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Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/24/us-state-department-visa-ban-former-eu-commiss...
1•robin_reala•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SatoriDB – embedded vector database written in Rust

1•joeeverjk•2m ago•1 comments

Handy Phone Features Can Save You Holiday Time

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/technology/personaltech/save-holiday-time-with-these-handy-sma...
1•fleahunter•9m ago•0 comments

Memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/memory_software_opinion/
2•pjmlp•11m ago•1 comments

Microarchitecture: What Happens Beneath [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVVNtG5dgks
1•dernett•18m ago•0 comments

Synadia response to Jepsen test of NATS 2.12.1

https://www.synadia.com/blog/jepsen-nats-2-12-1
1•Kinrany•18m ago•1 comments

No Stars

https://adactio.com/journal/22317
1•ArmageddonIt•20m ago•0 comments

Scope Creep- Why website projects don't finish on time

https://psavage.net/why-website-projects-go-off-the-rails-scope-creep-explained/
1•phillsav•21m ago•0 comments

New project idea and need company to Adopt it

https://www.google.com/
1•abdelazizElhor•25m ago•1 comments

Permission Systems for Enterprise That Scale

https://eliocapella.com/blog/permission-systems-for-enterprise/
1•eliocs•27m ago•0 comments

US sanctions EU government officials behind the DSA

https://mastodon.social/@fj/115773761468906515
4•pojntfx•35m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free QR Code Generator – Dynamic Tracking and Custom Logo – QrBarKit

https://qrbarkit.com/
1•daniel0306•37m ago•0 comments

Microsoft rolls out hardware-accelerated BitLocker in Windows 11

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-rolls-out-hardware-accelerated-bitlocker...
1•thunderbong•41m ago•1 comments

LongCat Avatar: Turn Any Photo into a Talking Video

https://www.longcatavatar.net/
1•chengzeyi•42m ago•1 comments

Slate AX: Wi-Fi 6 Gigabit travel router

https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-axt1800/
1•cl3misch•42m ago•0 comments

Unintentional Type Theory

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/unintentional+type+theory
1•measurablefunc•42m ago•0 comments

Google 2025 recap: Research breakthroughs of the year

https://blog.google/technology/ai/2025-research-breakthroughs/
2•Anon84•47m ago•0 comments

UK to ban deepfake AI 'nudification' apps

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8dp2y0z7wo
3•GaryBluto•50m ago•1 comments

Ten mistakes marred firewall upgrade at telco, contributing to 2 deaths

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/optus_emergency_outages_cause_report/
1•GaryBluto•52m ago•0 comments

Airplane lands itself after in-flight emergency, a first for aviation automation

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/23/us/airplane-lands-itself-first-aviation-automation
1•breve•53m ago•0 comments

Starlink satellite fails, polluting orbit with debris and falling toward Earth

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/starlink_satellite_fails_debris/
4•beardyw•56m ago•0 comments

Is This Normal? My new projector's picture is dull even though I paid for 4K

1•SorabAlavi•58m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Anybody here ever write apps for Windows Phone?

1•ge96•58m ago•0 comments

What happened next:how a rape and murder case was solved 58 years later

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/dec/24/what-happened-next-how-a-shocking-and-case-w...
2•zeristor•59m ago•2 comments

I built an AI app for deep research, reverse image search, and price comparison

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/claritycheck-deep-search-ai/id6747683917
1•mamunaso•1h ago•2 comments

Trump Admin Reinvents US Digital Services Program After Elon Musk Fired Experts

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/23/trump-admin-reinvents-us-digital-services-program-after-elon-...
3•beardyw•1h ago•0 comments

Appark

https://appark.ai/en
1•xuechen006•1h ago•0 comments

Next JavaScript app is hacked, you just don't know it yet

https://audits.blockhacks.io/audit/your-next-js-app-is-already-hacked
2•block_hacks•1h ago•1 comments

The dpkg shell implementation (by Ian A. Murdock)

https://www.dpkg.org/history/ancient/dpkg-0.93beta.sh
1•fisheuler•1h ago•0 comments

Nobody knows how large software products work

https://www.seangoedecke.com/nobody-knows-how-software-products-work/
1•danielfalbo•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•7mo ago

Comments

thechao•7mo 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•7mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•7mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•7mo 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•7mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•7mo 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•7mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•7mo 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_•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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/