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Minoxidil toxicosis in cats and dogs: A scoping review and call to action

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019096222500595X
1•felineflock•2m ago•0 comments

Character.ai Hosts Jeffrey Epstein Island Roleplay RPG Scenarios

https://www.gadgetreview.com/character-ai-hosts-jeffrey-epstein-island-roleplay-rpg-scenarios
1•gnabgib•2m ago•0 comments

Linking Smaller Haskell Binaries

https://brandon.si/code/linking-smaller-haskell-binaries/
1•PaulHoule•3m ago•0 comments

He Earns $1k a Job–and He's a Car Dealer's Worst Nightmare

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tomi-mikula-youtube-car-buying-negotiations-4a4c3d63
1•randycupertino•4m ago•1 comments

How many branches can your CPU predict?

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/03/18/how-many-branches-can-your-cpu-predict/
1•chmaynard•5m ago•0 comments

Fisher Traction – at-home spinal decompression devices for neck and back pain

https://www.fishertraction.com/
1•denseroll•5m ago•0 comments

Powell: Job creation is near zero

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/powell-job-creation-is-near-zero-202637723.html
2•AlexDragusin•6m ago•0 comments

Why I secretly rewrote my company's core infrastructure in my spare time

https://solc.uk/#p20260302
1•letaps_keys•7m ago•0 comments

Chainguard Is Now Protecting You from AI Agent Skills Gone Rogue

https://techstrong.ai/features/chainguard-is-now-protecting-you-from-ai-agent-skills-gone-rogue/
1•CrankyBear•7m ago•0 comments

Calcosmos

https://www.calcosmos.com/
1•anushkaams•7m ago•0 comments

Never let a good domain go to waste

https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/
1•blackdogie•9m ago•0 comments

Fighting Context Drift

https://github.com/dsadsadsadsadas/Trepan
1•slx44i•9m ago•0 comments

Aristotle Reasoning Agent

https://aristotle.harmonic.fun/
1•bananaflag•11m ago•1 comments

Microsoft weighs legal action over $50B Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal

https://www.ft.com/content/e814f4c3-4fb5-4e2e-90a6-470044436b39
2•markjgx•15m ago•0 comments

PondDB – Self-hosted agent memory database built on DuckDB

https://github.com/pond-db/pond-db
2•houtianlu•16m ago•0 comments

ORYN – local-first autonomous cybersecurity console, built in 7 days

https://github.com/alihassanassi/ORYN
1•alihassanassi•18m ago•0 comments

Ways to protect your money from potentially higher inflation and unemployment

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/18/business/consumer-interest-rates-inflation-unemployment-your-money
1•mooreds•21m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why is everyone on HN obsessed with Rust?

4•goldkey•21m ago•3 comments

2026, the Year of the Horse

https://www.carlyhasredhair.com/p/2026-the-year-of-the-horse
1•mooreds•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: WheresMyPermitSF – Self-Hosted SF Housing Permit Bottleneck Analyzer

https://wheresmypermitsf.candace.cloud/
1•kaashmonee•23m ago•0 comments

Why AI Tools Fail – and Where the Real Lever Is

https://dekodiert.de/en/articles/maschinenlesbarer-kontext
1•sdoering•24m ago•0 comments

CISA Urges Hardening After Cyberattack Against Stryker

https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/03/18/cisa-urges-endpoint-management-system-hardenin...
2•dboreham•24m ago•0 comments

French bulldog frenzy may be cooling in US, but dachshunds are riding high

https://apnews.com/article/popular-dog-breeds-dachshund-french-bulldog-d94ee9db8d56bcb29ccf39e855...
2•mooreds•25m ago•1 comments

Our new Windsurf pricing plans

https://windsurf.com/blog/windsurf-pricing-plans
1•qainsights•28m ago•0 comments

Fruity Loops

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FL_Studio
1•bigwheels•28m ago•0 comments

Shooting-Free Days Decline in Major U.S. Cities

https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/shooting-free-days-decline-major-u-s-cities-new-metric...
3•littlexsparkee•34m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?

4•general_reveal•35m ago•3 comments

Show HN: A Genetic algorithm that red-teams your copy with 100 LLM personas

https://crashtestcopy.com/
3•vignesh_warar•36m ago•0 comments

ServerGlance iOS app for real-time SSH server monitoring

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/serverglance-ssh-monitor/id6758614736
3•fatihkurt•36m ago•0 comments

The fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/18/tesla-cybertruck-crashes-battery-fires
2•abawany•38m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•10mo ago

Comments

thechao•10mo 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•10mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•10mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•10mo 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•10mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•10mo 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•10mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•10mo 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_•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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/