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In the Beginning Was the Command Line

https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt
1•wseqyrku•2m ago•0 comments

Portugal updates cybercrime law to exempt security researchers

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/portugal-updates-cybercrime-law-to-exempt-security...
2•N19PEDL2•4m ago•0 comments

Optimizing Iceberg Compaction: Why We Built an Embedded Engine in Rust

https://risingwave.com/blog/implementing-iceberg-compaction-rust/
1•WavyPeng•5m ago•0 comments

Geoffrey Hinton says Google is 'beginning to overtake' OpenAI

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-godfather-geoffrey-hinton-google-overtaking-openai-2025-12
1•djhu9•6m ago•0 comments

Zuck#: A programming language for connecting the world. And harvesting it

https://jayzalowitz.github.io/zucksharp/
1•kf•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dograh – an OSS Vapi alternative to quickly build and test voice agents

https://github.com/dograh-hq/dograh
1•a6kme•11m ago•1 comments

Curated SRE/DevOps/Cloud Job Board

https://sshcareers.com/
1•sajokrit•15m ago•0 comments

You Gotta Push If You Wanna Pull

https://www.morling.dev/blog/you-gotta-push-if-you-wanna-pull/
1•ingve•16m ago•0 comments

Knuth 2025 Christmas lecture: Adventures with Knight's Tours [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKiRte-tnMY
2•fs123•20m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Smart Glasses with a Decent Camera?

1•brcmthrowaway•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Detect employee skill gaps and develop training plans

https://semis.reispar.com
1•Mcjulie•27m ago•0 comments

Adding Unpack Syntax to RCL

https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2025/adding-unpack-to-rcl
3•todsacerdoti•29m ago•0 comments

Applets Are Officially Gone, but Java in the Browser Is Better

https://frequal.com/java/AppletsGoneButJavaInTheBrowserBetterThanEver.html
18•pjmlp•30m ago•9 comments

Can an English Fish Merchant Turn a Profit in Asia's Largest Market? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqAf1qRcixc
1•tosh•30m ago•0 comments

The AI-Fication of Cyberthreats

https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/gb/security/research-and-analysis/predictions/the-ai-fication-of...
2•runningmike•30m ago•0 comments

GitHub Actions Has a Package Manager, and It Might Be the Worst

https://nesbitt.io/2025/12/06/github-actions-package-manager.html
2•robin_reala•31m ago•0 comments

Why Startups Die

https://www.techfounderstack.com/p/why-startups-die
3•makle•41m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Weather mini – Trip forecasts powered by Apple Intelligence

https://weathermini.app
1•kailuo•44m ago•0 comments

From Azure Functions to FreeBSD

https://jmmv.dev/2025/12/from-azure-functions-to-freebsd.html
1•todsacerdoti•44m ago•0 comments

Guidance: A cheat code for diffusion models

https://sander.ai/2022/05/26/guidance.html
2•tesserato•44m ago•0 comments

App that turns sermon notes to daily devotionals

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/serma/id6745926259
1•roosells•47m ago•1 comments

Closer Look at the Birthday Paradox [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUQVhnuTMVU
1•duck•48m ago•0 comments

European commission X ad account has been terminated

https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1997450541275005041
1•teekert•48m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bugmail – the easiest way to catch and fix production bugs

https://www.bugmail.site/
2•bumpymark•51m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Pocket PMO – Quick free PMO oversight

https://pocketpmo.com/
1•iamasuperuser•51m ago•0 comments

Starmer's Electoral Posturing

https://rodgercuddington.substack.com/p/starmers-electoral-posturing
2•freespirt•52m ago•1 comments

Show HN: GffutilsAI, an agent to analyze genomic files

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.02.690645v1
1•sbassi•52m ago•0 comments

Drunk Driving – Grand Rapids Dip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving
1•thunderbong•52m ago•1 comments

The Collapse of Trust in AI Assistants

https://zenodo.org/records/17837188
6•businessmate•55m ago•1 comments

When software becomes fast food

https://world.hey.com/joaoqalves/when-software-becomes-fast-food-23147c9b
2•kiyanwang•58m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•7mo ago

Comments

thechao•7mo 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•7mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•7mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•7mo 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•7mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•7mo 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•7mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•7mo 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_•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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/