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Ponytail vs. a good AGENTS.md: What we found on our real codebase

https://docspring.com/blog/posts/ponytail-vs-agents-md/
1•nathan_f77•4m ago•0 comments

Introducing OWE-Bench for Long-Horizon Engineering Projects

https://www.mercor.com/blog/introducing-owe-bench/
1•matt_d•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Real-time inventory of natural stone slabs in US

https://slabby.org/
1•dhruvkar•10m ago•0 comments

Qwen3.8 re-educated with a more Western worldview

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/11/13/alibabas-qwen38-re-educated-with-a-more-western-...
1•NordStreamYacht•14m ago•0 comments

They Were the Indispensable CEOs–Until They Weren't

https://www.wsj.com/business/they-were-the-indispensable-ceosuntil-they-werent-1bb8a52c
1•marc__1•15m ago•0 comments

WMP Goodies

https://sites.google.com/view/wmpgoodies/home
1•themaxdavitt•16m ago•0 comments

North Korean hackers used fake video calls in $400M crypto hack, says FBI

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqdj1ellpd70o
2•1659447091•19m ago•0 comments

Jensen Huang expected to testify before Congress

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2026/nov/13/nvidia-jensen-huang-to-testify-before-con...
5•byte_0•22m ago•0 comments

Defunct Company Data Partnership

https://company.micro1.ai/register/?referralCode=340999d4-30b9-44d7-82c0-c6fda55a3d3e&utm_source=...
2•dkggwl1990•23m ago•0 comments

AI Security Wiki

https://nachi065.github.io/AI-Security-Wiki/
3•totetsu•23m ago•1 comments

Don't Underestimate Swift: Learnings Building Back Ends with Hummingbird/Vapor

https://wearecommunity.io/communities/mobilepeople/articles/8881
1•frizlab•24m ago•1 comments

Show HN: I built a Rick and Morty explainer video generator

https://usediorama.com/rick-and-morty
3•dixitbavu•25m ago•3 comments

Octen-WebGR, a 4B model that memorized 200M URLs (open weights, live demo)

https://huggingface.co/Octen/Octen-WebGR-4B
3•kunka_octen•26m ago•0 comments

FDA Approves First Factor Xla Inhibitor to Help Prevent Stroke

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-factor-xla-inhibitor-help-...
3•geox•30m ago•0 comments

Feel the AGI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMFjMYOkpgM
1•HowyHugh•31m ago•0 comments

The Land and the Landfill

https://urbanomnibus.net/2026/11/the-land-and-the-landfill/
2•wawayanda•32m ago•0 comments

Making nuclear fusion in your kitchen

https://hudzah.substack.com/p/making-nuclear-fusion-in-your-kitchen
2•niallsmart•33m ago•0 comments

Read the Aubrey-Maturin series. Before it's too late

https://mapwriting.substack.com/p/read-the-aubrey-maturin-series-before
8•chandlerh•33m ago•2 comments

Tailcat for Minecraft

https://github.com/tailscale/tailcat-for-minecraft
2•LelouBil•34m ago•0 comments

The Glued Cup

https://idle.news/blog/the-glued-cup/
1•colinprince•35m ago•0 comments

When the Observer Stole the Universe

https://pansophics.substack.com/p/when-the-observer-stole-the-universe
1•saadchakra•45m ago•0 comments

Mac-assed Mac app (2020)

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-apps
3•guessmyname•45m ago•0 comments

Mythos got Claude running on AMD chips in three days, a job that took months

https://madrobot.blog/2026/11/11/anthropic-mythos-claude-amd-chips-three-days/
2•mroche•47m ago•1 comments

A real-time database of Indian state GDP

https://itihasdata.org/
1•hunglee2•49m ago•0 comments

How are database migrations handled for FusionAuth Cloud instances?

https://fusionauth.io/community/forum/topic/3345/how-are-database-migrations-handled-for-fusionau...
2•mooreds•50m ago•0 comments

State of the tech job market: late 2026

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/state-of-the-tech-job-market-late
3•mooreds•51m ago•0 comments

Microsoft outage drags on for hours, disrupting Outlook, Teams for thousands

https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-365-outlook-down-thousands-us-users-downdetector-sho...
3•JumpCrisscross•52m ago•1 comments

Brandrail – make Claude Code and Cursor follow your design system

https://github.com/brandrail-app/brandrail
1•thiago_baptiste•54m ago•0 comments

Claude for Manufacturing

https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-for-manufacturing
1•jp_rider•56m ago•0 comments

Don't argue with me. $100k is fair, and you know it

https://folklore.org/Switcher.html
13•sammatilda•57m ago•1 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