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RVAA: Recursive Vision-Action Agent for Long Video Understanding

https://github.com/mohammed840/RLM-implementation
1•tmzt•32s ago•0 comments

AI's Memorization Crisis

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/ai-memorization-research/685552/
1•twalichiewicz•45s ago•1 comments

Show HN: I built a 220-lesson programming academy using only Claude Code

https://academy.thunderson.dev
1•eyrockscript•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nudge – Inject rules into agent context

https://github.com/attunehq/nudge
3•ilikebits•8m ago•0 comments

OpenAI has acquired the health-care technology startup Torch

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/open-ai-torch-health-care-technology.html
1•shelfchair•11m ago•0 comments

Google removes AI health summaries after investigation finds dangerous flaws

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/google-removes-some-ai-health-summaries-after-investigation-fi...
2•barishnamazov•12m ago•0 comments

Non-Essential French Embassy Staff Have Left Iran

https://www.barrons.com/news/non-essential-french-embassy-staff-have-left-iran-sources-d84d1f51
8•mhb•14m ago•0 comments

A deep dive on agent sandboxes

https://pierce.dev/notes/a-deep-dive-on-agent-sandboxes
1•icyfox•14m ago•0 comments

Republican introduces bill seeking to make Greenland 51st state

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5685118-fine-introduces-greenland-bill/
3•zqna•20m ago•2 comments

The "Bermuda Triangle" and the Growing Risk in the Insurance Markets

https://natlawreview.com/article/bermuda-triangle-and-growing-risk-insurance-markets
1•petethomas•23m ago•0 comments

GoFundMe Ignores Rules Hosting Legal Fund for ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good

https://www.wired.com/story/gofundme-ice-jonathan-ross-renee-good-fundraiser/
6•cdrnsf•24m ago•1 comments

Map Your API Landscape to Prevent Agentic AI Disaster

https://thenewstack.io/map-your-api-landscape-to-prevent-agentic-ai-disaster/
2•chhum•25m ago•0 comments

GitHub not showing that apps "act on your behalf" when only logging in

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-12-selectively-showing-act-on-your-behalf-warning-for-githu...
2•gregsadetsky•27m ago•0 comments

YAML? That's Norway Problem

https://lab174.com/blog/202601-yaml-norway/
1•thes1lv3r•27m ago•0 comments

China Just Built Its Own Time System for the Moon

https://gizmodo.com/china-just-built-its-own-time-system-for-the-moon-2000708991
1•hunglee2•27m ago•0 comments

Mars's big impact on Earth's climate: How the red planet's pull shapes ice ages

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-tiny-mars-big-impact-earth.html
1•bikenaga•30m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Speculate About a Hypothetical Cyber Exploit That Would Leverage AI

2•burnerToBetOut•31m ago•1 comments

Data-Dividend Calculator

https://delightful-maamoul-98e039.netlify.app
1•KillswitchAI•31m ago•0 comments

I built an ingestion engine because I hate mundane tasks

2•scannyai•32m ago•0 comments

Dialectics for Artificial Intelligence

https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17373
1•xiaoniu•32m ago•0 comments

Even Linus Torvalds is vibe coding now

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-vibe-coding-ai/
1•CrankyBear•32m ago•1 comments

Do you know how much money social apps make from your time

https://www.urtheproduct.com
4•ClipNoteBook•34m ago•2 comments

Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/12/danish_dev_floppy_drive_remote/
1•defrost•35m ago•2 comments

Transactional AI: Saga Pattern for Reliable AI Agent Workflows (v0.2)

https://github.com/Grafikui/Transactional-ai
2•grafikui•35m ago•1 comments

Wine 11.0 Planned for Release Tomorrow with NTSync Support, Better WoW64

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-11.0-Tomorrow
2•mikece•35m ago•0 comments

99% of Heart Attacks and Strokes Linked to 4 Risk Factors

https://www.sciencealert.com/huge-study-links-99-of-heart-attacks-and-strokes-with-4-risk-factors
2•Gaishan•36m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Are you using agents for refactorings?

1•suralind•38m ago•0 comments

Green Corn Ceremony

https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/green-corn-ceremony/
1•foster_nyman•38m ago•0 comments

Climate misinformation is threatening Canada's national security

https://thenarwhal.ca/climate-misinformation-national-security/
3•Teever•42m ago•0 comments

Workflow Description Language (WDL) 1.3

https://openwdl.org/wdl/bioinformatics/workflows/announcing-wdl-1-3-0/
1•azhenley•44m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/