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Printable Blank Calendar Generator

https://blankcal.app/?r=this-month&dp=1
1•zapeterson16•39s ago•0 comments

Google's Ambitious AI Search Changes (Biggest in 25 Years) Are Risky. Here's Why

https://www.inc.com/connor-jewiss/googles-ambitious-ai-search-changes-are-risky-heres-why/91347071
1•connorjewiss•1m ago•0 comments

Xi told Trump that Putin might 'regret' Ukraine invasion

https://www.ft.com/content/567c57b0-6346-43e6-9d14-840a793b4d1d
1•cwwc•2m ago•0 comments

Jigs, Products, and Appearances: The Vibe Coding Distribution Problem

https://trevoragilbert.com/posts/jigs-products-appearances-vibe-coding-distribution/
1•trevoragilbert•2m ago•0 comments

I created Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors

https://twitter.com/i/status/2056763353369063571
2•Michelangelo11•3m ago•0 comments

Trump's deal with government ends his tax audits

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441216/dl
1•defly•5m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How are people managing multi-node WireGuard deployments?

1•dminglv•6m ago•0 comments

Backup Photos from Google Photos: A Detailed Guide

https://blinkdisk.com/blog/backup-photos-from-google-photos
1•pauxel•6m ago•0 comments

Occupations with the Highest Divorce Rates

https://flowingdata.com/2026/05/07/divorce-and-occupation-2026/
1•gmays•7m ago•0 comments

This was Coworking Tech Week 2026

https://www.coworkingtechweek.com/blog/this-was-coworking-tech-week-2026/
1•inchevd•7m ago•0 comments

Hey Platforms: Add Take It Down to Your Transparency Reports

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/19/hey-platforms-add-take-it-down-to-your-transparency-reports/
1•hn_acker•9m ago•0 comments

Sōzune – a reverse proxy built on Sōzu, with Traefik-style autodiscovery

https://github.com/kemeter/sozune
2•Shine-neko•10m ago•2 comments

Concluding the Arc Experiment

https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-adams-arc-experiment-conclusion-00.html
1•upofadown•10m ago•0 comments

Power prices on America's largest grid rose 76%

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/15/power-prices-are-up-76-on-americas-biggest-grid-and-a-watchdog-...
1•logickkk1•11m ago•0 comments

Flyline: A Bash plugin to replace readline for a modern line editing experience

https://github.com/HalFrgrd/flyline/
4•hellohal•14m ago•3 comments

Purerl: Erlang back end for the PureScript compiler

https://github.com/purerl/purerl
1•tosh•15m ago•0 comments

A frightening weekend doesn't settle the license plate reader debate

https://www.statesman.com/opinion/editorials/article/license-plate-reader-debate-opinion-22264336...
1•jkestner•15m ago•0 comments

Trump Mobile is leaking customer info [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voxXDDq58Bk
2•geerlingguy•16m ago•0 comments

Slow Mode

https://blog.val.town/slow-mode
2•yurivish•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cable Detective

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cable-detective/id6765963737?mt=12
1•franze•18m ago•0 comments

Raven Software's Jedi Academy sources, from 2013, had all the crunch rage intact

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1thewau/raven_software_released_the_jedi_academy_so...
1•perching_aix•19m ago•1 comments

VeilGate- Deception Reverse Proxy

1•C0oki3s•21m ago•0 comments

Latest step in quest to 'de-extinct' Giant Moa? Hatching chicks from fake eggs

https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/20-05-2026/the-latest-step-in-the-quest-to-de-extinct-the-moa-ha...
1•HBcodes•23m ago•0 comments

Auto-Brewery Syndrome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome
2•pulkitsh1234•23m ago•0 comments

Predicting categorical&continuous Alzheimer's disease outcomes from 1 MRI scan

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-026-01121-2
4•bookofjoe•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Enforra – open-source action governance for AI agent tool calls

https://github.com/enforra/enforra
3•rohitguptap•25m ago•1 comments

Perplexity says its AI agent cut Rho's weekly meeting time by 90%

https://twitter.com/perplexity_ai/status/2056749555346235704
1•Otek•28m ago•0 comments

Google Antigravity Built an OS from a single prompt

https://antigravity.google/blog/google-antigravity-built-an-os
3•py4•28m ago•4 comments

Gmail is going to start talking to you

https://www.theverge.com/tech/932973/google-gmail-live-ai-keep-docs-io-2026
1•cdrnsf•29m ago•2 comments

The Telescope That Got Shot (2023)

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2023/04/the-telescope-that-got-shot.html
2•NKosmatos•30m 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/