frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Command A+: Making sovereign agentic capabilities available to all

https://cohere.com/blog/command-a-plus
1•offbyone42•38s ago•0 comments

Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/splinter-cell-veteran-says-realistic-modern-lighting-has-screwed...
1•Tomte•1m ago•0 comments

Weight loss drugs could save airlines money on fuel as Americans slim down

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/weight-loss-drugs-glp1s-airlines-fuel-costs/
1•mattas•6m ago•1 comments

Everlane Finalizes Sale to Shein

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/style/shein-everlane-fast-fashion-sustainability.html
1•lxm•9m ago•0 comments

Robotaxis Aren't as Autonomous as They Seem

https://junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com/p/robotaxis-arent-as-autonomous-as
1•mattas•9m ago•0 comments

Kids are Graduating Without Being Able to Read [video][34 mins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcSApLcxpYc
1•Bender•12m ago•0 comments

Workspace Orchestration

https://hyperspeed.work
2•Asadsangabi•18m ago•0 comments

DeepSeek-V4 KV Cache Explained: Why 1M Context Uses Less VRAM

https://knightli.com/en/2026/05/18/deepseek-v4-kv-cache-compressed-attention/
1•vinhnx•21m ago•0 comments

Lynote Humanize Text – Open-source AI text humanization toolkit

https://github.com/lynote-ai/humanize-text
2•Danny6969•21m ago•0 comments

MetalBench – Benchmark for Apple Silicon's Metal Shading Lang

https://github.com/Lazarus-931/MetalBench
1•AlazarManakelew•28m ago•1 comments

Irb-autosuggestions: Fish-like autosuggestions for irb

https://github.com/unurgunite/irb-autosuggestions
1•thunderbong•29m ago•0 comments

GKN Aerospace – Hazard Zone Simulator - Garden Grove Chemical Tank Emergency

https://joevezzani.github.io/hazard-zone-sim/
1•palidanx•31m ago•0 comments

Sign in Nobody Wants AI Anymore [video][12 mins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQpZdCKgc6w
2•Bender•33m ago•0 comments

AI Has Taken over Open Source

https://socket.dev/blog/ai-has-taken-over-open-source
1•ChicknNuggt•38m ago•1 comments

How to Teach AI the "Taste"

2•Jasonwang123•41m ago•1 comments

Code-mapper: Free CLI tool to reduce LLM token usage on any codebases

https://github.com/damien220/code-mapper
3•Damien_220•42m ago•0 comments

The Mystical Meaning of 369 and Its Link to Nikola Tesla

https://www.mentalfloss.com/random-facts/meaning-number-369-nikola-tesla
2•anujbans•46m ago•0 comments

Important Update: Transitioning Bitnami Offerings on AWS

https://community.broadcom.com/tanzu/blogs/beltran-rueda-borrego/2026/05/20/important-update-tran...
1•zoptie•1h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Have you seen Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu,nice CGI, no storyline

1•eagle10ne•1h ago•0 comments

China Launches Manned Spaceship on Mission Orbit Tiangong Space Station [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk-IZODWUzM
1•Bender•1h ago•0 comments

D. Trump Jr. and Eric Trump Running Felony Fraud Scheme Prosecutable in New York

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/donald-trump-jr-and-eric-trump-are
18•JumpCrisscross•1h ago•3 comments

Geopolitical Technicals

1•almogodel•1h ago•1 comments

Global AI Diffusion: Q1 2026 Trends and Insights [pdf]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Microsoft-AI-Diffusion-Report...
3•gmays•1h ago•1 comments

Ravens Don't Follow Wolves, They Predict Their Patterns

https://scitechdaily.com/ravens-dont-follow-wolves-they-predict-them/
1•Gaishan•1h ago•0 comments

NymphCast – Libre Multicast DNS Media Streaming to Any Device

https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast
1•righthand•1h ago•1 comments

Freediving, Embodiment and Humanity – Joanna Rutkowska

https://tracesofhumanity.org/freediving-embodiment-and-humanity/
1•transpute•1h ago•0 comments

How Telescope Rancher Became the Hot New Job in Texas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN48vEqaQs8
2•colinbartlett•1h ago•0 comments

Ghost CMS SQL injection flaw exploited in large-scale ClickFix campaign

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ghost-cms-sql-injection-flaw-exploited-in-large-sc...
3•sbulaev•1h ago•0 comments

HN: Silau – AI detects employee burnout"

1•silau•2h ago•2 comments

Army runs secret wargames under central London

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2e2vjl2ry8o
3•Vermin2000•2h 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.
jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
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/