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The First Multi-Behavior Brain Upload

https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/the-first-multi-behavior-brain-upload
1•honoredb•52s ago•0 comments

Whistleblower: DOGE member took Social Security data to new job

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/10/social-security-data-breach-doge-2/
2•raldi•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ory Lumen - faster, cheaper Claude Code with local semantic code search

https://www.ory.com/blog/ory-lumen-semantic-search-claude-code
1•luckyturkey•4m ago•0 comments

Second-warmest winter in U.S. history

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/03/we-just-had-the-second-warmest-winter-in-u-s-history-d...
1•melling•4m ago•0 comments

MVP Assessment Canvas – How to decide whether to build something

https://mvp-canvas.notion.site/MVP-Assessment-Canvas-27672cf0ee068024b5a2de97d5acf357?source=hack...
1•charlesiv•6m ago•0 comments

Code Is State

https://blog.agentcommunity.org/code-is-state
2•nembal•8m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: Crosstalk when using Ollama with cloud DeepSeek models?

1•alberto-m•10m ago•0 comments

Do the Illegible

https://ashwinsundar.com/posts/legibility-and-programming/
2•birdculture•11m ago•0 comments

Ig Nobel award ceremony moving to Zurich due to concern over U.S. travel visas

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/research-frontiers/ig-nobels-to-move-awards-to-switzerland-due-to-co...
4•ilamont•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LobsterLair – OpenClaw hosting with AI included ($19/mo)

https://lobsterlair.xyz
3•tobiasbischoff•11m ago•0 comments

Who Will Remember Us When the Servers Go Dark?

https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/who-will-remember-us-when-the-servers-go-dark/
3•pachorizons•13m ago•0 comments

Get the Data Model Right

https://www.natemeyvis.com/get-the-data-model-right/
1•speckx•13m ago•0 comments

Torres del Paine W Trek

https://yusufaytas.com/torres-del-paine-w-trek/
1•yusufaytas•14m ago•0 comments

ChurnBurner – Predicts SaaS churn from Stripe and behavioral signals

1•Sean_hh_builds•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built an ISP infrastructure emulator from scratch with a custom vBNG

https://aether.saphal.me/dashboard/default
1•saphalpdyl•15m ago•0 comments

Fortnite V-Bucks Price Increase

https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-v-bucks-price-increase
1•kotaKat•15m ago•0 comments

The deaf blacksmith who married in 1576

https://theconversation.com/the-deaf-blacksmith-who-married-in-1576-and-the-history-of-sign-as-a-...
2•robin_reala•15m ago•0 comments

LLMs – What aren't they good for?

https://www.manhattanmetric.com/blog/2026/02/what-are-llms-bad-at
3•jballanc•16m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Buildwhat.org – Find tech business ideas

https://buildwhat.org/
2•jx887•16m ago•0 comments

"dOn'T qUiT " No, do quit

https://insertdash.substack.com/p/dont-quit
2•randycupertino•17m ago•0 comments

The Token Tax You Didn't Know You Were Paying

2•singularly•17m ago•0 comments

Enterprise vs. Open-Source AI Agents

https://simplai.ai/blogs/enterprise-vs-open-source-ai-agents/
2•emilypellegrini•18m ago•1 comments

Where did you think the training data was coming from?

https://idiallo.com/blog/where-did-the-training-data-come-from-meta-ai-rayban-glasses
4•speckx•20m ago•0 comments

Tech Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-compute-compensation-software-engineers-greg-brockman-2026-3
5•cdrnsf•21m ago•1 comments

The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient and growing

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122
3•peyton•21m ago•0 comments

My Small RPG Is Finally Taking Shape

https://jslegenddev.substack.com/p/my-small-rpg-is-finally-taking-shape
2•ibobev•22m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How to Block V2K Torture?

1•Lapsa•22m ago•0 comments

Girl Scout troop sets up shop at weed dispensary. Cookies are in high demand

https://www.nj.com/food/2026/03/girl-scout-troop-sets-up-shop-at-weed-dispensary-cookies-are-in-h...
3•mhb•22m ago•0 comments

Lyte2D: A comfy little game engine

https://lyte2d.com/lyte.html?zip=public%2Flyte-intro.zip
1•PaulHoule•23m ago•0 comments

Why Mathematica does not simplify Sinh[ArcCosh[x]]

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2026/03/10/sinh-arccosh/
1•ibobev•23m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•10mo ago

Comments

thechao•10mo 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•10mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•10mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•10mo 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•10mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•10mo 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•10mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•10mo 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_•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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/