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Clawtoberfest Contribute · Iterate · Molt

https://nesbitt.io/clawtoberfest/
1•lyoncy•2m ago•0 comments

Monty Hall Problem Simulation

https://nodesocket.github.io/monty-hall-problem-simulation/
1•nodesocket•2m ago•0 comments

Can someone explain this information theory puzzle paper in simple terms?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394259368_Exploring_Reinforcement_Learning_and_Informati...
1•JustSittingHere•4m ago•0 comments

Multi-Tenancy in Spring Boot: A Practical Guide

https://anomitra.me/blog/multi-tenancy-in-spring-boot-a-practical-guide/
1•shadeslayer_•5m ago•0 comments

Americans Are Falling Behind on Their $1.25T Credit-Card Bill

https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/credit/us-credit-card-debt-af5c7c77
3•tcp_handshaker•6m ago•0 comments

Vidai – AI Gateway Written in Rust Community Edition Released

https://vidai.uk/community/
1•nagug•8m ago•0 comments

Decades of Effort Restore Steelhead and Salmon Passage on Alameda Creek

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/decades-effort-restore-steelhead-and-salmon-passage-...
3•rawgabbit•10m ago•0 comments

La Fabbrica Del Terrore

https://drfmappa.substack.com/p/la-fabbrica-del-terrore
1•drpsymappa•13m ago•0 comments

ChatPaper: Explore and AI Chat with the Academic Papers

https://chatpaper.com
1•geox•15m ago•0 comments

Rothko for your current weather conditions

https://rothko.joonas.wtf/
8•jxmorris12•16m ago•1 comments

Why German trains are never on time anymore

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/05/29/why-german-trains-are-never-on-time-an...
3•rawgabbit•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Heypi – Like OpenClaw but for Your Team (Slack, Discord, etc.)

https://github.com/hunvreus/heypi
1•hunvreus•17m ago•0 comments

Reproducible Infrastructure and Nix

https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/open-source-ready/ep-38-reproducible-infrastructure-wit...
1•jmartens•19m ago•0 comments

ARM Open Sources AI-Powered Security Code Review

https://github.com/arm/metis
1•ARob109•19m ago•0 comments

What is to be done about MGLRU?

https://lwn.net/Articles/1072866/
2•infinet•19m ago•0 comments

DDS Vibe Academy – 47 free AI coding masterclasses, built by AI agents

https://ddsboston.com/pages/dds-vibe-academy
1•robert_dds•19m ago•0 comments

GNUtrition 0.33.0rc4

https://savannah.gnu.org/news/?id=10896
2•amcclure•19m ago•0 comments

DOE's Lockheed Martin nuclear-weapons M&O contract: $48B cumulative since 1993

https://www.usaspending.gov/award/27001/
2•thebuildout•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Heirlooms – pass your legacy to family after stop breathing

1•jojwong•21m ago•3 comments

Plume – Sensible HTTP Security Headers for Gleam Web Servers, Inspired by Helmet

https://github.com/scott-ray-wilson/plume
1•TheWiggles•22m ago•0 comments

How to make Unreal's Message Log 100 times faster

https://larstofus.com/2026/05/28/how-to-make-unreals-message-log-100-times-faster/
1•caminanteblanco•22m ago•0 comments

AI will be used to estimate age of asylum seekers from next year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3pe36qe7ro
6•vylorn•24m ago•0 comments

Hybrid local and cloud LLM stack for regulated financial document processing?

2•rem_cam•25m ago•1 comments

Heirloom.app – Keep important information in a encrypted place

1•jojwong•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Simple news aggregator with source bias meters

https://unbiasthenews.com
2•sammy0910•26m ago•0 comments

Ferrari bungled the design of its first EV

https://www.theverge.com/transportation/939226/ferrari-luce-design-terrible-ev-jony-ive-apple
2•Brajeshwar•27m ago•0 comments

Good to Know: Exiting an international organization

https://goodauthority.org/news/good-to-know-exiting-an-international-organization/
1•jruohonen•27m ago•0 comments

International grads three times more likely to find work in Germany

https://thepienews.com/international-grads-three-times-more-likely-to-find-work-in-germany/
1•rustoo•27m ago•1 comments

Study reveals brain circuit that keeps memories from getting mixed up

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/study-reveals-brain-circuit-keeps-memories-getting-mixed-up
2•bryanrasmussen•27m ago•0 comments

Ingesting 1Gbps of logs into ClickHouse for $180/month

https://www.opendata.dev/blog/ingesting-1gbps-logs-to-clickhouse/
5•apurvamehta•28m 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