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I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence

https://www.interconnects.ai/p/i-expect-rapid-progress-but-not-towards
1•tokepi•22s ago•0 comments

Roko's Basilisk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
1•mudil•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Self Hosted System One Decision API for Images

https://deepanwadhwa.github.io/OpenDecision/image-examples/
5•dwa3592•3m ago•0 comments

The Houthis' threats to Saudi aviation have a government web address

https://freethedotye.org/blog/houthis-saudi-aviation-government-web-address/
2•FreeTheDotYE•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: How good is your Rust? Free quiz, every code answer checked by rustc

https://rustcoach.dev/test
1•grajo•5m ago•0 comments

Foot Binding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding
2•pr337h4m•6m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What to do with lots of spare compute in colocation?

1•lazyweb•7m ago•0 comments

Why we're watching these climate tech companies

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/08/1145920/climate-tech-companies-list/
2•joozio•8m ago•0 comments

Every AI Name

https://everyainame.com/
1•lukasthoms•9m ago•1 comments

DOJ investigating 5 major TV networks over response to White House press ban

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6141115-doj-investigates-tv-networks-boycott/
3•hn_acker•9m ago•1 comments

String-to-Float Conversion Error Checking in Standard C Is Not Portable

https://sebsite.pw/w/20261009-strtod.html
1•birdculture•11m ago•0 comments

Prime Video unveils Blade Runner 2099 full trailer at NYCC

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/10/prime-video-unveils-blade-runner-2099-full-trailer-at-nycc/
1•mikelgan•14m ago•0 comments

Thither – Lightweight remote editing over SSH with multi-GB file support

https://github.com/jsi-textediting
1•stonewell•16m ago•0 comments

Two Steam games made $560K but the co-creator took home $15K/year

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/two-steam-games-generated-usd560-000-across-13...
2•sbulaev•19m ago•0 comments

Polysilicon Consciousness

https://polysilicon-consciousness.pages.dev/about
1•measurablefunc•20m ago•0 comments

Ten Billion Lines of Code-The most prolific code generator before Copilot (2025)

https://www.dvdsgl.co/2025/quicktype-retrospective
1•ahl•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mira, AI Walking Tours

https://www.mira.tours/wander
9•bleonard•22m ago•2 comments

Show HN: Synonymizer – an experiment in non AI text adjustment

https://synonymizer.fyi/
1•bmoathn•24m ago•0 comments

What broke when an LLM read 9k pages of German election programs

https://parteiprogramm.com/en
1•michaelpomogajk•25m ago•1 comments

Using Microsoft-Decision-1 (out yesterday) to fill 3D indoor levels with assets

https://github.com/yeme-oss/LevelDez/
1•ycosynot•25m ago•0 comments

Share one live stream across multiple widgets

https://github.com/akshar07/llm-coalesce
2•akshart07•26m ago•0 comments

Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/russian-disinformation-bot-traffic-nearly...
5•mmh0000•27m ago•0 comments

AI is automating coding. So why are software developer job postings on the rise?

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/11/ai-software-developer-jobs.html
2•snarky-comments•27m ago•2 comments

Why hasn't SpaceX, worth $2T, paid this Bay Area chef the $70K it owes him?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/spacex-stateline-napa-late-payment-22463945.php
21•hn_acker•27m ago•13 comments

apsw: Another Python SQLite Wrapper

https://github.com/rogerbinns/apsw
2•tosh•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: DuckOnWire – Share one DuckDB file over Postgres wire and Quack

https://github.com/misaelzapata/duckonwire
1•misaelzapata•33m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Vizipedia – free open-source visualizations Wikipedia your agents code

https://shapelessai.com/vizipedia
1•FirstClassTree•38m ago•2 comments

Sound – Bartosz Ciechanowski

https://ciechanow.ski/sound/
2•dverlaeckt80•39m ago•1 comments

HashSmash: Benchmark for AI-assisted review of cryptanalytic collision claims

https://github.com/Layr-Labs/hash-smash
1•wslh•40m ago•0 comments

Drones Hit Third Yandex Data Center Disrupting over 80 Services

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/86708
3•mikelgan•44m 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