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Do All Your Agents Need Models Like Claude 5 or GPT-5.6?

https://aimoway-lab.github.io/blog/articles/do-all-your-agents-really-need-models-like-claude-5-o...
1•AIMOWAY•1m ago•0 comments

The Integer

https://gist.github.com/17twenty/1f230ab8256f42d4cd3ba931b9bd440b
1•hactually•5m ago•0 comments

That Disgraceful, Disreputable, (Wonderful) Form of Punctuation: The Parenthesis

https://lithub.com/on-that-disgraceful-disreputable-wonderful-form-of-punctuation-the-parenthesis/
1•pseudolus•6m ago•0 comments

ServiceNow are pushing customers off SaaS – are other industries doing similar?

1•rorychatt•7m ago•0 comments

Netstate – US Business Data from Primary Sources

https://netstate.co
1•qitx•9m ago•0 comments

OpenAI announces slowing pace of development after hack by rogue agent

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/18/open-ai-pause-hack
1•pseudolus•11m ago•1 comments

Study Finds Outdated Ideas About Antibiotics Are Common

https://healthcare.utah.edu/newsroom/news/2026/08/always-finish-your-antibiotics-longer-better-ou...
1•gumby•12m ago•0 comments

China's LandSpace beats SpaceX with steel-booster recovery after orbital launch

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3364492/chinas-landspace-beats-spacex-steel-boost...
2•decimalenough•14m ago•1 comments

Personetta – One YAML Persona for Cursor, Copilot, Claude, and Cline

https://github.com/EdwardAF-IT/Personetta
1•EdwardAF-IT•20m ago•0 comments

Follow-Up Thoughts on Watermarking Schemes for AI-Generated Text

https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/follow-up_thoughts_on_watermarking
1•pinkmuffinere•22m ago•0 comments

Tiny satellite will use the dark side of the Moon as a shield

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/tiny-satellite-will-use-the-dark-side-of-the-moon-to-eavesdro...
2•NordStreamYacht•22m ago•0 comments

The Economics and Engineering of On-Premises LLMs

https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/the-economics-and-engineering-of-on-premises-llms/
1•pseudolus•22m ago•0 comments

Are there space filling curves for the Hilbert Cube? (2010)

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/34982/are-there-space-filling-curves-for-the-hilbert-cube
1•peter_d_sherman•26m ago•0 comments

Calling Python from Matlab

https://www.mathworks.com/campaigns/offers/calling-python-from-matlab-cheat-sheet.html
1•teleforce•28m ago•0 comments

Fideliya Pass: Loyalty Program and More

https://www.fideliyapass.com/
1•zakox•32m ago•0 comments

New paper shows that 37% of workers in US saw real wages decline from 2021-2024 [pdf]

https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/BFI_WP_2026-108-1.pdf
3•jplusequalt•34m ago•3 comments

What's New with Monitoring in PostgreSQL 19

https://clickhouse.com/blog/postgres-19-monitoring-whats-new
1•saisrirampur•35m ago•0 comments

Bonds Are Getting Hammered, and Wall Street Says the Rout Won't End Anytime Soon

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/bonds-are-getting-hammered-and-wall-street-says-the-rout-wo...
1•petethomas•37m ago•0 comments

Scientists stunned by children's lung recovery in ultra low emission zone

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1l1r1zne1ro
2•dabinat•40m ago•0 comments

The Secret Killer of Startups: Low Ambition [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhRhElbVcI
2•stuartaxelowen•40m ago•0 comments

Trump's Broken Promises, in 11 Charts

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/18/opinion/trump-economy-campaign-promises.html
4•whack•42m ago•0 comments

Rent's Rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent%27s_rule
3•peter_d_sherman•48m ago•0 comments

The quest to find the best Calvin and Hobbes panel

https://www.polygon.com/best-calvin-and-hobbes-panel-ever/
1•thunderbong•49m ago•0 comments

Kithly – a family social network with no ads and no algorithm

https://kithly.social/
1•jkagidesignsllc•59m ago•0 comments

The Defender's Window

https://openai.com/index/the-defenders-window/
1•nedruod•59m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Search inside podcast episodes and read transcript while listening

https://metapodcast.net
1•lamecoder•1h ago•0 comments

Cerebras CS4

https://www.cerebras.ai/cs4
10•sunils34•1h ago•1 comments

SecIT Bench A frontier benchmark for AI agents in IT and security workflows

https://secitbench.cribl.io/
1•ram_rar•1h ago•0 comments

Testing Claude-designed proteins in the wet lab

https://www.adaptyvbio.com/blog/anthropic-1
1•julian_englert•1h ago•1 comments

Nutritional benefits of sourdoughs: A systematic review (2022)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2161831322013023
2•BiraIgnacio•1h ago•1 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