

Why (We Don't Need To?) Care About Debt-to-GDP?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5271557
1•neehao•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A MCP for controlling terminal UI apps built with bubbletea and ratatui

https://github.com/michaellee8/mcp-tui-server
2•michaellee8•32m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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.
jcgrillo•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/