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Seeds of doubt:The dark side of an Italian energy giant's green jet fuel promise

https://www.politico.eu/article/seeds-of-doubt-the-dark-side-of-enis-green-jet-fuel-promise/
1•leonidasrup•2m ago•0 comments

Sandflare – I built a sandbox that launches AI agent VMs in ~300ms

1•ajaysheoran2323•4m ago•0 comments

We Used to Think Everybody Heard a Voice Inside Their Heads – But We Were Wrong

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-used-to-think-everybody-heard-a-voice-inside-their-heads-but-we-w...
1•Anon84•5m ago•0 comments

EchoMind – AI Voice Notes

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/echomind-ai-voice-notes/id6760428216
1•srsstyle•6m ago•0 comments

Office, Messaging and Verbs (2015)

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/5/21/office-messaging-and-verbs
1•simonebrunozzi•8m ago•0 comments

Pgit: I Imported the Linux Kernel into PostgreSQL

https://oseifert.ch/blog/linux-kernel-pgit
1•ImGajeed76•11m ago•0 comments

Cape Town Seeks to Emulate India's High-End Outsourcing Push

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-31/cape-town-seeks-to-emulate-india-s-high-end-ou...
2•alephnerd•13m ago•0 comments

What is AX?

https://sumato.ai/posts/2026-03-31-what-is-ax.html
1•jasonmoo•15m ago•0 comments

Using AI to forcast success of active clinical trials

https://warpspeed.sh/
1•obventio56•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a native desktop app (open source)

https://github.com/tihiera/raincast
3•tito777•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: How many seasons does Melbourne (VIC) have?

1•bluemetal•23m ago•0 comments

LipoVive (Investigated) Why 2026 Metabolic Science Is a Rethink on Weight Loss

https://www.morningstar.com/news/accesswire/1138075msn/lipovive-reviews-shocking-2026-report-what...
1•tagyhans•24m ago•0 comments

China factories log fastest growth in a year as war risks loom large

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-factory-activity-returns-expansion-pmi-shows-20...
1•defrost•27m ago•0 comments

Call.md

https://github.com/video-db/call.md
1•handfuloflight•32m ago•0 comments

PyTorch Primer

https://bitwise.land/
2•jackomelon•32m ago•0 comments

Spacecraft Heat Shields Could Violently "Burst" in Alien Atmospheres

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/spacecraft-heat-shields-could-violently-burst-when-plungin...
1•gostsamo•34m ago•1 comments

I Like Real Estate

https://www.sohum.com/why-i-like-real-estate/
1•Sohum•34m ago•0 comments

Google's 200M-parameter time-series foundation model with 16k context

https://github.com/google-research/timesfm
22•codepawl•37m ago•8 comments

Sony halts memory card shipments due to NAND shortage

https://www.techzine.eu/news/devices/140058/sony-halts-memory-card-shipments-due-to-nand-shortage/
11•methuselah_in•46m ago•1 comments

Gone (Almost) Phishin'

https://ma.tt/2026/03/gone-almost-phishin/
2•luu•47m ago•0 comments

Scientists say we've been looking in the wrong place for human origins

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260327230113.htm
1•DeathArrow•47m ago•0 comments

GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/30/github_copilot_ads_pull_requests/
22•_____k•47m ago•2 comments

Information Flow Kernel for Claude Code Hooks

https://github.com/coproduct-opensource/nucleus/blob/main/docs/quickstart-hook.md
1•difc•47m ago•1 comments

Vector Databases Explained in 3 Levels of Difficulty

https://machinelearningmastery.com/vector-databases-explained-in-3-levels-of-difficulty/
1•eigenBasis•49m ago•0 comments

A Knowledge Graph

https://tjid3.org/test/kg12.74
1•TimothyMJones•49m ago•1 comments

Would you use a GitHub App that auto-generates changelogs from commit diffs?

1•mandeepsng•50m ago•4 comments

Run virtualized iOS with Private Cloud Compute drivers

https://github.com/wh1te4ever/super-tart-vphone-writeup
1•goranmoomin•52m ago•0 comments

Read-Only vs. Action AI: Why Most Odoo AI Tools Stop at the Report

https://www.odooclaw.ai/blog/read-only-vs-action-ai-why-most-odoo-ai-tools-stop-at-the-report
1•oktra_dev•54m ago•0 comments

Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies Against Quantum Vulnerabilities [pdf]

https://quantumai.google/static/site-assets/downloads/cryptocurrency-whitepaper.pdf
2•nstj•57m ago•0 comments

Meta Testing Instagram Plus Subscription with Exclusive Features

https://techlomedia.in/2026/03/meta-testing-instagram-plus-subscription-with-exclusive-features-1...
1•deepanker70•59m ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•11mo ago

Comments

thechao•11mo 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•11mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•11mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•11mo 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•11mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•11mo 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•11mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•11mo 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_•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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/