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WA state is turning your 3D printer into a cop

https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/25/washingtons-3d-printing-bills-are-bad-for-stem-bad-for-busin...
1•ptorrone•31s ago•0 comments

Software 3.0 is the era of Thinkers

https://twitter.com/theOpusLABS/status/2015465349206941711
1•opuslabs•1m ago•0 comments

Monopsony, Markdown, and Minimum Wages [pdf]

https://eml.berkeley.edu/~schoefer/schoefer_files/FLS_MMM.pdf
1•jandrewrogers•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Graft – binary file patcher in Rust

https://github.com/sam-mfb/graft
1•sam256•2m ago•0 comments

You Are an Agent – Try Being a Human LLM

https://youareanagent.app/
1•robkop•7m ago•1 comments

Show HN: We built a hidden micro-bearing system inside a 2mm ring

2•spinity•7m ago•0 comments

Nano agent: a minimalistic Python library for building AI agents using DAGs

https://github.com/NTT123/nano-agent
1•xcodevn•9m ago•1 comments

Show HN: RealXV6 – a faithful Unix V6 kernel port to 8086 real mode

https://github.com/FounderSG/RealXV6
1•FounderSG•11m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What's the best place to look at snow webcams?

1•bastawhiz•12m ago•2 comments

Cleaner air is (inadvertently) harming the Great Barrier Reef

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-cleaner-air-inadvertently-great-barrier.html
1•Brajeshwar•15m ago•0 comments

Ancient Spanish trees reveal Mediterranean storms are intensifying

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-ancient-spanish-trees-reveal-mediterranean.html
1•Brajeshwar•15m ago•0 comments

What happens when you train an LLM only on limited historical data

https://www.popsci.com/technology/this-ai-thinks-its-the-1800s/
1•Brajeshwar•15m ago•0 comments

Hey guys, check out my idea

1•harinand•16m ago•5 comments

XSS –> RCE in Screeps, a programming game on Steam

https://outsidetheasylum.blog/screeps/
2•Tiberium•17m ago•1 comments

Geo Is Not the Next Generation of SEO

https://valarmorghulis.io/view/202601-geo-vs-seo/
1•socrateslee•18m ago•1 comments

Human Approval as a Service

1•mf_taria•18m ago•0 comments

Software patches in NixOS for fun and productivity

https://log.pfad.fr/2026/software-patching-in-nixos/
3•todsacerdoti•21m ago•0 comments

The First Full-Scale Cyber War: 4 Years of Lessons

https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-first-full-scale-cyber-war-4
1•bryanrasmussen•22m ago•0 comments

Heart rhythm problems detected four times more often with smartwatches

https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/22/heart-rhythm-problems-detected-four-times-often-smartwatches
1•giuliomagnifico•23m ago•1 comments

More than a quarter of Britons say they fear losing jobs to AI in next 5 years

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/25/more-than-quarter-britons-fear-losing-jobs-ai-ne...
3•chrisjj•24m ago•0 comments

Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show with Steve Allen 1959 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLpNKo09Xk
1•aabiji•25m ago•0 comments

Kingdoms of Water: The Mekong River, empire, and the limits of human ingenuity

https://worldhistory.substack.com/p/kingdoms-of-water
1•crescit_eundo•27m ago•0 comments

Ice cream is one of the healthiest foods in existence

https://twitter.com/Outdoctrination/status/2015449347920396347
4•bilsbie•27m ago•0 comments

Inside Apple's AI Shake-Up and Its Plans for Two New Versions of Siri

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-01-25/inside-apple-s-ai-shake-up-ai-safari-and-pl...
2•thm•28m ago•0 comments

Good Taste

https://emsh.cat/good-taste/
1•embedding-shape•29m ago•2 comments

AMD Releases MLIR-AIE 1.2 Compiler Toolchain for Targeting Ryzen AI NPUs

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-MLIR-AIE-1.2
2•pella•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP Security Documentation with Code Examples

https://github.com/FinkTech/mcp-security
1•finktech•30m ago•0 comments

Interview: Kim Stanley Robinson, Science Fiction Maestro and Utopian, in 2026

https://sammatey.substack.com/p/interview-kim-stanley-robinson-science-111
2•mitchbob•31m ago•0 comments

Agent-Browser by Vercel Labs

https://github.com/vercel-labs/agent-browser
2•franze•32m ago•0 comments

An Open-Source Alternative to Vercel

https://www.shorlabs.com/
1•shorlabss•32m 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/