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Show HN: leaf – one month later: website, releases and lots of improvements

https://leaf.rivolink.mg
1•RivoLink•3m ago•0 comments

Boston Mystery Boom

https://www.wcvb.com/article/did-you-feel-it-viewers-report-hearing-mystery-boom-across/71450011
1•benwhitehead21•4m ago•0 comments

Possible meteor/bolide atmospheric entry east of Boston

https://twitter.com/NStewWX/status/2060792766997655903
1•twoodfin•5m ago•0 comments

Meta is reportedly developing an AI pendant

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/30/meta-is-reportedly-developing-an-ai-pendant/
1•rishikeshs•7m ago•0 comments

In Pursuit of Understanding the Crash in Me/CFS

https://likeannopeningbandforthesun.substack.com/p/in-pursuit-of-understanding-the-crash
1•brandonb•7m ago•0 comments

Fluid Fire Simulation Sandbox

https://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/fluid_fire_3/
2•Leftium•8m ago•0 comments

Development and validation of a digital biomarker for peripheral artery disease

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-026-02655-w
1•brandonb•9m ago•0 comments

Compare AI Model Pricing Across 9 Providers (385 Models)

https://silkdock.ai/rankings
3•aqib-public•9m ago•0 comments

Ernst & Young published cybersecurity report full of hallucinations

https://gptzero.me/investigations/ey
2•smartmic•10m ago•0 comments

Thiel moves family to Milei's libertarian Argentina

https://www.ft.com/content/3d7ab893-1842-4c6c-a3d9-26871d79dde4
1•mmarian•10m ago•1 comments

How Does Google Maps Work? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS-CGkiPetQ
1•tacon•12m ago•0 comments

People Keep Damaging Garbage Trucks by Throwing Car Batteries in the Trash

https://www.thedrive.com/news/people-keep-throwing-away-car-batteries-in-dumpsters-and-thats-a-re...
2•01-_-•12m ago•0 comments

What the OSS Summit Says About OSS in 2026

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2026/05/19/oss-summit-2026/
1•mooreds•13m ago•0 comments

United flight diverted to Wisconsin after passenger's attempts to breach cockpit

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/30/us/united-airlines-unruly-passenger-wisconsin
1•mooreds•14m ago•0 comments

SoftBank pledges €75B to build Europe's biggest AI facility in France

https://www.ft.com/content/1022f9bd-5b6d-44a5-9303-c8b05b8c6463
2•bazzmt•14m ago•1 comments

Getting changes from FusionAuth theme updates

https://fusionauth.io/community/forum/topic/3105/getting-changes-from-theme-updates
1•mooreds•14m ago•0 comments

DHS says it's 'drawing up plans' to ban international arrivals at SFO

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/dhs-ban-international-arrival-sfo-22280740.php
4•consumer451•16m ago•0 comments

You don't have a willpower problem. You have a slot machine in your pocket

https://stvrrll1ght.substack.com/
2•maheenahmed•17m ago•0 comments

Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Explained for Regular People

https://likeannopeningbandforthesun.substack.com/p/cardiopulmonary-exercise-testing
1•brandonb•19m ago•0 comments

Huawei thanks US for restrictions that supercharged China semiconductor industry

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/huawei-chairman-thanks-the-us-for-supercharging-chinas...
3•dabinat•19m ago•0 comments

Don't Forget To Flush (2025) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f30PceqQWko
2•tosh•19m ago•0 comments

Cancer jab can eradicate tumours in patients, trial shows

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/30/cancer-jab-can-eradicate-entire-tumours-in-patien...
2•tosh•21m ago•0 comments

Claude Code vs. Codex: FRA challenge 75746d-2025

https://gist.github.com/joelonsql/c49129b151d7e77fb83250f675ffea07
2•JoelJacobson•24m ago•0 comments

I Ported Pixal3D over to Apple Silicon

https://blog.chillaid.art/posts/porting-pixal3d-one-cursed-kernel-at-a-time
1•pawelma•26m ago•1 comments

Cancer Alley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
3•amarcheschi•26m ago•0 comments

Looking at code behind File Pilot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww26eO1WeGQ
1•vjekoslav•27m ago•0 comments

Wordiply

https://www.wordiply.com/
1•saikatsg•28m ago•0 comments

Bluey deal FOMO will kill the next Bluey. Do you want dreams or dollarbucks?

https://oblongataresearch.substack.com/p/bluey-deal-fomo-will-kill-the-next
3•basiljh•29m ago•0 comments

The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop

https://pudding.cool/2017/02/vocabulary/
3•chistev•30m ago•0 comments

NNSI Architecture – Standalone Neuromorphic memory chip specification (v0.1)

https://app.notion.com/p/Show-HN-NNSI-Architecture-Standalone-Neuromorphic-memory-chip-specificat...
1•nyan_archive•31m 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