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Show HN: Inference Cooperative, user-governed AI

https://inference.coop/
1•ntnsndr•9m ago•0 comments

CowAgent – Open-Source Super AI Assistant

https://cowagent.ai/en/
1•ankitg12•9m ago•0 comments

The Anger Machine (Joan Kirner Social Justice Oration 2026)

https://www.andrewleigh.com/speech_the_anger_machine_rebuilding_community_in_the_age_of_outrage_2...
1•femto•13m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Web Bot Auth SDK and SSH Utilty

https://messh.io
1•malviyamukul•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CallFlow – VS Code REST client that also captures your terminal's HTTP

https://smallhours.works/callflow/
1•arexey•19m ago•0 comments

Ruliobiology and the Theoretical Foundations of Biological Form

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/10/endless-forms-most-beautiful-and-most-wonderful-rulio...
1•alok-g•23m ago•0 comments

Black October

https://mili.dev/writing/black-october/
2•dannygreer•25m ago•0 comments

Build your coding orchestrator from scratch part 1

https://wiilearn.substack.com/p/spurcode-build-your-coding-archestrator
1•mf_kevintruong•28m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How do people self host email and maintain deliverability?

1•smithbob•29m ago•1 comments

EU Member States approve "digital expropriation" for AI companies

https://noyb.eu/en/ai-eu-member-states-approve-digital-expropriation-europeans-ai-companies
2•HotGarbage•31m ago•0 comments

Agent skill for creating isometric illustrations

https://github.com/wheresryan22/anatomy
1•ankitg12•37m ago•0 comments

Meta says if its AI makes a mistake, it will legally be the customer's fault

https://www.cio.com/article/4237395/metas-new-enterprise-contract-says-if-its-ai-makes-a-mistake-...
5•wyclif•41m ago•2 comments

Modular MAX 26.7 open on October 22 2026

https://explainx.ai/blog/modular-max-source-available-26-7-graph-compiler-runtime-max-license-cla...
1•noobplus•47m ago•0 comments

Tabletop Whale is an original science illustration blog

https://tabletopwhale.com
3•Levitating•50m ago•0 comments

Takeda Hideo credits Ronald Searle, not Yakuza, for his absurdist art

https://intojapanwaraku.com/culture/245517/
2•oliculipolicula•57m ago•0 comments

How Block Blast harvests its players for ad money

https://ayoships.com/breakdowns/block-blast
2•motionlessveloc•58m ago•0 comments

OpenAI disables internet access during model training

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/10/23/openai-disables-internet-access-during-model-tra...
1•hologramofham•1h ago•2 comments

Apple Security Research Device

https://security.apple.com/research-device/
2•neom•1h ago•0 comments

Anthropic employee tells students their careers may not exist by graduation

https://twitter.com/cheaf25master/status/2113261574194659368
5•entryleveljobsc•1h ago•1 comments

Google changes privacy policy so Gmail, Photos could fuel targeted ads

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/google-quietly-changes-privacy-policy-so-your-gmail-and-pho...
2•entryleveljobsc•1h ago•1 comments

Security incident: Hostwinds client area offline

https://status.hostwinds.com/
2•debo_•1h ago•1 comments

Half‑Life: Alyx on Apple Vision Pro

https://glovebox.vision/
2•bryan0•1h ago•0 comments

HTX's iPhone Duo Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1qc29t04GI
1•skogstokig•1h ago•0 comments

Max is now source available and open to everyone

https://www.modular.com/blog/max-license
1•nickmain•1h ago•0 comments

"Interesting hidden file on NVR"

https://www.reddit.com/r/reolinkcam/s/QIovKvK0JI
1•hentrep•1h ago•0 comments

Alzheimer's breakthrough: 2 hrs of sleep restored without clearing brain plaques

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261018084421.htm
36•amichail•1h ago•5 comments

LeTrain v1.0.0-beta.7 is out

https://github.com/antoniovazquezaraujo/LeTrain
1•avaraujo•1h ago•0 comments

The Emperor's New Clothes – Edward Snowden (2026) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMG6aRZhIGE
1•xeonmc•1h ago•0 comments

Afterfeed: A tool to view all your social media backups

https://github.com/rebeccathedev/afterfeed/
1•RebeccaTheDev•1h ago•0 comments

DeepSeek Just Shook the AI Industry Again [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX6QdIYVSgY
1•Bender•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