frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Show HN: Separating work and play in Claude Code

https://github.com/diranged/claude-profile
1•diranged•1m ago•0 comments

Goldman Sachs to laid-off tech workers: take time, earnings loss to find new job

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/goldman-sachs-blunt-warning-to-laid-off-tech-workers-it-will-take-...
1•pseudolus•1m ago•0 comments

NY Yankees' torpedo bat is the same as regular bat

https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2026/04/02/science-confirms-torpedo-bat-works-as-well-as-regul...
1•geox•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Knowledge Bases for AI/Human Sharing

https://akuna.software/introduction
1•smissingham•1m ago•0 comments

High AI judgment consistency does not mean high reasoning quality (preprint)

https://zenodo.org/records/19446064
1•h_hasegawa•5m ago•0 comments

Hello World

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260404.html
1•beatthatflight•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Where Is Artemis? Realtime open source 3D tracker for Artemis 2 mission

https://where-is-artemis.com
1•mareko•6m ago•0 comments

OpenAI's vision for the AI economy: public wealth funds, robot taxes, and more

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/06/openais-vision-for-the-ai-economy-public-wealth-funds-robot-tax...
1•evo_9•9m ago•0 comments

Factory Makes the Most Expensive Stuff [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjp3WC8Unj8
1•chilipepperhott•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Physical constants from 2 integers – MIT, 1225 tests, falsifiable

https://bpr.thestardrive.com
2•iq19zero•12m ago•0 comments

Sourcehut disrupted due to DDoS attack

https://status.sr.ht/issues/2026-04-06-ddos-attack/
1•0xsn3k•12m ago•0 comments

I use Pollinations as a lightweight LLM back end (faster than Hugging Face)

https://pollinations.ai
2•volatilityfund•15m ago•0 comments

RAPP Brainstem

https://kody-w.github.io/RAR/virtual-brainstem.html
1•bothangles•16m ago•0 comments

jq for Forensics

https://righteousit.com/2026/04/06/jq-for-forensics/
1•indigodaddy•16m ago•0 comments

3x faster project loads with the origin private file system

https://barndoors.lumafield.com/3x-faster-project-loads-with-the-origin-private-file-system/
1•noahteuscher•16m ago•0 comments

Audicin Wants to Fix Your Stress with Sound

https://www.siliconsnark.com/audicin-wants-to-fix-your-stress-with-sound-the-science-is-airtight/
2•SaaSasaurus•20m ago•1 comments

Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems

https://etd.gsfc.nasa.gov/our-work/lcrns/
3•mooreds•26m ago•0 comments

AI-Displaced Workers Could Face Long Setbacks, Report Finds

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/ai-displaced-workers-could-face-long-setbacks-report-finds-57ef1356
3•JumpCrisscross•27m ago•0 comments

Patch Claude Code system prompt to fix laziness

https://gist.github.com/roman01la/483d1db15043018096ac3babf5688881
1•murkt•30m ago•0 comments

How Do You Find an Illegal Image Without Looking at It?

https://mahmoud-salem.net/the-invisible-shield
1•danso•30m ago•0 comments

Claude Code limits are starting to feel like a psychological trick

1•trinsic2•31m ago•1 comments

I Deploy Apps to My Homelab (A Love Story in 9 Acts)

https://blog.laurentcharignon.com/post/2025-12-14-homelab-deployment-flow/
3•swq115•32m ago•0 comments

Exploding primordial black holes might have reshaped the early universe

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-primordial-black-holes-reshaped-early.html
1•cpncrunch•33m ago•0 comments

Open-source sandboxes to run AI code, browser agents and computer-use

https://github.com/CelestoAI/smolVM
2•theaniketmaurya•35m ago•0 comments

Inspired by gstack: I stopped prompting Claude and gave it job titles instead

https://github.com/tonone-ai/tonone
1•thisisfatih•39m ago•1 comments

After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2025/06/after-20-years-i-turned-off-google-adsense-for-my-w...
12•datadrivenangel•41m ago•1 comments

Neuro-symbolic AI breakthrough cuts energy use by 100x while boosting accuracy

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260405003952.htm
2•teleforce•43m ago•0 comments

US/CA EMP E1-E2-E3 surge suppression devices with proper lab results doc

https://www.empshield.com/
1•burnt-resistor•43m ago•1 comments

Show HN: FieldLedgr – Free field service software for tradespeople

https://www.fieldledgr.com/
1•onenomad•44m ago•0 comments

An Inside Look at OpenAI and Anthropic's Finances Ahead of Their IPOs

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-anthropic-ipo-finances-04b3cfb9
1•doener•45m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•11mo ago

Comments

thechao•11mo 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•11mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•11mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.

thechao•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•11mo 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•11mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•11mo 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•11mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•11mo 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_•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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/