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One token is enough: fingerprinting LLMs from one token output distributions

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.10252
1•anigbrowl•1m ago•0 comments

AI as Normal Technology- What Will Be Left for Us to Work On?

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/icml-2026-annotated-slides/#
1•aanet•1m ago•2 comments

The 2026 Developer Survey is Live

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/439978/the-2026-developer-survey-is-live
1•joshdavham•5m ago•0 comments

Updating IP Regulations for AI Distillation

https://www.marble.onl/posts/copyright_vs_ai.html
1•amarble•12m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What is best thing to do if you are gonna rebuilt your website

2•anitroves•20m ago•2 comments

Forcing Fable to Generate Disinformation

https://blog.j11y.io/2026-07-18_Jailbreaking-Fable-disinformation/
2•padolsey•25m ago•0 comments

Pascal Prediction Market

https://blog.usv.com/pascal
2•wslh•30m ago•0 comments

AI Bubble vs. Dot Com Crash. History Is Repeating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWJ-g5u9Rqs
13•cable2600•33m ago•5 comments

DanFootball

https://danfootball.com
1•declaj•33m ago•1 comments

They Call Her 'The Assassin' on Wall Street–and She Has a New Target

https://www.wsj.com/finance/fahmi-quadir-industry-assassin-3d6ccd82
1•tortilla•33m ago•1 comments

Anthropic's newest ad is creeping people out

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/14/anthropics-newest-ad-is-creeping-people-out/
3•gnabgib•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Tailguard – A tested CVaR-based optimizer for stochastic reshoring

https://github.com/dismissed8582/tailguard
1•dismissed181•44m ago•0 comments

Microsoft's "Digital Escorts" Left DoD Vulnerable to Chinese Hackers

https://www.propublica.org/podcast/microsoft-digital-escorts-china-defense-department
8•jnord•49m ago•1 comments

Popular sugar substitutes linked to faster brain aging

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260717033213.htm
12•toomuchtodo•59m ago•1 comments

Harness Engineering

https://github.com/lopopolo/harness-engineering
4•handfuloflight•59m ago•1 comments

Open-Source Communism

https://continuouswritting.substack.com/p/open-source-communism
4•operator_nil•1h ago•0 comments

Codex Resets

https://codex-resets.com/
54•denysvitali•1h ago•42 comments

Why 'admin nights' are the new book club for busy adults

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/26/health/admin-night-adults-productivity-trend-wellness
3•akman•1h ago•0 comments

European Court Confirms Ethical Veganism Is a Protected Philosophical Belief

https://veganfta.com/articles/2026/07/17/european-court-confirms-ethical-veganism-is-a-protected-...
4•salutis•1h ago•1 comments

Godecompose: Go decompiler that uses pattern matchers

https://github.com/cookiengineer/godecompose
2•cookiengineer•1h ago•1 comments

Prepaid Cellphone Plans – Comparison Site

https://prepaidcompare.net
2•WarOnPrivacy•1h ago•1 comments

CannonSmash Web

https://github.com/jgbrwn/cannonsmash-web
1•indigodaddy•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ilya Sutskever's AI reading list into a learning RPG – using kimi k3

https://ilya-papers-quest.naigap.com/#/
2•praveer13•1h ago•0 comments

A free PTE Core practice platform with instant AI scoring

https://ptecorepractice.com
1•justinzhou01•1h ago•1 comments

Retrotvs – Channel-surf the past now by choosing any of the TV sets

https://70s.myretrotvs.com/
1•modinfo•1h ago•0 comments

On Ethics and Usefulness

https://manuelmoreale.com/thoughts/on-ethics-and-usefulness
2•HotGarbage•1h ago•0 comments

New hybrid positioning system promises reliable tracking where GPS fails

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2026/science-and-engineering/se/new-hybrid-positioning-sy...
2•hhs•1h ago•0 comments

Multi-Agent LLMs Fail to Explore Each Other

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.11250
1•Anon84•1h ago•1 comments

Statistical test helps judge the value of personalization

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/07/statistical-test-personalization-k-fold
2•hhs•1h ago•0 comments

Java was a three-day hotfix away from dying horribly on stage

https://www.theregister.com/devops/2026/07/18/java-was-a-three-day-hotfix-away-from-dying-horribl...
1•jnord•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.
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