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Open-source platform for cybersecurity Attack Surface Management (OASM) oasm.dev

1•l1ttps•28s ago•0 comments

Are There Enough Engineers for the AI Boom?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-data-centers-engineers-jobs
1•JeanKage•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Gh-PR-review – CLI tool for LLMs to create, read, comment PRs

https://github.com/agynio/gh-pr-review
2•NBenkovich•4m ago•0 comments

Unveiling Firestore Pipeline operations – Firestore's powerful new query engine

https://firebase.blog/posts/2026/01/firestore-enterprise-pipeline-operations
1•reimertz•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Build AI Agents Declaratively with Terraform

https://github.com/chatbotkit/terraform-provider-chatbotkit
2•_pdp_•7m ago•0 comments

RISC-V is coming along quite speedily: Milk-V Titan Mini-ITX 8-core board

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/milk-v-titan-mini-ix-board-with-ur-dp1000-process...
1•fork-bomber•7m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Which skill is best for future?

1•SRMohitkr•7m ago•0 comments

Mandiant releases rainbow table that cracks weak admin password in 12 hours

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/mandiant-releases-rainbow-table-that-cracks-weak-admin-p...
1•thunderbong•9m ago•0 comments

Does Antimatter 'Fall Up'?

https://www.space.com/astronomy/dark-universe/does-antimatter-fall-up
1•AdamN•9m ago•0 comments

The next frontier for public access: building channels of meaning

https://www.aaas.org/news/next-frontier-public-access-building-channels-meaning
1•JeanKage•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Agentic Commits – Commit spec for AI agent workflows

https://agentic-commits.deligoz.me
1•deligoez•14m ago•0 comments

Alarm is sacred, must not fail, but iOS 26 is wicked

https://rakhim.exotext.com/alarm-is-sacred-but-ios-26-is-wicked
2•7777777phil•15m ago•0 comments

Palacio Barolo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palacio_Barolo
1•f1shy•16m ago•0 comments

JBDev: Jailbreak/TrollStore app development with Xcode

https://github.com/lich4/JBDev
1•lich4•18m ago•0 comments

I built a "Linter" for SaaS features (detects missing billing/auth flows)

https://github.com/SkeneTechnologies/skene-growth
1•teemuki•18m ago•1 comments

Wikipedia: WikiProject AI Cleanup

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_AI_Cleanup
5•thinkingemote•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: HHistAI – Explore History with Artificial Intelligence

https://histai.net/
1•jsxyzb•21m ago•0 comments

Use Mac as a coding agent with no additional server setup

https://getmoshi.app/articles/mac-remote-endless-agent-setup
1•rjyo•21m ago•1 comments

You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/01/17/three-minutes
2•7777777phil•25m ago•0 comments

Quadro Tracker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker
1•bschne•26m ago•0 comments

Led by Texas, New Hampshire, U.S. states put Bitcoin on public balance sheet

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/17/texas-us-states-budgets-bitcoin-crypto-strategic-reserve.html
1•TMWNN•29m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Gdocs-CLI – Fetch Google Docs as Markdown for AI Coding Agents

https://github.com/famasya/gdocs-cli
1•pacific01•29m ago•0 comments

CVEFinder – Fast CVE lookup with product-level mapping

1•cvefinder•32m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: "Unfortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of [redacted]"

2•fdeage•32m ago•1 comments

The Jolla Phone Proved We've Been Using Smartphones Wrong All Along

https://techglimmer.io/jolla-phone-2026-review-kill-switch-privacy-review/#Jolla
30•mpol•32m ago•16 comments

NASA ID Sy1174304 – O(1) Strategic Proposal: Alzheimer's and Longevity

2•MASTER_shivam•32m ago•0 comments

Last year I eliminated our PTO policy. I called it "unlimited."

https://twitter.com/gothburz/status/2011421898161144192
19•marbartolome•35m ago•9 comments

Castle Engine downloads with bundled FPC for all platforms

https://castle-engine.io/wp/2026/01/18/engine-downloads-with-bundled-fpc-for-all-platforms-castle...
1•mariuz•35m ago•0 comments

2026 Adamuz Train Derailments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments
1•Rygian•38m ago•0 comments

Determinate: End-to-End Nix for macOS, WSL, Linux

https://docs.determinate.systems/
1•Lwrless•39m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/