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How Elon Musk Left OpenAI, According to Greg Brockman

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/06/how-elon-musk-left-openai-according-to-greg-brockman/
2•evo_9•3m ago•1 comments

Umka: A statically typed embeddable scripting language

https://github.com/vtereshkov/umka-lang
2•modinfo•5m ago•0 comments

Riju: Fast online playground for every programming language

https://riju.codes/
2•gurjeet•9m ago•0 comments

How AI Works Under the Hood – LLMs Explained with Code

https://nitayneeman.com/blog/how-ai-works-under-the-hood-llms-explained-with-code/
1•thunderbong•10m ago•0 comments

Arithmeum Museum

https://www.arithmeum.uni-bonn.de/en/arithmeum.html
1•soupspaces•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Replaced React in GraphiQL with Svelte

https://code.webb.page/eol/graphiql.git/about/
4•NetOpWibby•14m ago•0 comments

0xBitNet

https://github.com/m96-chan/0xBitNet
2•oldfuture•16m ago•0 comments

Muscles by Electricity: The Latest Fitness Craze?

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/fitness/electrical-muscle-stimulation-ems-workout-03dce7e3
2•lxm•17m ago•0 comments

Character.ai Faces Unlawful Practice of Medicine Claim in Pennsylvania Suit

https://www.law.com/therecorder/2026/05/06/characterai-maker-faces-unlawful-practice-of-medicine-...
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•23m ago•2 comments

Compaction in `Sid`: A Novel Algorithm?

https://rescrv.net/w/2026/05/06/compaction-in-sid
2•rescrv•26m ago•1 comments

Spec CPU 2026

https://www.spec.org/cpu2026/
2•sanxiyn•30m ago•0 comments

School Cellphone Ban Study Finds Mixed Results

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/did-school-cellphone-bans-study.html
3•lxm•36m ago•0 comments

We had people come just to see it: Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by drone

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx21k21vnmgo
2•nmstoker•38m ago•0 comments

Three-Em Dash

https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2E3B
4•gregsadetsky•40m ago•0 comments

Nvidia Enterprise Reference Architectures for AI Data Centers

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/technologies/enterprise-reference-architecture/
2•nalinidash•42m ago•1 comments

SpaceX is starting to move on from the most successful rocket

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/spacex-is-starting-to-move-on-from-the-worlds-most-successf...
2•LorenDB•43m ago•0 comments

Permacomputing Principles

https://permacomputing.net/principles/
6•andsoitis•49m ago•0 comments

Hantavirus explained: Symptoms, transmission and treatment

https://epi.ufl.edu/2026/05/06/hantavirus-explained-symptoms-transmission-and-treatment/
3•rolph•50m ago•0 comments

Quilt Poems

https://leetusman.com/projects/quilt-poems/
4•andsoitis•50m ago•0 comments

Orthohantavirus

https://viralzone.expasy.org/213.html?outline=all_by_species
3•rolph•53m ago•0 comments

Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations

https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/91230-encountering-artificial-intelligence-ethical-and-anth...
5•andsoitis•55m ago•0 comments

An SDK to accept payments from Agents

https://github.com/GTG-Labs/sangria
3•simantakDabhade•56m ago•0 comments

If AI cuts jobs, it would also threaten Social Security and Medicare

https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/04/17/if-ai-cuts-jobs-it-would-also-threaten-social-security-a...
8•littlexsparkee•57m ago•2 comments

Marco Rubio discovers he needs to take over Spirit Airlines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whF9C5j7X8k
4•keepamovin•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dreamwork – a job search site I made after Indeed fired my pregnant wif

https://www.dreamworkhq.com/
4•cojj25•1h ago•2 comments

Ridiculous Things I Utterly Love About Vampire Crawlers

https://kotaku.com/vampire-crawlers-survivors-garlic-poe-decks-chests-sponge-2000689719
4•PaulHoule•1h ago•0 comments

SpaceX IPO gives Musk unchecked power and forbids investor lawsuits

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/report-spacex-ipo-gives-musk-unchecked-power-and-forb...
10•pzxc•1h ago•1 comments

Geography Is Four-Dimensional

https://sive.rs/4d
5•inatreecrown2•1h ago•1 comments

Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI
4•incomplete•1h ago•0 comments

Cognitive Surrender

https://twitter.com/addyosmani/status/2052124873208799378
4•ayoisaiah•1h 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/