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From Operations to Effects: A Journey Through M-Sets

https://burakemir.ch/post/from-operations-to-effects/
1•g0xA52A2A•42s ago•0 comments

The Five Mules Pulling the 21st Century

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-five-mules-pulling-the-21st-century-ce1def18
1•kjhughes•45s ago•0 comments

Apple's Developer Academy Faces Funding and Outcome Questions

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/29/apple-developer-academy-faces-questions/
1•cebert•1m ago•0 comments

New Recipe Generation / Cookbook App

https://www.coocoo.life/
1•miyuapps•1m ago•1 comments

How the Mad Men Lost the Plot Again

https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/how-the-mad-men-lost-the-plot-again
1•dotcoma•3m ago•0 comments

NASA Tracking Plane-Sized Asteroid Approaching Earth

https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-tracking-plane-sized-asteroid-approaching-earth-3-11278882
1•leopoldj•3m ago•0 comments

My Flights Are in the Epstein Files

https://jkbjournalist.substack.com/p/my-flights-are-in-the-epstein-files
1•d3rockk•4m ago•0 comments

Nvidia closes $5B stake in Intel, filing shows

https://coinheadlines.com/news/nvidia-closes-5-billion-stake-in-intel-filing-shows/article-24243/
1•Johann-Wilfred•4m ago•0 comments

Agnelli family rejects Tether's 1B euro offer

https://coinheadlines.com/news/agnelli-family-rejects-tethers-1-2-billion-offer-to-acquire-majori...
1•Johann-Wilfred•6m ago•0 comments

Exploiting Silent Delivery Receipts to Monitor Users on WhatsApp/Signal

https://github.com/gommzystudio/device-activity-tracker
1•krick•6m ago•0 comments

Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg Are Full of Shit (Literally) in New Art Exhibit

https://gizmodo.com/musk-bezos-and-zuckerberg-are-full-of-shit-literally-in-new-art-exhibit-20006...
3•gnabgib•6m ago•0 comments

The Worst Thing About Elon Musk Is That He Got Away with All of It

https://newrepublic.com/article/204558/elon-musk-monster-2025-doge
4•robtherobber•8m ago•3 comments

Show HN: Package Manager for Agent Skills: Publish, Discover, Install Everywhere

https://paks.stakpak.dev
3•kajogo•9m ago•0 comments

The Compromises of Free Software

https://micahblachman.beehiiv.com/p/the-compromises-of-free-software
1•subdomain•9m ago•1 comments

The tyranny of friendship: Let your friends set your goals

https://friend.backend.how
2•pg_law•9m ago•3 comments

The Precious Eyeblink

https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/the-precious-eyeblink
1•zdw•10m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What B2B SSO solution are you using and do you like it?

1•scottndecker•11m ago•0 comments

My 9-Year-Old Built His Own Gaming PC

https://h3manth.com/scribe/9-year-old-builds-gaming-pc/
2•init0•12m ago•0 comments

Freedom from Incompetence

https://lemire.me/blog/2025/12/29/freedom-from-incompetence/
2•zdw•12m ago•0 comments

Social networks affect redistribution decisions and polarization

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/11/pgaf339/8340223?login=false
1•PaulHoule•13m ago•0 comments

Big Tech basically took Trump's unpredictable trade war lying down

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/big-tech-basically-took-trumps-unpredictable-trade-wa...
3•danaris•15m ago•0 comments

This Year's Abel Prize Was Awarded to Professor Masaki Kashiwara

https://twitter.com/abel_prize/status/2005639950906319353
1•tzury•15m ago•0 comments

From Fake Heiress to Fugitive

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fake-heiress-fugitive-former-employees-detail-alleged-long-c...
1•RickJWagner•16m ago•0 comments

The Time I Had to Sue Air France

https://sudo.foo/posts/2024/06/18/the-time-i-had-to-sue-air-france.html
1•BaloneyGeek•16m ago•0 comments

Rich Hickey's opening remarks from Clojure/Conj 2025 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLDwbhuNvZo
2•puredanger•16m ago•0 comments

Is Reality Under a New Management?

https://helenofdestroy.substack.com/p/is-reality-under-new-management
2•yubblegum•16m ago•0 comments

Free Native Mobile App Template for WordPress

https://thebbapp.com/
1•thebbapp•17m ago•1 comments

Show HN: How about some meditation in gaming?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4156740/Bluegrass_Mindfulness_Simulator_Demo/
1•madsterO•18m ago•0 comments

Reality Is Evil

https://aeon.co/essays/philosophers-must-reckon-with-the-meaning-of-thermodynamics
2•Brajeshwar•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MiddleViewer – A native macOS app for technical interview feedbacks

https://middleviewer.in
2•madhav_gaba•19m 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/