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Microsoft Committed to Doubling AI Infrastructure in Two Years

https://www.nextplatform.com/cloud/2026/05/04/microsoft-committed-to-doubling-ai-infrastructure-i...
1•rbanffy•14s ago•0 comments

Intel Inside the Micro Revolution: 8008 Origins

https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/intel-inside-the-micro-revolution
1•rbanffy•1m ago•0 comments

How to Download Videos from Canvas LMS

https://canvas-assistant.com/blog/how-to-download-videos-from-canvas-lms
1•behindai•2m ago•0 comments

Tile Language

https://tilelang.com
1•ibobev•3m ago•0 comments

Bun (the JavaScript runtime) is being vibe-ported from Zig to rust

https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/blob/claude/phase-a-port/docs/PORTING.md
1•birdculture•4m ago•0 comments

Uutils Coreutils CVEs

https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2026/q2/332
2•mpweiher•6m ago•0 comments

Why are arbitrage bots becoming core trading infrastructure in crypto?

https://www.bitdeal.net/crypto-arbitrage-bot-development
1•harrisonrichrd•8m ago•0 comments

NetHack 5.0.0

https://www.nethack.org/v500/release.html
1•mtct88•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Gymnasium RL Environments in Julia

https://github.com/scascino4/Gym.jl/
1•scascino4•11m ago•0 comments

Will AI lead to despecialisation of work?

https://gavinmorrice.substack.com/p/left-hand-or-right
1•bodacious•15m ago•0 comments

Self-hosted Tailscale, Part 1: Headscale and clients

https://blog.fidelramos.net/software/tailscale-1-headscale-and-clients
1•fidelramos•16m ago•0 comments

Are Those Brake Lights or a House on Fire? Your Security Camera Can't Tell

https://www.wsj.com/tech/are-those-brake-lights-or-a-house-on-fire-your-security-camera-cant-tell...
1•reaperducer•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Kamal-backup – Rails backups with restore drills and audit evidence

https://kamal-backup.dev/
1•earcar•18m ago•0 comments

Symta: Lisp and Refal and Pop-11 Abomination

https://github.com/NancyAurum/symta
1•NancySadkov•18m ago•0 comments

Musk vs. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/01/1136800/musk-v-altman-week-1-musk-says-he-was-duped-w...
2•rbanffy•18m ago•0 comments

Documentary about AI Consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbTvUOx2A6c
1•phajduk•18m ago•0 comments

New Gemma chat template update by Google

https://huggingface.co/unsloth/gemma-4-E4B-it-GGUF/discussions/14
1•whythismatters•19m ago•0 comments

Creativity in the Age of AI – About Space10, IKEA's Research and Design Lab

https://designexplained.substack.com/p/creativity-in-the-age-of-ai
2•kaizenb•20m ago•1 comments

Ahead of Race to IPO, OpenAI Discussed Spinning Out Robotics, Hardware Divisions

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ahead-of-race-to-ipo-openai-discussed-spinning-out-robotics-hardware-div...
1•reaperducer•20m ago•0 comments

We are building an open-source agentic company OS

https://agent-swarm.dev
1•tarasyarema•22m ago•1 comments

A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat

https://www.wired.com/story/super-pac-backed-by-openai-and-palantir-is-paying-tiktok-influencers-...
1•kordlessagain•22m ago•1 comments

How to Search a Dev Job Abroad in 2026

https://relocateme.substack.com/p/how-searching-for-tech-jobs-with
2•andrewstetsenko•23m ago•0 comments

A 49-line physics classifier that beats kNN on 76% of benchmarks

https://github.com/DorField/DarkWare
1•Dor86•24m ago•0 comments

ChessUnlock – A chess puzzle to access your Mac

https://chessunlock.app
9•jonahthan•24m ago•0 comments

The rise and fall of Intrade, the first prediction market

https://thecurrency.news/articles/223898/unpredictable-part-1-the-rise-and-fall-of-intrade-the-wo...
1•dylancollins•27m ago•0 comments

No More Code Reviews: Lights-Out Codebases Ahead

https://molochinations.substack.com/p/no-more-code-reviews-lights-out-codebases
1•rzk•29m ago•0 comments

UIGen: How we build a full frontend from an OpenAPI spec at runtime using an IR

https://uigen-docs.vercel.app/blog/uigen-architecture
1•ombedzi•30m ago•0 comments

Nobody Reviews Compiler Output

https://skiplabs.io/blog/codegen_as_compiler
1•rzk•31m ago•0 comments

Unmasking the Docker Onbuild Supply Chain Attack Vector

https://www.o3c.no/knowledge/unmasking-the-docker-onbuild-supply-chain-attack-vector
1•techbabbler•35m ago•0 comments

AI data hubs in space: when will they take flight?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01370-6
1•rbanffy•36m 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/