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America's schools face backlash on digital devices as screens saturate classroom

https://www.boston25news.com/news/technology/americas-schools/XFNZQ73AT4Y3RCPO5A4AV3A6SU/
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•7m ago•0 comments

A New Typst Template for Pandoc

https://imaginarytext.ca/posts/2025/typst-templates-for-pandoc/
1•ankitg12•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Desktop GUI sandbox for AI agents and MCP servers

https://github.com/rednakta/nilbox
1•rednakta•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Versionparser – Java library for working with versioning schemes

https://github.com/cthing/versionparser
1•baron1405•10m ago•0 comments

You don't need all the LLM benchmarks

https://alex.smola.org/posts/34-benchmark-selection/
1•matt_d•16m ago•0 comments

How to Make xt850 Match xt 850

https://manticoresearch.com/blog/how-to-make-searches-like-xt850-match-xt-850/
1•snikolaev•16m ago•0 comments

Tech CEOs summoned to Congress for another hearing on social media's risks

https://apnews.com/article/tech-ceos-senate-hearing-zuckerberg-8c2c46758fd669e688170f96fa12a882
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•18m ago•0 comments

Pope Leo calls for being 'profoundly human' in the age of AI

https://www.theverge.com/news/936945/pope-leo-letter-encyclical-ai-anthropic-labor-warfare
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•21m ago•0 comments

Noioaapps – our tools keep you informed (a dream)

https://medium.com/luminasticity/noioaapps-our-tools-keep-you-informed-43db36175f5d
1•bryanrasmussen•23m ago•0 comments

GPT Image 2 left me amazed but exhausted – so I built a little tool

https://imagesv2.ai
2•taoji•27m ago•0 comments

The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/25/schoolboys-ai-girlfriends/
2•Markoff•29m ago•1 comments

Self-Driving bus in Sweden crashes with tram on first day of passenger service

https://www.firstpost.com/auto/self-driving-bus-in-sweden-crashes-with-tram-on-first-day-of-passe...
3•Markoff•30m ago•0 comments

Notes on Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical on AI

https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/25/encyclical-on-ai/
2•pretext•31m ago•0 comments

The Little Go Book

https://github.com/karlseguin/the-little-go-book
2•saikatsg•32m ago•0 comments

Enhance or Eliminate? How AI Will Likely Change These Jobs

https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/enhance-or-eliminate-how-ai-will-likely-change-thes...
1•_____k•35m ago•0 comments

NanoClaw creator turns down $20M buyout offer, raises $12M seed instead

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/nanoclaw-creator-turns-down-20m-buyout-offer-raises-12m-seed-in...
2•doppp•35m ago•0 comments

The User Is Visibly Frustrated

https://pscanf.com/s/354/
3•croes•37m ago•0 comments

Real wages start to shrink in developed countries

https://www.ft.com/content/e126f744-3db9-4305-8871-31f83ebc4ed7
2•mikhael•38m ago•0 comments

The working definition of an Agent Endpoint

https://ianpilon.github.io/agent-endpoint/
1•ianpilon•40m ago•0 comments

New Google sheet favicon – but why?

2•jinen83•41m ago•2 comments

Ask HN: When and why did you start believing in God?

3•dvrp•41m ago•13 comments

Ask HN: Pregunta para los devs hispanohablantes

5•alonsovm44•46m ago•0 comments

AgentBrew – Portable toolbelt for your AI agents

https://github.com/patchen0518/AgentBrew
1•patchen0518•49m ago•0 comments

Ollama v0.30.0-rc23: "directly support llama.cpp" & "compatibility with GGUF"

https://github.com/ollama/ollama/releases/tag/v0.30.0-rc23
2•theanonymousone•49m ago•0 comments

My minimal, memory-safe Go rsync steers clear of vulnerabilities

https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2026-05-24-minimal-memory-safe-go-rsync-vulns/
1•gsky•52m ago•0 comments

Interest Rate May Explain Consumer Sentiment Anomaly

https://www.nber.org/papers/w32163
3•efavdb•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Auto GPU Kernel – Autonomous GPU-kernel discovery and optimizer

https://github.com/Dogacel/auto-gpu-kernel
1•dogacel•53m ago•0 comments

Polymorphic Associations in Postgres

https://danolivo.substack.com/p/on-polymorphic-associations-in-postgres
2•gsky•53m ago•0 comments

Elusive order of async GPU kernels: scheduling, abstractions, DSL implications

https://ianbarber.blog/2026/05/25/the-elusive-order-of-things/
1•matt_d•58m ago•0 comments

NewAgentsHub

https://www.newagentshub.dev/
1•IlijaD123•59m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•1y ago

Comments

thechao•1y 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•1y ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•1y ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•1y 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•1y ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•1y 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•1y ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•1y 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_•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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/