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Design of metabolism-inspired hydrogels driven by emergence of function

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2026/cc/d5cc06562c
1•geox•5m ago•0 comments

I rebuilt the Million Dollar Homepage 20 years later

https://theforeverwall.com
2•ARMAND2O•6m ago•0 comments

Great Trigonometrical Survey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Trigonometrical_Survey
1•thunderbong•6m ago•0 comments

Recursion and the STP Macro Processor

https://coe.psu.ac.th/ad/macros/
1•ADavison2560•8m ago•0 comments

Three things in AI to watch, according to a Nobel-winning economist

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/11/1137090/three-things-in-ai-to-watch-according-to-a-no...
2•joozio•9m ago•0 comments

The Fast Way to Sweden – BGP Routing Experiments

https://alastairbarber.com/Fast-Way-to-Sweden-Optimal-BGP-Prefix-Announcement/
1•alibarber•9m ago•0 comments

$70 Should Be the Most Worrying Number for LNG

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-05-11/why-70-should-be-the-most-worrying-number-f...
2•helsinkiandrew•11m ago•0 comments

The Anti-Singularity – LessWrong

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3XHZ4DjykLSfsnks/the-anti-singularity
1•kiyanwang•12m ago•0 comments

LLMs Are a Siren Song

https://user8.bearblog.dev/ai-the-poor-and-the-ignorant/
1•dnnddidiej•13m ago•0 comments

EU weighs restricting use of U.S. cloud platforms to process sensitive gov data

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/07/eu-commission-cloud-sensitive-data.html
2•_____k•16m ago•0 comments

The Brag Doc

https://ben.balter.com/2026/04/27/the-brag-doc/
1•kiyanwang•17m ago•0 comments

Mini Shai-Hulud has crossed from NPM into PyPI

https://bsky.app/profile/socket.dev/post/3mln2ck4joc2p
1•anglesideangle•20m ago•0 comments

Kamy- PDF and e-signature API for AI agents (now on Cursor Directory)

https://cursor.directory/plugins/kamy
1•rakanalalami•20m ago•0 comments

The Wire's Final Season and the Story Everyone Missed (2008)

https://davidsimon.com/the-wires-final-season-and-the-story-everyone-missed/
1•chistev•20m ago•0 comments

FreeBASIC

https://github.com/freebasic/fbc
1•ustad•22m ago•0 comments

Fastmail Down?

1•bsder•28m ago•1 comments

The Museum Can Wait

https://mikaelpawlo.substack.com/p/the-museum-can-wait
1•imartin2k•30m ago•1 comments

Show HN: TextifyALL – AI transcription with zero file size or duration limits

https://textifyall.com
1•Harvey1331•34m ago•0 comments

Devframe: Framework-Neutral Foundation for DevTools

https://devfra.me/
1•kozika•35m ago•0 comments

New York Times Published A.I.-Fabricated Quote Attributed to Pierre Poilievre

https://pxlnv.com/linklog/times-poilievre-fabricated-quote/
2•danaris•36m ago•0 comments

Why were semiconductors invented in the USA? [YouTube]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJUJztMrUxk
1•johncole•36m ago•2 comments

The Inspiring Journey of Harmandeep Singh Kandhari in Real Estate

https://harmandeepsingh-kandhari.onepage.me
1•KirtiKKapoor•37m ago•0 comments

Amazon staff use AI tool for unnecessary tasks to inflate usage scores

https://www.ft.com/content/8ee0d3ef-9548-422d-8ff1-ebd48ad4b2ca
5•uhfraid•38m ago•1 comments

Artificial Intelligence and Quarterly Earnings Reports

https://ritholtz.com/2026/05/ai-q-earnings/
1•imartin2k•39m ago•0 comments

Arts and cultural engagement 'linked to slower pace of biological ageing'

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/12/arts-cultural-engagement-linked-slower-pace-biolo...
2•XzetaU8•39m ago•0 comments

Getting the Maximum Out of My Claude Code Subscription

https://jigjoy.ai/blog/getting-the-maximum-out-of-claude-code
1•mijura•40m ago•0 comments

Breez SDK Case Study: Deblock, Instant Bitcoin at Scale

https://breez.technology/case-studies/deblock/
1•janandonly•42m ago•0 comments

California Scrub Jay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_scrub_jay
2•vismit2000•43m ago•0 comments

Axavive Results: Real Before and After Pictures (90-Day Skin Test)

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/healthcare/articles/axavive-skin-exploding-2026-golden-22590060...
1•tarzlopa•44m ago•0 comments

Is Google down for anyone else?

https://www.google.com/search?q=end+of+times&sca_esv=89f358ba4e2fcd04&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU1082AU1082&...
1•schappim•45m ago•3 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/