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DiffusionBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Generative Diffusion Transformers

https://github.com/End2End-Diffusion/diffusion-bench
1•ilreb•2m ago•0 comments

Woman with Alzheimer's starts conversing again after taking psilocybin

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2531319-woman-with-alzheimers-starts-conversing-again-after-...
1•nazgul17•9m ago•0 comments

I Read the Palantir Manifesto

https://corbettreport.com/i-read-the-palantir-manifesto/
1•paulnpace•9m ago•0 comments

Find FA's in your local area

https://www.falists.co/
1•mattmerrick•11m ago•0 comments

UK tribunal gives go ahead for $4B lawsuit against Apple over iCloud services

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/uk-tribunal-gives-go-ahead-for-4-billion-lawsuit-again...
1•geoffbp•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Interactive and realistic water ripple physics

https://github.com/Whynotmetoo/water-ripples
1•carsonye•18m ago•0 comments

Design Kits for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27

https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=e2lxw9l1
2•soheilpro•23m ago•0 comments

China Minerals Threatens EU; AI Warfare Dominates Japan, WeChat

https://asiaai.fyi/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fasiaai.fyi%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost...
2•dweisinger•26m ago•0 comments

Fear in Four Dimensions

https://taylor.town/fear-4d
2•Curiositry•28m ago•0 comments

Heliodor: An RVA23-Compliant Multicore Out-of-Order RISC-V Core in Veryl

https://veryl-lang.org/blog/heliodor-rva23/
1•dalance•32m ago•0 comments

OpenJTD: Project to Reverse-Engineer Ichitaro Word Processor Files Used in Japan

https://github.com/KimEJ/OpenJTD
1•nogajun•36m ago•0 comments

Chinese supercomputer leapfrogs best US machines to be ranked fastest

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/24/china-supercomputer-world-fastest-top500-ranki...
5•jethronethro•42m ago•0 comments

Tech stocks slump as AI bubble fears loom

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/23/tech-stocks-ai-bubble
6•1vuio0pswjnm7•44m ago•0 comments

SpaceX raises $25B in debt sale less than two weeks after IPO

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/23/spacex-debt-bond-market-ipo.html
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•46m ago•1 comments

Arabian Sand Boa: Python interpreter with frontier intelligence conditional eval

https://github.com/hopafoot/arabian-sand-boa
2•hopafoot•49m ago•1 comments

The Part After Done

https://howstrangeitistobeanythingatall.com/post/2026-06-23-the-part-after-done
2•alanbotts•50m ago•0 comments

Purroute – An auto-detecting proxy router that translates between protocols

https://github.com/femboyisp/purroute
1•vxfemboy•51m ago•0 comments

The Fastest Python Struct?

https://www.crumpledpaper.tech/2026-06-21-python-struct-profiling/
2•JPHutchins•55m ago•0 comments

FDA drops enforcement against Whoop after it tweaks blood pressure feature

https://www.statnews.com/2026/06/23/fda-drops-enforcement-against-wearable-maker-whoop/
2•brandonb•55m ago•1 comments

China's LineShine Supercomputer Dethrones US' El Capitan

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/supercomputers/chinas-lineshine-supercomputer-dethrone...
5•yogthos•57m ago•0 comments

Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI

https://restofworld.org/2026/chinese-universities-drop-humanities-ai/
6•higginsniggins•1h ago•0 comments

UN chief urges AI companies to 'come clean' about the pollution they generate

https://www.fastcompany.com/91563535/un-chief-urges-ai-companies-come-clean-about-pollution-create
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago•0 comments

SpaceX Has Successful Starfall Demo

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2026/06/spacex-has-successful-starfall-demo.html
5•bookmtn•1h ago•0 comments

War by Other Means

https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/war-by-other-means
4•jger15•1h ago•0 comments

Eli Lilly Approved Obesity Drug for Mystery 79-Year-Old Patient

https://newrepublic.com/post/212206/eli-lilly-obesity-drug-79-year-old-patient-trump-health
12•randycupertino•1h ago•1 comments

Abyssguard

https://www.abyssguard.app/
3•Luci_Star•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Reachpad – open-source .md sharing platform for companies and agents

https://github.com/las7/reach
1•sakuraiben•1h ago•0 comments

How to Passive-Aggressively Shame People Who Use LLMs Selfishly

https://joshmoody.org/blog/selfish-ai/
23•joshmoody24•1h ago•17 comments

Vypl a Python REPL with Vim workflows and commands

https://github.com/HoraDomu/Vypl
2•HoraDomu•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Daily ETF holdings for 2,200+ ETFs as one API

https://developer.stockfit.io/blog/daily-etf-holdings
2•areimann•1h ago•2 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