frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

A woman's uterus has been kept alive outside the body for the first time

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/28/1134766/womans-uterus-kept-alive-outside-the-body-first/
1•joozio•7m ago•0 comments

I put all 8,642 Spanish laws in Git – every reform is a commit

https://github.com/EnriqueLop/legalize-es
2•enriquelop•7m ago•1 comments

Human neurons on a chip learned to play Doom

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-human-neurons-on-a-chip-learned-to-play-doom/
1•Brajeshwar•7m ago•0 comments

How are you handling web scraping at scale without getting blocked?

https://meshscrape.com/
1•Viktor_5togrow•8m ago•0 comments

Quantum Control Plane

https://github.com/mareksuchodolski12-hash/kwantowy
1•ProEloElo•12m ago•0 comments

Grove: Distributed ML Training Across MacBooks

https://github.com/swarnim-j/grove
1•hasheddan•13m ago•0 comments

Tmate.io is Shut Down...

https://github.com/tmate-io/tmate/issues/322
1•pvtmert•14m ago•0 comments

In an Asymmetrical War, Iran Seeks an Edge with Its Information War

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/business/iran-propaganda-war-ai.html
1•mitchbob•14m ago•1 comments

Visuali (Updated): A workspace to create and edit with AI on a infinite canvas

https://visuali.io
3•visuali•14m ago•0 comments

Study explains Antarctic sea ice growth and sudden decline

https://phys.org/news/2026-03-antarctic-sea-ice-growth-sudden.html
2•Brajeshwar•18m ago•0 comments

I Built an Open-World Engine for the N64 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXxmIw9axWw
2•msephton•19m ago•1 comments

Fired from Warhorse Studios and Replaced with AI

https://old.reddit.com/r/kingdomcome/comments/1s5vgt9/other_fired_from_warhorse_studios_and_repla...
1•jzig•25m ago•0 comments

The new way to manage Private Equity Funds

https://rockvault.io/
1•rakanalalami•25m ago•1 comments

Show HN: 2MB FOSS Nav App with GPX Tracking

https://github.com/CompassMB/MBCompass/releases/tag/v1.1.13
1•nativeforks•29m ago•0 comments

Semiont: Build a Knowledge Base Collaboratively with AI

https://the-ai-alliance.github.io/semiont/
1•argee•31m ago•1 comments

Zsh-patina: A fast Zsh syntax highlighting plugin (written in Rust)

https://github.com/michel-kraemer/zsh-patina
1•michel-kraemer•34m ago•0 comments

Fastbelt: The high-speed DSL toolkit for Go

https://www.typefox.io/blog/fastbelt-introduction/
3•spoenemann•37m ago•0 comments

What Is YouTube's Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its CEO

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/magazine/neal-mohan-interview.html
1•pretext•37m ago•0 comments

Gaza toddler released from Israeli custody with 'cigarette burn' wounds

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-toddler-released-israeli-custody-cigarette-burn-wounds
4•ghd_•43m ago•0 comments

From the TI-57 to AI: A Veteran's Methodology for "Not Vibe Coding"

https://github.com/tchoa91/RSSext/discussions/2
3•tchoa91•43m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Substrate UI, my "teaching myself front end development" design system

https://www.substrateui.dev/
1•MikeNotThePope•45m ago•0 comments

The Age Verification Con

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-age-verification-con
2•bilsbie•46m ago•0 comments

Computers, Geometry and Einstein – Jason Lotay (Oxford Mathematics) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NCbEbopMj8
1•vismit2000•46m ago•0 comments

FruitsGrid Japanese Puzzle Game

https://www.fruitsgrid.com/
1•code-less•50m ago•0 comments

Oppo made the best foldable phone, again

https://www.theverge.com/tech/901846/oppo-find-n6-review-crease-screen-specs-price
1•dkobia•51m ago•0 comments

Architecture Decision Record

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ArchitectureDecisionRecord.html
2•BerislavLopac•55m ago•0 comments

No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/what-happens-next-with-nasas-plan-to-replace-the-iss-source...
8•rbanffy•55m ago•1 comments

Introduction to Nyreth v1.0 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvCFmfjJLA
1•NyrethAI•58m ago•0 comments

Scaling a Monolith to 1M LOC: 113 Pragmatic Lessons from Tech Lead to CTO

https://www.semicolonandsons.com/articles/scaling-a-monolith-to-1m-loc-113-pragmatic-lessons-from...
1•dondraper36•1h ago•0 comments

Looking for honest feedback on Entry I – a physical artifact

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/looking-for-honest-feedback-on-entry-i-a-physical-artifact-that...
1•Entryi•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•11mo ago

Comments

thechao•11mo 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•11mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•11mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•10mo 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•10mo 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•11mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•11mo 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•10mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•11mo 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•11mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•11mo 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_•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•10mo 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/