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Ask HN: How do you troubleshoot desktop Linux crashes/freezes?

1•Curiositry•1m ago•0 comments

Wyoming's 'Explosive Diarrhea' Cases Double, Linked to Travel Outside of U.S.

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/07/13/wyomings-explosive-diarrhea-cases-double-linked-to-travel...
1•Bender•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nihonpost – I parsed Japan Post's KEN_ALL.CSV so you don't have to

https://github.com/Thiya11/nihonpost
2•kitsunechaos•7m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: AI Agent and harness containerization/security recommendations

1•dv35z•7m ago•0 comments

Why 'Asia's cleanest village' bans tourists on Sundays

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260625-why-asias-cleanest-village-bans-tourists-on-sundays
1•gmays•7m ago•0 comments

Trump Shrinks Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2026/07/13/president-trump-shrinks-bears-ears/
1•almog•8m ago•0 comments

Four awful new privacy-eroding features from Meta in a month

https://manualdousuario.net/en/meta-instagram-ai-facial-recognition/
3•rpgbr•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a one-prompt hackathon platform, free entry, sponsored prizes

https://1shotchallenge.ai
3•lucasmartinic•12m ago•0 comments

" We care deeply about your privacy and respect customer choice"

https://twitter.com/spacexai/status/2076692402442846289
1•telotortium•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A reproducible harness for catching agent-eval cheating

https://github.com/sebuzdugan/agent-eval-harness
1•sebuzdugan•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Raftig – Plant Breeding X Naval Combat Roguelike

https://raftig.seldoncortex.com/
1•EstanislaoStan•15m ago•0 comments

Karios AI Agent Carzy

https://github.com/adnqcr7-code/kairosv2
1•kairos_agent•22m ago•0 comments

Claude is just Mr. Meeseeks

https://github.com/thephw/claude-meseeks
2•patrickwiseman•23m ago•0 comments

Soofi – Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models

https://www.soofi.info/
1•karussell•23m ago•1 comments

NYC Launches "Public Interest Technology (Pit) Crew" to Build Digital Solutions

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/mayor-mamdani-launches--public-interest-technology...
1•ChrisArchitect•25m ago•1 comments

How does an LLM feel about you?

https://sackfield.substack.com/p/how-does-an-llm-feel-about-you
1•sackfield•26m ago•0 comments

Economists are coming around to the idea that AI really is killing jobs

https://qz.com/economists-ai-job-displacement-industrial-revolution-statement-071326
2•pseudolus•28m ago•1 comments

The Estranged Worlds of J. G. Ballard

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jg-ballard-illuminated-man-christopher-priest-nina-allan/
1•Caiero•29m ago•0 comments

A Large-Scale Empirical Study of AI-Generated Code in Real-World Repositories

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27130
1•softwaredoug•30m ago•0 comments

$65K to work at Anthropic? Debate ensues amid IPO wave

https://missionlocal.org/2026/07/anthropic-sf-affordability-ipo-housing-evictions-rent/
2•gcheong•30m ago•0 comments

Primate 0.40: Route pages, store enums, async schemas and events

https://primate.run/blog/primate-040
4•terrablue•30m ago•0 comments

DOOMQL – what if SQLite were the game engine?

https://github.com/petergpt/doomql
1•simonw•31m ago•1 comments

SHOW HN: Every Repo as a Unique Galaxy

https://gitgalaxy.io/
1•squid-protocol•33m ago•1 comments

Frankie: AI analyst you can email to get work done

https://getcompound.ai/blog/introducing-frankie
1•somerandomness•36m ago•0 comments

The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/business/ai-white-collar-jobs.html
1•bookofjoe•37m ago•1 comments

MindRoom: AI agents that live in Matrix and work everywhere

https://www.nijho.lt/post/mindroom/
1•AdamGibbins•38m ago•0 comments

The case of the 500-mile email (2002)

https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
1•downbad_•40m ago•1 comments

Pentagon suspends CMMC phase two requirements, launches review of program

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/cybersecurity/2026/07/pentagon-suspends-cmmc-phase-two-requirement...
2•petethomas•40m ago•0 comments

MIT's New Method Flags AI Models Trained on CASM Without Generating It

https://insideai.news/news/ai-safety/mits-new-method-flags-ai-models-trained-on-child-abuse-image...
1•sdoering•42m ago•0 comments

A Study of Microsoft's Early 2026 Rollout of Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01418
3•softwaredoug•43m 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