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Ant: Can unprecedented revenue growth outrun irresponsibly large investment

https://leonlins.com/writing/anthropic_ipo
1•avoidboringppl•1m ago•0 comments

Polybius – The Video Game That Doesn't Exist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7X6Yeydgyg
1•CharlesW•4m ago•0 comments

Did Anthropic value itself at $1.2T in August?

https://www.ft.com/content/60fb40ed-f1bf-416e-982b-1b9b80582ab4
2•Betelbuddy•4m ago•1 comments

Why Design in the 1980s Looked So Weird and Why It's Relevant Today [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zVQ_SibpyM
1•ViktorRay•4m ago•0 comments

RPG Mapper – Mapping Software for Classic RPGs and Tabletop Adventures

https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=3077
1•erickhill•5m ago•0 comments

Shrinking NixOS RAM footprint and resource requirements to the bare minimum

https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/11543/shrinking-nixos-ram-footprint-and-resource-requirements...
1•birdculture•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bowerbird – Open-source NotebookLM for any model, with checked quotes

https://github.com/jolovicdev/bowerbird
1•yolovich•6m ago•0 comments

Parts of Northwestern Ontario Moving to Permanent Daylight Saving Time

https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1008130/ontario-moving-to-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-pa...
1•geox•8m ago•0 comments

Get ready for a new database entering the market in 2027

1•RandomFNP•9m ago•0 comments

There will always be someone faster, cheaper, and better

http://www.chrbutler.com/faster-cheaper-better
3•delaugust•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Jumble, a Word Game

https://www.quizingo.app/jumble
1•coder97•9m ago•0 comments

Talking Hardware with Palmer Luckey

https://a16zfrontier.substack.com/p/talking-hardware-with-palmer-luckey
1•gmays•11m ago•0 comments

EraseAI Firewall – stop secrets and PII before they reach ChatGPT

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/eraseai-firewall-block-se/hckhbadbpkihjpooeljdocgidelcampp
1•vantwardsolutio•12m ago•0 comments

Shittyscreenshare.com – Open Standards for better video quality

https://shittyscreenshare.com/
1•Sean-Der•13m ago•1 comments

'Everest: The Other Side': The Triumph and Tragedy of Extreme Mountaineering

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/everest-the-other-side-review-documentary-...
1•diogenes_atx•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Pmstream, Milkdrop visualizations in the terminal (also in kew player)

https://github.com/ravachol/pmstream
1•ravachol•13m ago•0 comments

AI as Social Technology

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-social-technology
2•justin_•21m ago•0 comments

Brian May, Queen guitarist and Astrophysicist

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-10-30/brian-may-queen-guitarist-and-astrophysicist-t...
2•Betelbuddy•21m ago•0 comments

Police chief unplugs Flock cameras after company ignores contract cancellation

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/police-chief-physically-unplugs-flock-cameras...
3•entryleveljobsc•21m ago•0 comments

Lenovo's 'encrypted' fingerprint USB is just an unencrypted SD card in a case

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1xl2pr3/lenovos_encrypted_fingerprint_usb_drive_is_j...
9•entryleveljobsc•23m ago•1 comments

Show HN: ElmTUI. Declarative terminal user interface framework in Common Lisp

https://github.com/fkr-0/elmtui
1•fkr•23m ago•0 comments

3D Printing Graphene Ink: Creating Electronic and Biomedical Structures (2016)

https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/technical-documents/technical-article/materials-science-and-en...
1•josh-wrale•25m ago•0 comments

.hey .human: .let .the .official .agent .race .for .the .future .internet .get

https://www.netcraft.com/blog/what-new-tld-applications-reveal-icann
2•jruohonen•26m ago•0 comments

GitHub Agentic Workflows generally available

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-10-28-github-agentic-workflows-generally-available/
1•arbayi•27m ago•0 comments

Nonpartisan Voter Guide to Every House and Senate Race

https://wheretheystand.vote
1•zaidbourini•29m ago•0 comments

Pi Is the Last Harness

https://destiner.io/blog/post/pi-is-the-last-harness/
2•Destiner•30m ago•0 comments

Opt out of AI use at work based on religious freedoms law

https://fortune.com/2026/10/30/kentucky-administrator-ai-religious-exemption-title-vii-humanism/
6•sheeshkebab•33m ago•0 comments

Terence Tao on how AI math solutions miss the point

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/terence-tao-ai-math-solutions/
2•digital55•35m ago•0 comments

Sadiq Khan calls for cap on numbers of robotaxis on London streets

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/nov/01/sadiq-khan-calls-cap-numbers-robotaxis-london-...
1•edward•35m ago•0 comments

Same model, different agent: 17 points apart on 21 MCP servers

https://m3.sineframe.com/blog/same-model-different-agent
2•stag•35m ago•1 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