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Purl – A curl-esque CLI for making HTTP requests that require payment

https://github.com/stripe/purl
1•vercantez•15s ago•0 comments

Exiting the Cubic Simulation: The SPU-13 and the Geometry of Freedom

https://github.com/johncurley/synergetic-sqr
1•j291920•1m ago•1 comments

Trump tells CNN he's not insisting Iran needs to be a democratic state

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/06/politics/trump-interview-iran-cuba-dana-bash
1•maxloh•2m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Why do analytics tools show what happened but not why?

1•HPSimulator•3m ago•0 comments

Loxation flags: pig-butchering, grooming and social engineering

https://www.loxation.com/blog/posts/blog_vector_db_learning_substrate/
1•jabbr•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PriceMon – get alerted when a competitor changes their pricing

https://pricemon.io
1•scrygl•8m ago•0 comments

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee backs social media ban for under-16s

https://www.catalannews.com/business/item/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-backs-social-media-ban-for...
1•rbanffy•9m ago•0 comments

Syracuse among cities to upgrade snowplows with video, AI and GPS – AP News

https://apnews.com/article/snowplows-blizzard-ai-gps-syracuse-newyork-7508aa04a5877541bb1ea55e946...
1•rbanffy•9m ago•0 comments

China's Parents Are Outsourcing the Homework Grind to A.I

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/world/asia/china-education-ai.html
1•rbanffy•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Typeui.sh – generate skill files for design system specifications

https://www.typeui.sh/
5•elwingo1•12m ago•2 comments

I Audit a Legacy Rails Codebase in the First Week

https://piechowski.io/post/how-i-audit-a-legacy-rails-codebase/
1•birdculture•12m ago•0 comments

We're Training Students to Write Worse to Prove They're Not Robots

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/06/were-training-students-to-write-worse-to-prove-theyre-not-rob...
3•PretzelFisch•13m ago•0 comments

Blacksky: Open-source digital public infrastructure project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacksky
1•doener•13m ago•1 comments

Block Number Formats Are Direction Preservers

https://constantinides.net/2026/03/07/block-number-formats-are-direction-preservers/
1•matt_d•13m ago•0 comments

Warren's Abstract Machine: A Tutorial Reconstruction (1999)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220119110941/http://wambook.sourceforge.net/
2•Jtsummers•16m ago•0 comments

A New Version of Our Oracle Solaris Environment for Developers

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/announcing-a-new-version-of-our-oracle-solaris-environment-for-d...
2•naves•17m ago•0 comments

Agents of Chaos

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20021
1•pagade•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dead Man's Switch – miss a check-in, alert your contacts

https://deadmansswitch.cloud
1•pajones•18m ago•0 comments

Shannon Got AI This Far. Kolmogorov Shows Where It Stops

https://medium.com/@vishalmisra/shannon-got-ai-this-far-kolmogorov-shows-where-it-stops-c81825f89ca0
1•tosh•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I made an App for learning Japanese, and it won in Vercel's OSS program

https://github.com/lingdojo/kana-dojo
1•thebababak•21m ago•0 comments

Apple Ads

https://ads.apple.com/app-store
2•_RPM•21m ago•0 comments

Linux hacked onto a PS5 to turn Sony's console into a Steam Machine

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/playstation/linux-hacked-onto-a-ps5-to-turn-sonys-consol...
4•LorenDB•21m ago•0 comments

Does Costco Sell Half of the Cashews?

https://www.tastingtable.com/1685159/costco-half-the-worlds-supply-cashew/
2•thunderbong•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: NovusNet, a C++ networking library for beginners

https://github.com/Nullora/NovusNet
1•nullora•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: NervOS – Sandbox for AI Agents Using Firecracker MicroVMs

https://github.com/ashishgituser/NervOS
1•ashishch111•34m ago•0 comments

Building Cursor for LibreOffice: A Week-Long Journey

https://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=5060
3•keithcu2•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: N8n-trace – Grafana-like observability for n8n workflows

https://github.com/Mohammedaljer/n8nTrace
2•mj95•37m ago•1 comments

Knuth Claude's Cycles note update: problem now fully solved by LLMs

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/preprints.html
2•fs123•37m ago•2 comments

Tesla back on top as Norway's EV market surges to 98% share in February

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-norway-98-percent-ev-sales/
2•andsoitis•37m ago•0 comments

Sam and Dario's not-so-excellent AI adventure

https://www.fastforward.blog/sam-and-darios-not-so-excellent-ai-adventure/
1•ohjeez•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/