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E-Hiking Is Here. You Can Tell by My 1k-Watt Hips. Hypershell's X Ultra S

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/robot-legs-hypershell-x-ultra-tested-e8a254e2
1•mataug•2m ago•0 comments

CES, a peer-to-peer system (25 years R&D, free)

https://github.com/fcecin/ces
1•fcecin•3m ago•1 comments

When does learning from data work (math starting from basic probability)

https://prateekchandrajha.github.io/vc-rademacher.html
1•alok-g•4m ago•0 comments

Discovery Platform for Startups

https://www.hyperspeed.work
1•Asadsangabi•5m ago•0 comments

A Transoceanic Jet at 35,000 Feet Is In Airspace That Doesn't Legally Exist

https://simpleflying.com/why-commercial-jet-flying-35000-feet-traveling-airspace-doesnt-legally-e...
1•Stratoscope•8m ago•0 comments

$COOKED – cooked or cooking? Fresh Solana memecoin, just launched on pump.fun

https://pump.fun/coin/E9wv3cReZpNmCLUpDsFeyAGkAVaxkfRUTQVdhKUYpump
1•advaithketha•9m ago•0 comments

The New Luddite Movement

https://www.ft.com/content/f5c96fa6-5b9b-4951-b71d-e32b3b57d8df
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•11m ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Looking for experienced web developer to commission

1•marysminefnuf•20m ago•0 comments

Jeremy Scott gets cheer after ripping up AI-written commencement speech

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-scott-fashion-graduation-speech-commencement-ai-student-ba...
2•cdrnsf•21m ago•0 comments

Resident: Vibe coding firmware (our new sandbox library for ESP32 devices)

https://interconnected.org/home/2026/05/20/resident
1•bertwagner•21m ago•0 comments

Crafting Fluid Animations Across Apple Platforms with Phil Zakharchenko [video]

https://vimeo.com/1194916003
1•Austin_Conlon•22m ago•0 comments

Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352
1•cdrnsf•23m ago•0 comments

ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies

https://www.projectsaltbox.com/p/ice-awards-25-million-iris-scanning
4•cdrnsf•23m ago•0 comments

SBCL – Struct by Value Final

https://github.com/jbouwman/sbcl/pull/14/commits/95acdf13aecda724f2dba12c4fb056ac825c58c8
1•dismalaf•24m ago•0 comments

AI-fix: type one word after a failed command and it fixes it

https://github.com/anasmohiuddinsyed-bit/ai-fix
1•Anas1371•25m ago•0 comments

Plane Geometry: An Elementary Textbook by Shalosh B. Ekhad, XIV (Circa 2050)

https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/GT.html
1•casey2•26m ago•0 comments

Browserling – free cross-browser testing tool

https://www.browserling.com
1•tester1•33m ago•0 comments

The shared recipe behind search: Images, Shazam and RAG

https://medium.com/@pablo.cael/the-shared-recipe-behind-search-images-shazam-and-rag-08fc93a276ac
1•pcael•37m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CurRant->Screw Google scourge, help people notice what is worth a look

https://currantfeed.cc/
1•PAndreew•37m ago•1 comments

AV2 Codec Looks Like It Will Be Officially Released Next Week

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AV2-Next-Week
1•breve•39m ago•0 comments

Inequality Fell as (Bronze Age) Mohenjo-Daro Grew

https://www.anthropology.net/p/inequality-fell-as-mohenjo-daro-grew
3•marojejian•42m ago•1 comments

My I3-Emacs Integration

https://khz.ac/software/i3-integration.html
7•nosolace•49m ago•0 comments

Experimental Drug Retatrutide Yields Dramatic Weight Loss

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/science/retatrutide-weight-loss-drug.html
3•bookofjoe•50m ago•1 comments

Why T. Rex had tiny arms

https://nautil.us/we-finally-have-the-answer-for-t-rexs-tiny-arms-1280997
3•marojejian•1h ago•0 comments

Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols

https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Miller/mathsym/
4•layer8•1h ago•0 comments

Bun.Image

https://bun.com/docs/runtime/image
22•chakintosh•1h ago•9 comments

AI Governance 2026: I Almost Quit over This Shit (and Why You Might Too)

https://medium.com/open-ai/ai-governance-2026-i-almost-quit-over-this-shit-and-why-you-might-too-...
3•sukhpinder0804•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Fruitsy, a slot machine game

https://fruitsy.surge.sh
5•stagas•1h ago•0 comments

Jira Is Turing-Complete

https://seriot.ch/computation/jira.html
5•MrFinch•1h ago•0 comments

Codex is flagged as malware on macOS

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/23195
3•vldszn•1h ago•4 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/