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OpenAI, the US government, and Persona built an identity surveillance machine

https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/
1•rzk•2m ago•0 comments

Google image URLs allow arbitrary upscaling via size parameter

1•tavro•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Equidistance – find a meeting spot that's equally painful for everyone

https://equidistance.io/
1•lambfruit•4m ago•0 comments

12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI's work culture is a warning

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/feb/17/ai-startups-work-culture-san-fr...
1•aanet•4m ago•1 comments

Show HN: I Made a Programming Language with Python Syntax, zero-copy and C-Speed

https://github.com/CrimsonDemon567PC/Mantis
1•CrimsonDemon567•7m ago•0 comments

One guy accidentally hacked all a company's robot vacuums

https://www.androidauthority.com/robot-vacuum-hack-3641615/
1•chha•7m ago•0 comments

Seedance 2.0 – Direct AI Videos Like a Filmmaker

https://v2seedance.top
1•namewyf•8m ago•0 comments

Unitree Robotics demostration during the Chinese New Year Gala is incredible [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R40IDdAkRZM
1•piquadrat•9m ago•0 comments

European Parliament bars lawmakers from using AI tools

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/17/european_parliament_bars_lawmakers_from/
2•_____k•12m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How do you get traction of a free tool

1•TealMyEal•13m ago•1 comments

Runtime Mipmap Generation

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/02/runtime-mipmap-generation/
2•ingve•14m ago•0 comments

Triton Language

http://ternarysearch.blogspot.com/2026/02/triton-language.html
1•paladin314159•24m ago•0 comments

Book2Course V2 – Turn any PDF textbook into an interactive AI course

https://www.book2course.org/
1•syukursyakir•28m ago•2 comments

Show HN: Galopen – Auto-opens Zoom/Meet links from your calendar

https://galopen.kkweb.io
1•piro0919•29m ago•0 comments

Kung Fu Robots Deliver 'Knockout' Performance at Chinese New Year Gala [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVX6vq0RSnY
2•KolmogorovComp•29m ago•0 comments

Open-source game engine Godot is drowning in 'AI slop' code contributions

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-engine-godot-is-drowning-in-ai-slop-c...
4•wwalexander•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Grok Spicy – Free AI Prompts for Text to Spicy Image and Video

https://grokprompts.app/
1•Yreminder•30m ago•0 comments

TaskForge – auditable, secure, framework for OpenClaw

https://github.com/romanklis/openclaw-contained
1•roman_klis•31m ago•2 comments

Autonomous Gold Farming: 8 Repos, 3 Languages, Zero Human Intervention

https://marius-anderie.com/blog/autonomous-gold-farming-architecture
2•moccajoghurt•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Goxe v1.3.6 – Faster processing with zero-copy byte slices

1•nxus_dev•37m ago•0 comments

Kubernetes CSI Driver for TrueNAS Scale

https://github.com/fenio/tns-csi
1•fenio•43m ago•0 comments

Build an MCP server with Laravel (and use it to publish this post)

https://thunk.dev/posts/build-mcp-server-with-laravel
1•deekdeek•43m ago•1 comments

American Kids Uses to Eat Everything

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/02/picky-american-kids-food/685956/
1•JumpCrisscross•45m ago•2 comments

'Scandalous and unacceptable': readers on new UK entry rules for dual nationals

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/17/readers-uk-entry-new-rules-dual-nationals-citize...
2•prmph•49m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Banana Pro AI – a single web UI for text/image → image and short video

https://banana-pro.ai/
1•xuyanmei•50m ago•0 comments

Android 17's lock-free MessageQueue

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/02/under-hood-android-17s-lock-free.html
2•ingve•50m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Compare Prices with SupplyFLare AI

https://www.supplyflare.com/
1•invar1ant•51m ago•0 comments

New version of DOOM on SNES with the help of RP2350

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/play-a-new-version-of-doom-on-snes-with-the-help-of-rp2350/
1•tosh•52m ago•0 comments

Repeating the prompt increases non-reasoning LLM Perf

https://twitter.com/aakashgupta/status/2023998053737541636
1•MrBuddyCasino•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: InStudio – Free Instagram toolkit with 10 creator tools

https://instudio.artboards.in//
1•sidduex•58m 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/