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The Great Zombification

https://www.thenewcritic.com/p/the-great-zombification
1•XzetaU8•48s ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a small repertoir of different computing systems

https://computers.tugdual.fr
1•tugdual•11m ago•0 comments

Trap Street

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
1•ivanjermakov•13m ago•0 comments

Why are some people mosquito magnets? Clues are emerging

https://phys.org/news/2026-05-people-mosquito-magnets-clues-emerging.html
1•jnord•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I made a screen recording app to make demos like an Apple commercial

https://shotglass.app
5•jakemanger•17m ago•1 comments

Satteri – High-Performance Markdown and MDX Processing for the JavaScript

https://github.com/bruits/satteri
2•todotask2•17m ago•0 comments

GitHub Launchpad Proposal

https://github.com/liamromanis101/Github_Strategic_Proposal-2026
3•lromanis•18m ago•0 comments

FaceTime Without the Internet [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b1XL91-q48
2•marklit•20m ago•0 comments

OpenAI, Microsoft and Friends Build a Better, More Scalable Ethernet

https://www.nextplatform.com/connect/2026/05/12/openai-microsoft-and-friends-build-a-better-more-...
3•rbanffy•22m ago•0 comments

Cuckooland – Tom Burgis on the abuse of power and influence (2024)

https://www.ft.com/content/b82c15dd-0c63-4657-a2e7-488ce30b8afc
3•robtherobber•25m ago•0 comments

Google's Android-powered laptops are called Googlebooks, and coming this year

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/googles-android-powered-laptops-are-called-googlebooks-an...
3•rbanffy•26m ago•0 comments

Hysteria: A QUIC-Based Proxy Designed to Resist Censorship

https://github.com/apernet/hysteria
4•steveharing1•28m ago•0 comments

Bun is being ported to Rust using Claude. Here's a code review using GPT

https://github.com/Swival/security-audits/blob/main/bun-rust/README.md
2•jedisct1•29m ago•0 comments

Alien

https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/
3•tosh•30m ago•0 comments

AllSkyKamera: A Citizen-Science Network for Global Night Sky Monitoring

https://allskykamera.space/index.php?lang=en
3•ptrsrtp•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Recursant, a mesh-based control plane for AI agents

https://github.com/ajensenwaud/recursant
2•hestefisk•33m ago•0 comments

OpenCL 3.1

https://www.khronos.org/blog/opencl-3.1-is-here
3•tosh•36m ago•0 comments

Valve snuck a Wilhelm scream Easter egg into the new Steam Controller [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw5Luf_7F8c
2•HelloUsername•38m ago•0 comments

Terence Tao: New mathematical workflows [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc2zt198U_U
1•energy123•41m ago•0 comments

Codex Computer Use

https://developers.openai.com/codex/app/computer-use
1•tr33house•41m ago•1 comments

AluminiumOS, by Google: Android Reimagined for the Desktop

https://aluminium-os.com/
9•brysonreece•45m ago•14 comments

Urlsify.com Made This Free to Use URL Shortener with Indepth Analytics

https://old.reddit.com/r/sideprojects/comments/1tabelm/finished_making_this_url_shortener_complet...
1•godlymod•46m ago•0 comments

Hantavirus Map

https://hantavirusmap.net/
1•leonvonblut•50m ago•0 comments

Wrote this for humans, now I use it as a prompt

https://x-x.codes/posts/supplementary-guide-to-code-reviews
1•alex_x•51m ago•1 comments

Sick of Ads on Free QR Generator

https://miqr.mx/
1•rubiocanino•53m ago•2 comments

Genera OS

https://wiki.c2.com/?GeneraOs
2•tosh•54m ago•0 comments

Leak reveals Google's Aluminium OS with a 16-minute video

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-aluminium-os-leak-3665979/
4•thunderbong•55m ago•0 comments

The Role of HubSpot in Driving Successful CRM Adoption in Africa

https://amdan.pro/the-role-of-hubspot-in-driving-successful-crm-adoption-in-africa/
1•amdanmerit•56m ago•0 comments

Tep: A Sinatra-flavoured framework that compiles to a native binary via Spinel

https://github.com/oripekelman/tep
1•futurecat•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Design posters showcasing your country's electrical grid

https://github.com/open-energy-transition/grid2poster
1•lyoncy•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/