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RFC Index

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc-index.txt
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•3m ago•0 comments

Why We've Filed a Referendum

https://www.stopstratos.org
1•mrwaffle•3m ago•0 comments

Don't just paste the AI at me

https://dontquotetheai.com/
3•khaosdoctor•6m ago•0 comments

CypherLoc, an advanced browser-locking scareware targeting millions

https://blog.barracuda.com/2026/05/20/threat-spotlight-cypherloc-scareware
2•croes•9m ago•0 comments

Abc

2•j_zhan•13m ago•0 comments

Did Google's AI agents build an operating system for $916?

https://www.normaltech.ai/p/did-googles-ai-agents-really-build
3•randomwalker•14m ago•0 comments

T

4•j_zhan•16m ago•1 comments

AI and doctrinal collapse

https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/ai-and-doctrinal-collapse/
1•hhs•18m ago•0 comments

Jailbroken Gemini helped Russian-speaking fraudster target MAGA crypto users

https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/05/22/jailbroken-gemini-helped-russian-speaking-frau...
1•lschueller•19m ago•0 comments

Who's to Blame When an Ivy League President Drives into His Students?

https://www.theringer.com/2026/05/22/national-affairs/cornell-car-scandal-president-michael-kotli...
2•hn_acker•20m ago•2 comments

Show HN: BonzAI – self-sovereign, local LLM inference in the browser

https://www.bonzai.sh/
1•wilhempujar•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Logatory – local-first log analysis and threat detection, no SIEM

https://github.com/T0nd3/logatory
1•T0nd3•21m ago•0 comments

Bug 1950764: Work Around Crash on Intel Raptor Lake CPU

https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D301917
1•luu•21m ago•0 comments

MCP-safeguard: Automated security scanner for MCP servers (52 detection rules)

https://github.com/SyedAnas01/mcp-safeguard
1•Anas1371•22m ago•0 comments

Ford Enters Battery Storage Business

https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2026/introducing-ford-energy
1•foxfired•22m ago•0 comments

Dehydration's role in learning and memory

https://www.cshl.edu/dehydrations-role-in-learning-and-memory/
1•hhs•26m ago•0 comments

High-Volume VRP Optimization at Amazon Scale on a Raspberry Pi 400

https://medium.com/@martinvizzolini/i-ran-the-amazon-last-mile-routing-challenge-on-a-raspberry-p...
1•pantherolive•27m ago•0 comments

Uber, Meta hinder users’ ability to control data, study says

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/uber-meta-make-it-hard-for-users-to-stop-...
1•hhs•30m ago•0 comments

Reverse Engineering: Dagda and Wolf's Lair bugs fixed after 21 years (2022)

https://i-war2.com/news/181-dagda-and-wolf%E2%80%99s-lair-bugs-fixed-after-21-years
1•sigma5•30m ago•0 comments

Two Loops: How China's Open AI Strategy Reinforces Its Industrial Dominance [pdf]

https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2026-03/Two_Loops--How_Chinas_Open_AI_Strategy_Reinforce...
1•robocat•32m ago•0 comments

The First Hit Is Free

https://whattotelltherobot.com/p/the-first-hit-is-free
1•stefie10•36m ago•0 comments

Jira IS Turing-Complete

https://seriot.ch/computation/jira.html
1•beefburger•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Synchole is a native P2P data transfer protocol library in Rust

https://github.com/doshareme/synchole
2•vednig•41m ago•0 comments

Starship Launch – Everyday Astronaut [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWYDx3u8A4
5•cwillu•43m ago•0 comments

Ontology vs. Semantic Layer

https://lowhangingdata.com/article/ontology-vs-semantic-layer/
1•mryagerr•47m ago•0 comments

I'm Tired of Listening to Nerds and Dweebs (2025) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S9OZTQa0eY
2•TMWNN•49m ago•0 comments

Triumph of the Nerds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Nerds
1•evo_9•52m ago•0 comments

Only 17% of all 64-bit Integers are products of two 32-bit integers

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/05/22/only-17-of-all-64-bit-integers-are-products-of-two-32-bit-integ...
2•yacin•52m ago•0 comments

DeadBro – Lightweight APM for Rails apps (N+1 detection, error tracking, alerts)

https://www.deadbro.com/
1•deadbro•53m ago•0 comments

LT2: Linear-Time Looped Transformers

https://charlesdddd.github.io/lt2/
2•matt_d•56m 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/