frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

The End of Licenses

https://myblog.ru/the-end-of-licenses
1•xenator•1m ago•0 comments

Coursera prompt injection on copy and paste

https://twitter.com/iangcarroll/status/2022212829441667482
1•pjf•1m ago•0 comments

Anthropic to donate $20M to group backing AI regulation

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/anthropic-donate-20-million-us-political-group-backing-a...
1•noduerme•3m ago•0 comments

A 10/10 portfolio page of a young designer

https://rishikeshsarangan.com/
1•alexsanjoseph•4m ago•0 comments

MiniMax releases M2.5: Performance on par with Claude Opus 4.6, but 20x cheaper

https://twitter.com/askOkara/status/2021988522329354264
3•alexfefun1•4m ago•0 comments

AI trends in 2026 will likely be about copilot tools, not automation agents

1•mikasisiki•6m ago•0 comments

How often does the average person fart? Scientists built a device to find out

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-often-does-the-average-person-fart-scientists-buil...
1•beardyw•7m ago•0 comments

SMTP server from scratch in Go – FSM, raw TCP, and buffer-oriented I/O

1•Jyotishmoy•8m ago•0 comments

CEO of Digital Asset Company SafeMoon Sentenced to 100 Months in Prison

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/ceo-digital-asset-company-safemoon-sentenced-100-months-pris...
1•pseudolus•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Enunciate – Paste a speech script, find the words you'll mispronounce

https://getenunciate.com
1•eventual_consis•12m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is there a no-LLM license yet?

2•ahub•12m ago•1 comments

AI uncovers solutions to Erdős problems, moving closer to transforming math

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-uncovers-solutions-to-erdos-problems-moving-closer-...
1•beardyw•12m ago•0 comments

Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

https://www.openculture.com/2021/06/hear-the-amati-king-cello-the-oldest-known-cello-in-existence...
3•tesserato•16m ago•1 comments

Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dcFhF0Dlk
1•gobugat•18m ago•0 comments

Python for Prediction

https://pythonforprediction.wordpress.com/2026/01/28/llmtextualanswer-usage-examples/
1•librasteve•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Machine-readable CV portfolio (llms.txt, capabilities.json)

https://github.com/vassiliylakhonin/vassiliylakhonin.github.io
1•vassilbek•23m ago•0 comments

Analyzing Container Filesystem Isolation for Multi-Tenant Workloads

https://systemweakness.com/i-am-breaking-my-head-in-analyzing-container-filesystem-isolation-for-...
2•hevalon•23m ago•0 comments

Epstein Files: if you change the extension to .mp4 you can view the videos

https://old.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1r1dkrf/comment/o4orail/
3•wise_blood•28m ago•0 comments

Charts show how Trump is isolating the US on the world stage

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/feb/13/these-charts-show-how-trump-is-isola...
2•gizzlon•28m ago•1 comments

What Agentic AI "Vibe Coding" in the Hands of Actual Programmers / Engineers

https://www.stochasticlifestyle.com/what-agentic-ai-vibe-coding-in-the-hands-of-actual-programmer...
2•xeonmc•28m ago•0 comments

Forge: Scalable Agent RL Framework and Algorithm

https://www.minimax.io/news/forge-scalable-agent-rl-framework-and-algorithm
20•dougian•29m ago•0 comments

Dijkstra's algorithm won't be replaced in production routers any time soon

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/10/dijkstras_algorithm_impact_on_networks/
1•pseudolus•30m ago•0 comments

600% memory price surge threatens telcos' broadband router

https://theoverspill.blog/2026/02/13/climate-change-acceleration-question-start-up-2609/
1•doener•32m ago•0 comments

Building Trust in Fusion Energy

https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/building-trust-in-fusion-energy/
1•mpweiher•33m ago•1 comments

Self-replicating RNA discovered of only 45 nucleotides long

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt2760
1•s3tt3mbr1n1•33m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Seedance 2.0 - Create cinematic AI videos from text and images

https://www.seedance20.site
1•Sharon111•35m ago•0 comments

Trump revokes basis of US climate regulation, ends vehicle emission standards

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trump-administration-set-revoke-basis-us-climate-regulat...
2•pseudolus•36m ago•0 comments

Closed –> Traced –> Closed: Did a Tech Giant Panic over an HTTP/2 200 OK Bypass?

1•CorporationHit•38m ago•0 comments

OpenClaw Hub: A Platform for Managing OpenClaw Skills

https://openclawskill.net
1•cherry19870330•39m ago•2 comments

Show HN: A macOS App to shrink files natively

https://tinyfast.app
2•melvinzammit•39m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•9mo ago

Comments

thechao•9mo 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•9mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•9mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•9mo 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•9mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•9mo 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•9mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•9mo 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_•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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/