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The AI Party House Where Networking Has a Dark Side

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/technology/agi-house-ai-culture.html
1•timmytokyo•1m ago•0 comments

Wiring Diagrams for BMW Radios

https://bmw-radios.com/instructions/
1•measurablefunc•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hindsight: Automated Work Timeline

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hindsight-work-timeline/id6806331002?mt=12
1•dark1ord•1m ago•0 comments

Study Sessions Should Be Short and Frequent as Opposed to Long and Sparse

https://www.justinmath.com/study-sessions-should-be-short-and-frequent-as-opposed-to-long-and-spa...
3•gmays•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI·rete·RAG – a Rete rule engine decides, RAG explains why

https://ai-rete-rag.com/
2•ZaharaHussain•2m ago•0 comments

Call of Duty's Activision to make next Halo game as Xbox cuts more jobs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvj64gz74ky4o
2•mindracer•2m ago•0 comments

Gravity-Gradient Stabilization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity-gradient_stabilization
2•firephox•2m ago•0 comments

Satsie's Pocket Guide to Op_cat (Bitcoin)

https://satsie.dev/zines/opcat.html
2•EthanHeilman•5m ago•0 comments

16-bit Intel 8088 chip by Charles Bukowski

https://allpoetry.com/16-bit-Intel-8088-chip
5•rbanffy•5m ago•0 comments

Xbox continues its "reset" with dramatic restructuring

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/09/shuffling-the-deck-chairs-xbox-continues-its-reset-with-dr...
4•dgrin91•6m ago•0 comments

6 Years In, $6M Far

https://blog.tally.so/6-years-in-6-million-far/
2•duck•6m ago•0 comments

Jev-blindspot – find the blind spots in the prompt you just sent

https://github.com/jsk4581/jev-blindspot
2•jsk4581•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Every Credit Card

https://every-credit-card.numberplanet.com/
1•Fileformat•7m ago•0 comments

Research Harness from First Principles

https://edotenv.com/blog/oh-my-quant-harness
1•RuiWang0811•7m ago•1 comments

Tell HN: Firefox's default browser check dark pattern triggers Windows BSOD

1•xeonmc•9m ago•0 comments

Streamhouse: What It Is, What It Isn't, and What's Missing

https://www.conduktor.io/blog/streamhouse-what-it-is-what-it-isnt-whats-missing
1•chtefi•9m ago•0 comments

No More Warning Shots

https://www.aenguslynch.com/no-more-warning-shots/
1•lukaspetersson•9m ago•0 comments

Raspberry Pi locks boards to factory RAM capacities in firmware

https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-locks-boards-to-factory-ram-capacities-in-...
3•sbulaev•10m ago•0 comments

1,300 STEM 3D Models created by GPT-6 Astra

https://www.emergentmind.com/3d-models
2•matt1•10m ago•0 comments

The Home Computer Generation

https://www.datagubbe.se/hcg/
2•rbanffy•10m ago•0 comments

We built muse from scratch, but it is definitely inspired by OpenClaw

https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/2102103707936768130
1•tosh•11m ago•0 comments

Marvin Heemeyer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
2•mooreds•11m ago•0 comments

Our Quantum Future is a documentary exploring the rise of quantum technologies

https://ourquantumfuture.com/
1•mooreds•11m ago•0 comments

Founding Teams

https://writing.ajays.quest/p/founding-teams
2•mooreds•12m ago•0 comments

ESTA Empezando a USAR Telefonos COMO Centro DE Datos

1•donsolo•12m ago•0 comments

FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins Until Trump Got in the Way

https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-susan-collins-navatek-campaign-donations-investigation
3•noleary•12m ago•0 comments

Jev-based document editing is 97% faster than ChatGPT Word Plugin

https://twitter.com/jobryan205/status/2102399675999695046
1•jpbryan•13m ago•0 comments

Mathematics Isn't Just a Game to Let A.I. Solve. History Shows Why

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/science/math-ai-history-understanding.html
1•furcyd•14m ago•0 comments

Trump Orders US to Rename AI to SI – "Super Intelligence"

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/donald-trump-renaming-ai-super-intelligence-after-bad-it-s-g...
2•4ndrewl•15m ago•0 comments

I built a linter/skill that ensures requests to jev are structured correctly

1•suraj_phanindra•15m 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