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IsChinaByEmoji – A way for browser to detect if a user is from China

https://github.com/yArna/isChinaUser/blob/main/src/isChinaByEmoji.ts
1•phantomathkg•2m ago•0 comments

Camox: The framework for agent-driven websites

https://github.com/camox-ai/camox
1•malgamves•5m ago•1 comments

TS Foundation Models

https://huggingface.co/NX-AI/TiRex-2
1•Robert_Linz•6m ago•1 comments

Read Build Ship #1 – Starting at $0, 0 users, 27 followers. Here's the plan

https://readbuildship.substack.com/p/read-build-ship-1-starting-at-0-0
1•babilonczyk•14m ago•0 comments

What is the Fourth Dimension? (1884)

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_is_the_Fourth_Dimension%3F
2•downbad_•20m ago•0 comments

Achieving Operational Excellence with AI

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/02/1140045/achieving-operational-excellence-with-ai/
1•joozio•23m ago•0 comments

The Expensive Fictions of Low-Level Programming Languages

https://stng.substack.com/p/the-expensive-fictions-of-low-level
1•rbanffy•25m ago•0 comments

The Day I Played Hide-and-Seek with an AI

https://medium.com/@gianlucabailo/the-day-i-played-hide-and-seek-with-an-ai-7a1ee189b5ff
1•dexmac221•26m ago•1 comments

Running 26B and 35B LLMs at Full Speed on €990 of Used Hardware – No Cloud

https://medium.com/ai-advances/running-26b-and-35b-llms-at-full-speed-on-990-of-used-hardware-no-...
2•dexmac221•26m ago•0 comments

Why Europe doesn't have a Tesla

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-europe-doesnt-have-a-tesla/
1•nielsole•28m ago•1 comments

Scaling PgBouncer Beyond a Single CPU Core

https://clickhouse.com/blog/pgbouncer-clickhouse-managed-postgres
1•saisrirampur•28m ago•0 comments

The Data Recipe for Teaching AI New Skills [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9F_VFfLTmM
2•aborovykh•36m ago•1 comments

Obsidian AI Setup – A production-ready onboarding skill for AI agents

https://github.com/anliberant/obsidian-ai-setup
1•javatuts•39m ago•0 comments

Google's AI buildout drove 37% increase in electricity use in 2025

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/googles-ai-buildout-drove-37-increase-in-electricity-use-in-2025/
4•mpfect•50m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Opplic AI growth employees for web agencies

https://opplic.com
1•sanketta•51m ago•0 comments

Nvidia B300 vs H200: GPU Specs and Performance Analysis

https://canopywave.com/blog/nvidia-b300-vs-h200-gpu-specs-performance-analysis
1•Timmyzzz•58m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Warmbly – Automate cold email outreach

https://github.com/warmbly/warmbly
1•meszmate•59m ago•0 comments

Meta: New Muse Spark update, and an Opus level Muse variant, are both on the way

https://twitter.com/i/status/2072858780816330833
1•euio757•1h ago•0 comments

Go (golang) Report Card project/service was archived on Jul 1, 2026

https://github.com/gojp/goreportcard/commit/176744ca23b40aa64c55b390161a3c78982e91b8
1•guessmyname•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

13•yehiaabdelm•1h ago•16 comments

After WhatsApp, Indian govt sends notices to Telegram, Signal over usernames

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/after-whatsapp-centre-notices-to-telegram-signal-today-...
1•shibaprasadb•1h ago•0 comments

Buy nothing, feel richer – South Korea dopamine apps

https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/lifestyle/these-brainhacking-services-let-you-buy-absolutely-n...
1•BaudouinVH•1h ago•0 comments

Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o
3•gmargari•1h ago•1 comments

Horsewood: I Tried It for 60 Days – My Honest ReviewS

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/healthcare/articles/horsewood-urgent-report-2026-horse-19110038...
1•gaxyjami•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What does a good day at work look like in the AI era?

2•akashwadhwani35•1h ago•1 comments

We Tested 40 CSS Tools for Performance and Learning Curve. Here's What Won

https://cssawwwards.com/blog/color-blindness-accessible-design-guide-2026
2•cssawwwards•1h ago•0 comments

Three Hundred Fifty-Four Fireworks per Second. Is it a good idea?

https://chadtopaz.com/essays/fireworks-per-second.html
1•mattoxic•1h ago•0 comments

Why Build vs. Buy is the wrong question

https://quii.dev/Why_%22Build_vs_Buy%22_is_the_Wrong_Question
1•quii•1h ago•0 comments

Understanding AI with Soumitra Dutta

https://soumitradutta.gt.tc
1•davidwilliam26•1h ago•0 comments

AI is punishing game developers [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59XdUJRzRxc
1•frag•1h 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