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Cangjie, Huawei's new language for HarmonyOS NEXT

https://cangjie-lang.cn/en/docs?url=%2F0.53.13%2Fuser_manual%2Fsource_en%2Ffirst_understanding%2F...
1•pjmlp•1m ago•0 comments

Replacing a 3 GB SQLite db with a 10 MB FST (finite state transducer) binary

https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/replacing-a-3-gb-sqlite-database-with-a-7-mb-fst-finite-state-t...
1•hiAndrewQuinn•4m ago•0 comments

Facebook Reveals Its Smart Glasses' Nerve-Tracking Wristband Tech (2021)

https://www.slashgear.com/facebook-reveals-its-smart-glasses-nerve-tracking-wristband-tech-18664390/
1•Eridanus2•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Make your codebase agent ready

https://github.com/jaksa76/agentize
2•jaksa•9m ago•0 comments

Notetux++ – a native GTK3 Linux port of Notepad++, written in C11

https://github.com/notetux-plus-plus/notetux-plus-plus
1•andreacoi•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Akmon, a Rust AI coding agent for regulated engineering

https://github.com/radotsvetkov/akmon
1•radotsvetkov•12m ago•0 comments

Agent Readiness

https://jaksa.me/blog/2026-05-10-agent-readiness
1•jaksa•12m ago•0 comments

FB >> HTTPS://Www.facebook.com/EndoPeakGet/

https://www.facebook.com/EndoPeakGet
1•jarrykyll•15m ago•0 comments

"openai.com" was once the personal homepage of a guy named glenn

https://bsky.app/profile/annierau.bsky.social/post/3mkzrvrn44c2h
1•ndr42•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A Skill/MCP to access any open-source repo's code and docs

https://github.com/NitroRCr/gread
1•krytro•16m ago•0 comments

Fc, a lossless compressor for floating-point streams

https://github.com/xtellect/fc
1•enduku•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ASCII pixel art editor for the terminal

https://github.com/Mr-Robot-err-404/perkins
1•doctor_schultz•24m ago•1 comments

Main · Streamlit

https://yf-aiapp-2.streamlit.app
1•Yamaan_Faraz•30m ago•1 comments

A Tale of Two Charting Paradigms: Vega-Lite vs. R+ggplot2

https://rud.is/b/2016/02/28/a-tale-of-two-charting-paradigms-vega-lite-vs-rggplot2/
1•tosh•32m ago•0 comments

Application performance is a product requirement

https://www.echooff.dev/blog/application-performance-is-a-product-requirement
2•lo1tuma•38m ago•1 comments

A clock that maps Earth's 4.5B year history onto 12 hours. 1s=0.105Myears

https://eona.earth/
2•Eridanus2•45m ago•0 comments

Wideawake: Auto-detect agents and prevent your Mac from sleeping

https://github.com/shhivv/wideawake
1•shhivv•46m ago•0 comments

MCP is prompt engineering all over again

https://simpleobservability.com/blog/mcp-is-prompt-engineering
2•khazit•52m ago•0 comments

Think Linear Algebra

https://allendowney.github.io/ThinkLinearAlgebra/index.html
2•tamnd•57m ago•0 comments

0.12949 This is not randomness this is Determinism HST

https://github.com/sel8888/harmonic-shape-transform-2026-koncept
1•sel8888•1h ago•0 comments

The Era of the Tiger Mom Is Over. Enter the Beta Mom

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/beta-moms-influencers-tiktok-6cf99674
2•huhkerrf•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: WfmOxide a Rust parser (.wfm/.isf) with CLI and time axis

https://github.com/SGavrl/WfmOxide
1•Galo43•1h ago•0 comments

FreeBSD – A Lesson in Poor Defaults

https://vez.mrsk.me/freebsd-defaults
2•jruohonen•1h ago•1 comments

Bill Gates' Mosquito Factory in Colombia and Its Contribution to Health

https://aldianews.com/en/wellness/investigation/gates-mosquito-factory
2•thunderbong•1h ago•0 comments

Lego raises age limit to 100 for David Attenborough's birthday

https://www.instagram.com/p/DYCw8KIlaDJ/
3•Brajeshwar•1h ago•1 comments

AI Act Article 50 transparency rules. Heading for another cookie consent moment?

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/draft-guidelines-implementation-transparency-obl...
3•nilen•1h ago•0 comments

Simpler Agent Orchestration WTF

https://alokit.substack.com/p/the-number-nobody-runs-before-building
1•avikalp•1h ago•1 comments

Foo on You, Asparagirl! (2002)

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=112
2•jruohonen•1h ago•0 comments

A grid of live embedded links

https://hypergrid.systems/site/
3•keepamovin•1h ago•1 comments

Open-source Express.js dev panel for routes and request logs

https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-dev-panel
1•dvsxdev•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.
jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
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/