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Omarchy Exploit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgNvD9DaZxY
1•krehwell•2m ago•0 comments

Speculative Programmatic Tool Calling

https://alexzhang13.github.io/blog/2026/spec-ptc/
2•iamwil•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ShrinkRay – HandBrake for TinyML

https://github.com/TarulAhsan/ShrinkRay
1•EmonAhsan•7m ago•0 comments

Five spending categories absorbed 88% of the US middle fifth's raise (2013-2023)

https://efficientdollar.com/blog/leftover-money-after-essentials/
1•lundj•10m ago•0 comments

LLMPanel Deploy vLLM to RunPod or Vast.ai Without Kubernetes

https://llmpanel.io
1•SquidJack•13m ago•0 comments

Silence Is a Feature

https://aradar.top/posts/silence-is-a-feature/
1•aradar46•13m ago•0 comments

Beyond China's humanoid robots, a quieter machine revolution is unfolding

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m4zn1q6mo
2•nairteashop•14m ago•0 comments

National Police Union Blasts Flock CEO for Turning Against Police

https://ipvm.com/reports/union-who-flock
1•jhonovich•17m ago•0 comments

Artificial Intelligence Market (2026 – 2033)

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-ai-market
1•Rutujad•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Tmtail – Multi-log tail with coloring, search, and history via tmux

https://github.com/themadsens/tmtail
1•themadsens•22m ago•0 comments

Surge in AI-assisted complaints putting extra strain on councils and schools

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2dk6wzjw23o
2•tomwphillips•22m ago•0 comments

Avery–MacLeod–McCarty Experiment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery%E2%80%93MacLeod%E2%80%93McCarty_experiment
1•num42•23m ago•0 comments

Ukraine hands Britain 'goldmine' of secret battlefield intelligence

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ukraine-britain-battlefield-intelligence-russia-s...
2•Teever•26m ago•0 comments

Moral Realism

https://philosophy.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/122/2014/07/Moral-Realism.pdf
1•andsoitis•26m ago•0 comments

I made HACKER AI for you vibecoded app

https://www.netherite.uz
1•apexxx•26m ago•0 comments

Reality Realism

https://philarchive.org/archive/CARRRK
1•andsoitis•27m ago•0 comments

Singapure Unveils Biological Data Center Prototype

https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/news/nus-medicine-dayone-and-cortical-labs-unveil-biological-data-cen...
1•vasco•27m ago•0 comments

Logging in Was Never Supposed to Be This Complicated

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/08/password-manager-login-difficulty/688396/
2•littlexsparkee•37m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Can token caching be a business idea?

1•sourav_biswas•46m ago•2 comments

The .NET One Person Framework

https://github.com/pal-tamas/rask
1•pal-tamas•46m ago•0 comments

Share your website and I'll make you a shareable interactive demo

https://www.mirenta.ai/
1•alexanderbz•48m ago•1 comments

Free AND open source Minecraft LAUNCHER WITH FETURES

1•sozip•51m ago•0 comments

MIDI-hook – Run a shell command when a MIDI keyboard key is pressed

https://github.com/skorotkiewicz/midi-hook
1•modinfo•52m ago•0 comments

Simulating cosmic rays to lobotomize LLMs

https://spock.is/writing/simulating-cosmic-rays-to-lobotomize-llms
1•xiaoyu2006•52m ago•0 comments

The Pavlov Scale of Phone Addiction

https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/pavlov-scale-phone-addiction
1•prdgl_daughter•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: When AI Decides What Matters

https://jasondoyle.ie/whitepapers/when-ai-decides-what-matters/
2•thepsychguy•56m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Everyone tries to be different. I made the 100% (unique) clone

https://imviral.lol
1•alexcloudstar•58m ago•0 comments

Shein Came Crashing Down

https://economist.com/business/2026/08/24/how-shein-came-crashing-down
3•andsoitis•59m ago•0 comments

Made a directory for finding Christian tools, services, and apps

https://christianpicks.com
1•pdgrg•1h ago•0 comments

Not a natural calamity: it is being done to us knowingly

https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2026/aug/24/this-is-not-a-natural-calamity-it-is-being-don...
6•speckx•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