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Testing Vue Components in the Browser

https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/05/02/testing-vue-components-in-the-browser/
1•ibobev•1m ago•0 comments

Links to CSS Colour Palettes

https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/05/04/css-colour-palettes/
1•ibobev•1m ago•0 comments

Hiker finds 6th C. gold sword fitting

https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/76004
2•speckx•1m ago•0 comments

Kids can't use computers and this is why it should worry you (2013)

http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
1•downbad_•2m ago•1 comments

Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI
1•CharlesW•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Generated Videos for your Code diffs

https://steerable.dev/
1•bmusuku•3m ago•0 comments

Is AI 2027 coming true?

https://secondthoughts.ai/p/is-ai-2027-coming-true
1•baxtr•3m ago•0 comments

Clozure CL

https://ccl.clozure.com/
1•tosh•3m ago•0 comments

The Fallacy of Premature Optimization (2009)

https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1513451
1•downbad_•3m ago•1 comments

WebTransport is now available across all major browsers

https://caniuse.com/?search=webtransport
1•apitman•3m ago•0 comments

OpenAI launches GPT-Realtime-2

https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/2052438194625593804
1•vthallam•4m ago•0 comments

Natural Language Autoencoders

https://www.neuronpedia.org
1•pretext•5m ago•0 comments

Build a Beeper Bridge

https://blog.beeper.com/2025/10/28/build-a-beeper-bridge/
1•luu•7m ago•0 comments

Lisp in Space (2022)

https://www.corecursive.com/lisp-in-space-with-ron-garret/
1•tosh•7m ago•0 comments

Memory Arena – AI coding agents that learn from past tournaments

https://memoryarena.xyz/arena
1•casanovaabraham•7m ago•0 comments

Lumon Terminal – A Severance-Inspired Apple Terminal Theme

https://github.com/onehorizonai/lumon-terminal
1•gusnewman•8m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Live SEO monitoring dashboard in 100 lines of Python

https://seoscoreapi.com/demo/dashboard
1•avansledright•9m ago•0 comments

Two OpenClaw Agents Negotiate a YC SAFE with Agentic Power of Attorney

https://www.juanfiguera.com/notes/system-prompt-and-vibes/
1•juanfiguera•10m ago•0 comments

Notes on the xAI/Anthropic data center deal

https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/7/xai-anthropic/
2•droidjj•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bundlebase – Docker for Data

https://nvoxland.github.io/bundlebase/
2•nvoxland•12m ago•0 comments

The Self Is an Evolutionary Engineering Solution – What Does This Mean for LLMs?

https://darkomulej.substack.com/p/four-roads-to-a-vanishing-self
1•Darius-BC•12m ago•0 comments

How to Build an Agent Platform

https://www.ashpreetbedi.com/agent-platform
2•yashsolanky•12m ago•0 comments

Bell fires small number of employees who allegedly falsified attendance

https://mobilesyrup.com/2026/05/06/bell-employees-fired-in-office-mandate/
1•milkglass•12m ago•0 comments

Advancing voice intelligence with new models in the API

https://openai.com/index/advancing-voice-intelligence-with-new-models-in-the-api/
6•meetpateltech•14m ago•0 comments

JavaScript server-side interoperability with rcompat

https://bytecode.news/posts/2026/05/javascript-server-side-interoperability-with-rcompat
6•terrablue•16m ago•0 comments

The case against bearer secrets

https://credctl.com/blog/vercel-context-ai-breach/
1•matzhouse•17m ago•0 comments

OpenAI's WebRTC Problem

https://moq.dev/blog/webrtc-is-the-problem/
2•atgctg•17m ago•0 comments

Tesla's 4680 battery cells are underperforming and frustrating buyers

https://electrek.co/2026/05/07/tesla-4680-battery-cell-performance-data-shows-cant-build-own-cells/
2•Klaster_1•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Airlock – self-upgrading compiled AI agents

https://github.com/airlockrun/airlock/
2•cyberteaborg•19m ago•0 comments

The balcony solar boom is coming to the US

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/07/1136933/balcony-solar-boom/
1•Brajeshwar•19m 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.
jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
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/