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Show HN: TUI for SVN

https://lazysvn.sawirstudio.com/
1•sawirricardo•1m ago•0 comments

Agentic Risks

https://cloudberry.engineering/article/agentic-risks/
1•gbrindisi•3m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why does a black line appear on HN sometimes?

1•bheadmaster•8m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How do you find joy in a world full of depressing news?

2•Razengan•11m ago•1 comments

Gpsjam GPS/GNSS Interference Map

https://gpsjam.org/
1•jonbaer•15m ago•0 comments

The Quantum Curtain

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2026/03/quantum-curtain/411967/
2•jonbaer•18m ago•0 comments

Stacksort

https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/
1•mihau•19m ago•0 comments

Mesh – remote mobile forensics and network monitoring

https://github.com/BARGHEST-ngo/MESH
1•0x0v1•19m ago•1 comments

MacBook Neo Review: Better Than You Think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGeXGdYE7UE
1•keepamovin•19m ago•0 comments

Encode/httpx: Closing off access

https://github.com/encode/httpx/discussions/3784
2•luismedel•20m ago•0 comments

A Kubernetes operator that orchestrates AI coding agents

https://medium.com/@bobbydeveaux/we-built-an-ai-that-plans-codes-reviews-and-ships-and-then-we-us...
2•bobbydeveaux•21m ago•1 comments

AI Agent Hacks McKinsey

https://codewall.ai/blog/how-we-hacked-mckinseys-ai-platform
1•mycroft_4221•22m ago•0 comments

Movies I Highly Recommend

https://github.com/ojhaugen15/12_movies
1•programmexxx•24m ago•0 comments

Richard Feynman's story illustrating the problem of p-hacking

https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/2031604331510690112
4•MrBuddyCasino•32m ago•0 comments

Glanceway – Collect RSS and custom plugin data in your macOS menu bar

https://glanceway.app
1•codytseng•33m ago•1 comments

Unbash: Fast 0-deps bash parser written in TypeScript

https://github.com/webpro-nl/unbash
1•mariuz•34m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is there a market for a security-audited Claude Code skills newsletter?

1•camicortazar•34m ago•0 comments

The Anthropic Institute

https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-anthropic-institute
4•meetpateltech•35m ago•1 comments

Gemini 2 Is the Top Model for Embeddings

https://agentset.ai/blog/gemini-2-embedding
2•tifa2up•39m ago•0 comments

Tutorials in Optomechanics

https://wp.optics.arizona.edu/optomech/tutorials-in-optomechanics/
1•o4c•41m ago•0 comments

A.I. Incites a New Wave of Grieving Parents Fighting for Online Safety

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/technology/ai-social-media-child-safety-parents.html
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•45m ago•1 comments

The Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Is Moving to Europe (After 35 Years in the USA)

https://improbable.com/2026/03/10/the-ig-nobel-prize-ceremony-is-moving-to-europe-after-35-years-...
3•layer8•48m ago•0 comments

Some Arabic Words Transliterated

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RMxjUr2Rki6TLNTNd00BNtBUwB0DJXiE4Dd_YppUi1I/edit
1•programmexxx•50m ago•0 comments

Google to Provide Pentagon with AI Agents

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-10/google-to-provide-pentagon-with-ai-agents-for-...
12•1vuio0pswjnm7•51m ago•3 comments

Europe tops global arms imports, SIPRI reports

https://www.dw.com/en/sipri-europe-arms-imports-global-weapons-trade-defense-spending/a-76261906
1•breve•55m ago•0 comments

AI-powered apps struggle with long-term retention, new report shows

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/10/ai-powered-apps-struggle-with-long-term-retention-new-report-sh...
2•pseudolus•59m ago•0 comments

My app got 3k users in 48 hours and then monetization almost killed it

https://getcalendarly.com
1•DimKat•59m ago•1 comments

PEP 827 – Type Manipulation

https://peps.python.org/pep-0827/
2•EvgeniyZh•59m ago•0 comments

NASA's Van Allen Probe A to re-enter atmosphere

https://phys.org/news/2026-03-nasa-van-allen-probe-atmosphere.html
7•bookmtn•1h ago•0 comments

How age standardization make health metrics comparable

https://ourworldindata.org/age-standardization
1•sohkamyung•1h 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/