frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

HIV pandemic's origins located (2014)

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-10-03-hiv-pandemics-origins-located
1•thunderbong•51s ago•0 comments

Platform Engineering End-to-End

https://www.lucavall.in/blog/platform-engineering-end-to-end
1•ingve•4m ago•0 comments

The complete Claude Code course for engineers and technical founders

https://code-agents.ai
1•onder_ceylan•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Runs AI coding agents inside isolated Docker containers

https://github.com/marvincaspar/agent-sanbox
1•matt_callmann•8m ago•0 comments

Best Free Agentic AI Course in 2026 with Real Projects, and No-Code Learning

https://simplai.ai/simplai-university
1•shanmugarajsk•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mideo – Translate Video to MIDI

https://cafedelcadence.github.io
1•bbrwx•12m ago•0 comments

Building for the future: Cloudflare lays off 1,100 employees

https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/
1•pabs3•14m ago•0 comments

Nintendo confirms Switch 2 price rises, consoles now $500 in the US

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-confirms-switch-2-price-rises-consoles-now-500-...
1•01-_-•15m ago•0 comments

What Microsoft Executives Thought About OpenAI in 2018

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-executives-discuss-openai-sam-altman-2018/
1•01-_-•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Meeseeks Driven Development

https://github.com/lukehedger/meeseeks
1•levelout•17m ago•0 comments

Virtual private networks and the protection of children online

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_ATA(2026)782618
1•mvdwoord•22m ago•0 comments

60% of MD5 password hashes are crackable in under an hour

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/05/07/60-of-md5-password-hashes-are-crackable-in-under-...
1•signa11•23m ago•0 comments

The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle

https://www.wired.com/story/canvas-hack-shinyhunters-ransomware-instructure/
1•signa11•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I instructed AI to create tool to clean AI-generated text: undsh.com

https://undsh.com/
1•kkarpkkarp•27m ago•0 comments

I hate soldering existentially

https://user8.bearblog.dev/rant/
2•James72689•28m ago•0 comments

Token Coffee

https://testflight.apple.com/join/VHaxgb3B
1•Brrainz•28m ago•0 comments

AI is technology, not a feature

https://senkorasic.com/articles/ai-is-tech-not-feature
3•taubek•30m ago•0 comments

Hardware Memory Models

https://research.swtch.com/hwmm
1•jerrinot•31m ago•0 comments

Canvas Breach Disrupts Schools and Colleges Nationwide

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/05/canvas-breach-disrupts-schools-colleges-nationwide/
1•lschueller•33m ago•0 comments

Phel v0.36.0 – Lisp on PHP, now with numeric tower and first-class Vars

https://github.com/phel-lang/phel-lang/releases/tag/v0.36.0
1•Chemaclass•36m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: How are you handling QA being bottlenecked with more AI-generated PRs?

3•softneon•37m ago•1 comments

30x faster than Prometheus: How we rebuilt ES as a leading columnar datastore

https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/elasticsearch-columnar-metrics-engine-30x-faster-prometheus
3•yla92•42m ago•0 comments

The Download: the tech reshaping IVF and the rise of balcony solar

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/07/1136956/the-download-ivf-tech-balcony-solar/
1•joozio•45m ago•0 comments

ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

https://clojurescript.org/news/2026-05-07-release
2•Borkdude•50m ago•0 comments

Containers Aren't Just Linux Processes

https://labs.iximiuz.com/tutorials/oci-containers-explained
3•birdculture•51m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I'm building a tiny WordPress plugin on top of my open source software

1•darkhorse13•52m ago•0 comments

QBE – Compiler Back End

https://c9x.me/compile/
3•smartmic•54m ago•0 comments

Moodle – open-source Learning Management System

https://moodle.org/
1•10000truths•56m ago•0 comments

British reporter gets personal YouTube account blocked

https://twitter.com/edconwaysky/status/2052349717489537472
4•jarym•58m ago•1 comments

Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/en/2026/260508.html
3•razorbeamz•58m 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/