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Grokking Apache Iceberg

https://thingsworthsharing.dev/iceberg/
1•stivikivi•2m ago•0 comments

Tim Cook's last day as Apple CEO

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/its-tim-cooks-last-day-as-apple-ceo-investors-ar...
3•ludovicianul•2m ago•0 comments

Race to bottom in Indias voice AI market (0.15 cents/min)

https://twitter.com/rajananandan/status/2092952143078490550
2•kinj28•3m ago•0 comments

PyDPainter: A usable pixel art program written in Python

https://pydpainter.org/
1•doener•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hybrids – a daily flower logic puzzle

https://hybrids.rudyp.dev
1•rudyp_dev•5m ago•1 comments

What's the best way to label speakers in a transcript? I measured every option

https://lyonesse.app/blog/speaker-diarization-benchmark.html
1•get-inscribe•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nos4.fun – A functional iOS 4 recreation in the browser

https://github.com/1etu/nos4
2•1etu•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A dedicated hub to find, test, and serve LLM adapters

https://aptai.dev
1•ab613•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Decispher – persistent engineering context and memory for coding agents

5•iamalizaidi•9m ago•0 comments

For a Thirsty American West, It's Either Cows or Humans

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-08-31/colorado-river-cuts-will-force-southwest-to...
1•littlexsparkee•9m ago•1 comments

EU Commission Designates ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox Under the DSA

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-designates-chatgpt-reddit-roblox-under-d...
5•lumannnn•10m ago•1 comments

The Cast-Iron Company That Has Been Controlled by the Same Family for 130 Years

https://www.wsj.com/business/the-cast-iron-company-that-has-been-controlled-by-the-same-family-fo...
1•bookofjoe•10m ago•1 comments

Getting the Steam Deck LCD Working on a Raspberry Pi

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/steam-deck-lcd-pi-hat/
1•metrofun•12m ago•0 comments

AI in Education Knowledge Base

https://edtechdev.github.io/aied/
2•edtechdev•14m ago•1 comments

Unpack

https://www.unpack.fm/
1•mijokaliger•14m ago•0 comments

A new class of memory-based AI (MIRaS) published this week

https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/54/16/gkag833/8769250
2•CTBI_WUSTL•14m ago•0 comments

AI and Employment: So Far, So Good

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/08/ai-and-employment-what-the-firms-say.html
3•garrickvanburen•15m ago•0 comments

We swapped Zed's storage layer for Dagr

https://gist.github.com/mzaks/8d0bd41e50cc547ce33c759c397fad4f
1•mzaks•17m ago•0 comments

Nvidia to Invest $3.5B in Chipmaker MediaTek

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-31/nvidia-to-invest-3-5-billion-in-chipmaker-medi...
2•zinekeller•17m ago•0 comments

The actually useful SaaS agents no one is building

https://pulkitsharma.substack.com/p/the-actually-useful-saas-agents-no
1•pulkitsh1234•19m ago•0 comments

Are we any closer to the Quantum Apocalypse?

https://neilmadden.blog/2026/07/02/are-we-any-closer-to-the-quantum-apocalypse/
2•mooreds•19m ago•0 comments

Remembering the Apple II and IIGS from High School

https://www.goto10retro.com/p/remembering-the-apple-ii-and-iigs
2•rbanffy•19m ago•0 comments

Let's build a digital clock [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XDH-fZKnQk
1•surprisetalk•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Words to Worlds - world build in 100 words or less

https://wordstoworlds.com
3•realizer_kevin•21m ago•0 comments

Apple Caught Off Guard by AI Demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/30/apple-unexpected-mac-mini-and-studio-demand/
6•thm•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: agix – addresses and messaging for agents working for their humans

https://agixlink.com/
2•populuxe•25m ago•1 comments

Trivium 30 aug 2026

https://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/2026-08-30
2•swah•26m ago•0 comments

The new Go JSON API: twice as fast, or 1.5x slower? – Daniel Lemire's blog

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/08/29/the-new-go-json-api-twice-as-fast-or-1-5x-slower/
1•ncruces•26m ago•0 comments

Dataloupe – turn any CSV, Parquet, or Excel file into an offline HTML explorer

https://github.com/aurelio-nakamura/dataloupe
2•aurelionakamura•27m ago•0 comments

Historical Discoveries That Reshaped Modern Historical Understanding

https://thehistoricalinsights.page/2026/08/historical-discoveries.html
2•thunderbong•27m 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