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Fast-fashion giant Shein aims for $27B valuation in Hong Kong market debut

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/24/fashion-giant-shein-27bn-valuation-hong-kong-mar...
1•Markoff•5m ago•0 comments

Attention is all we have: A conjectural theory of cognitive inequality

https://davidbessis.substack.com/p/attention-is-all-we-have
1•rzk•10m ago•0 comments

Compare robot recordings across runs

https://foxglove.dev/blog/compare-robot-recordings-across-runs
1•intrepidsoldier•11m ago•0 comments

Elevated Errors for Multiple Models

https://status.claude.com/incidents/vgz5psbjmt1h
8•rob•11m ago•1 comments

OpenAI web interface to Claude down, again

6•b112•13m ago•4 comments

Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

https://zackbartel.com/blog/2026/08/tether/
2•zackb•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Scalattice Modelmeter. OSS price and latency bench for open models

https://scalattice.com/blog/modelmeter/
1•RomulusHill•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Searchable Stripe test cards with one-click copy

https://checkoutpage.com/tools/stripe-test-cards
1•fishsander•19m ago•0 comments

I Rented a 96 GB GPU and Took Uncensored Qwen3.8 From 44 to 125 tok/s

https://aseemshrey.com/blog/running-qwen3-8-27b-uncensored/
2•LuD1161•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Open-source calculator for "will my GPU run this LLM?"

https://jaeseok614.github.io/llm-gpu-checker-ko/
2•jaeseok614•20m ago•0 comments

Claude Is Down?

7•tuleiff•23m ago•6 comments

Show HN: Turn everything you read into things you write

https://sidelong.app
2•whatcha•26m ago•0 comments

Texas Gov. says data centers deserve the backlash: 'They dug their own grave'

https://www.businessinsider.com/greg-abbott-texas-data-centers-backlash-2026-8
3•dgellow•29m ago•0 comments

5% of venture capitalists have generated roughly 90% of the industry's profits

https://www.thevccorner.com/p/100-best-performing-vc-firms-ranking-2026
1•koolhead17•34m ago•0 comments

Executable Is a SQLite Database

https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/23/your-executable-is-a-sqlite-database
2•setheron•36m ago•0 comments

The Absolute State of Management

https://infrequently.org/2026/07/state-management/
1•luu•37m ago•0 comments

Mourning Steve French

https://lwn.net/Articles/1090098/
2•mfrw•37m ago•0 comments

The agent that writes the code cannot read the tests that grade it

https://medium.com/@giladha/the-agent-that-writes-the-code-cannot-read-the-tests-that-grade-it-b4...
1•giladha•37m ago•0 comments

AI Is Quietly Draining the Public Internet of Thought

https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/2091127620431933780
10•nreece•43m ago•2 comments

Observare – one monitoring service instead of five

https://observare.co.uk/
1•5uth3r1ano•47m ago•0 comments

Tesla's Biggest Design Mistake May Be Hiding in Plain Sight

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2026/08/22/teslas-biggest-recall-yet-exposes-a-dangerous-p...
3•FireBeyond•52m ago•1 comments

Moonshine STT adds domain customization

https://moonshine-voice.readthedocs.io/en/latest/models/domain-customization/
1•Curiositry•55m ago•0 comments

Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g6ggdg030o
40•chicken-stew•56m ago•32 comments

Show HN: AltCaption – generate HTML-ready image alt attributes

https://altcaption.com/alt-attribute-generator
1•hboon•57m ago•0 comments

Minimus Is Ending Operations

https://www.minimus.io
4•markiannucci•1h ago•0 comments

Six opportunities for scientists and engineers to learn programming with AI [pdf]

https://pg.ucsd.edu/publications/scientists-engineers-learning-programming-using-ai_CiSE-2023.pdf
3•azhenley•1h ago•0 comments

GitHub tag: "token-optimization" – List of token consumption reduction software

https://github.com/topics/token-optimization
1•peter_d_sherman•1h ago•0 comments

All-in-one tool and config for Claude-things

https://github.com/damusix/atomic-claude
3•daniloa•1h ago•0 comments

Tobi Lutke builds walgit in a weekend

https://twitter.com/tobi/status/2091678506992222258
3•cpstein•1h ago•0 comments

Sabatier Principle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_principle
2•peter_d_sherman•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