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Tldr we built the fastest and most compact embedded vector database in the world

https://github.com/Egoist-Machines/LodeDB
1•erinmeryl•2m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Where is our profession (programmer) going?

1•syntaxbush•3m ago•0 comments

China's Electric Vehicle Exports Reach Record High in May

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-24/china-s-electric-vehicle-exports-reach-record-...
1•xbmcuser•4m ago•0 comments

Home Feed does not show releases

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/146124
1•oaix•4m ago•0 comments

Supeintelligence Future

1•Siarchitect•6m ago•1 comments

Satteri: A Markdown pipeline forged in Rust for the JavaScript world

https://satteri.bruits.org/
1•handfuloflight•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Drive your already-logged-in Chrome from any AI agent

https://github.com/leeguooooo/chrome-use
1•leeguoo•13m ago•0 comments

Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

https://www.science.org/content/article/medical-students-are-using-popular-research-tool-pump-out...
2•rndsignals•15m ago•0 comments

Chinese scientists unveil glowing Avatar-like plants that could light cities

https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/04/02/chinese-scientists-unveil-glowing-avatar-like-plants-tha...
2•thunderbong•17m ago•0 comments

Are you better than the screen watchers?

https://sailsandcommas.com/2026/05/30/are-you-better-than-the-screen-watchers/
1•Curiositry•26m ago•0 comments

Cloudflare launched self-managed OAuth for all

https://blog.cloudflare.com/oauth-for-all/
3•terryds•27m ago•1 comments

Libaui – Tk clone in XCB and C

https://github.com/onanaxm/libaui
2•onuelito•29m ago•0 comments

Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley

https://www.economist.com/business/2026/06/21/zombie-unicorns-are-haunting-silicon-valley
1•andsoitis•29m ago•1 comments

Electronics can now be printed onto living tissues

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/06/24/electronics-can-now-be-printed-onto-l...
2•andsoitis•31m ago•0 comments

Scbkr – an owner-signed responsibility-chain workbench for local LLMs

https://github.com/HIJO790401/scbkr-local-responsibility-model
1•look888•32m ago•0 comments

SystemVerilog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SystemVerilog
1•handfuloflight•38m ago•0 comments

Accidental Anonymity

https://macwright.com/2026/06/24/accidental-anonymity
1•maxutility•40m ago•0 comments

Mr. Big (Police Procedure)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure)
3•killingtime74•42m ago•0 comments

Duolicious – Open-source dating app

https://github.com/duolicious/duolicious
4•roger_penrose•42m ago•0 comments

TronBrowser is an open-source, privacy-first, AI-native web browser

https://tronbrowser.dev/
1•buffer_overlord•44m ago•1 comments

Remembering the life and artwork of Ron Spears

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/remembering-the-life-and-artwork-of-ron-spears
1•WalterGR•53m ago•0 comments

Writers and Drugs

https://lithub.com/are-writers-intrinsically-vulnerable-to-alcohol-and-drugs/
3•dang•55m ago•1 comments

The effortless genius of Super Mario 64

https://ravi64.com/messi-effortless-genius-super-mario-64/
1•merlioncity•58m ago•0 comments

Paintings by Adolf Hitler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler
3•num42•1h ago•0 comments

Bible as RAG Database

https://www.crosscanon.com/
33•jacksonastone•1h ago•14 comments

Bitcoin hits 20-month low as market sentiment sours

https://www.ft.com/content/41d1da8f-e1a8-4953-9d89-a8caa84cd26c
10•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago•0 comments

The Microsoft Store on Windows 11 is great now (2025)

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/the-microsoft-store-on-windows-11-is-actually...
1•kristianp•1h ago•1 comments

Golden Boot – Club Impact Tracker

https://golden-boot-club-impact.vercel.app/
2•saq7•1h ago•1 comments

Tech companies dealing with data center protests locally fighting losing battle

https://fortune.com/2026/06/22/data-center-opposition-goes-national-despite-only-8-percent-living...
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago•1 comments

Exploring the internal representations of Pangram 3.3.2

https://www.pangram.com/pangram-space
10•krackers•1h 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