frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Leo thought Guthrie's smart cam was disconnected, Google still had the tape

https://fortune.com/2026/02/11/privacy-concerns-nancy-guthrie-google-nest-camera-footage-kidnapping/
1•c420•2m ago•0 comments

The curious case of binfmt for x86 emulation for ARM Docker

https://gergely.imreh.net/blog/2025/04/the-curious-case-of-binfmt-for-x86-emulation-for-arm-docker/
1•pvtmert•10m ago•0 comments

A "QuitGPT" campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/10/1132577/a-quitgpt-campaign-is-urging-people-to-cancel...
1•amai•10m ago•1 comments

With Boran, First AI Agent Protagonist in Next-Generation Video Games

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2451190/Kebabstar/
1•akbr•10m ago•1 comments

Prime Intellect Lab: a full-stack platform for training your own models

https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/lab
1•anacleto•11m ago•0 comments

Self-contained RTL to GDS flow for simple chip designs

https://github.com/htfab/microlane
2•ua709•12m ago•0 comments

Language a Wood for Thought: Susan Howe's Work

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/1769037/language-a-wood-for-thought
1•apollinaire•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Terminal Anywhere – Browser terminal via Cloudflare tunnels

1•alamas•13m ago•0 comments

Measles Is Raging Worldwide

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00367-5
1•anigbrowl•15m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Japanese ma is the most underrated design system in front end

https://opale-ui-mugen.vercel.app/
1•Dontizi•16m ago•0 comments

Seedance 2.0 makes it hard for agencies and production houses to ignore AI now

https://twitter.com/heydin_ai/status/2021529833197773204
1•DustinEchoes•17m ago•1 comments

Best Practices for Ownership in GLib

https://blog.sebastianwick.net/posts/glib-ownership-best-practices/
1•PaulHoule•19m ago•0 comments

The Dead Simple Car Wash Management App

https://CarDesk.net/
1•ahmednefzaoui•20m ago•1 comments

Why Some Models Quantize Better Than Others

https://ym2132.github.io/why_quantization_fails.html
1•Two_hands•21m ago•0 comments

Are F-35s Being Delivered to the USAF Without Radars? Sure Seems Like It

https://www.twz.com/air/are-f-35s-being-delivered-to-the-usaf-without-radars-sure-seems-like-it
2•nradov•21m ago•0 comments

Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass

https://age-verifier.kibty.town/
11•JustSkyfall•23m ago•0 comments

Military AI Adoption Is Outpacing Global Cooperation

https://www.cfr.org/articles/military-ai-adoption-is-outpacing-global-cooperation
2•geox•24m ago•0 comments

Rust runtime for computer-use agents (native back end and conformance)

https://github.com/xayhemLLC/computer-use-runtime
1•xxayh•25m ago•0 comments

The One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI Morals

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-amanda-askell-philosopher-ai-3c031883
3•stanislavb•26m ago•0 comments

Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-bi...
3•sohkamyung•29m ago•1 comments

RIP Robert Tinney, the illustrator behind so many Byte magazines

https://tinney.net/in-memoriam
3•ohjeez•30m ago•0 comments

Electrolytes vs. Water: The Surprising Effect on Your Training Zones

https://vo2maxpro.com/blog/electrolytes-vs-water-training-zones
3•GoodluckH•35m ago•0 comments

Attorney General Bonta Announces $2.75M Settlement with Disney

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/california-wont-let-it-go-attorney-general-bonta-announces...
1•sebastian_z•39m ago•1 comments

Building a Pastebin, Hardening Two Services – While Working

https://www.smolkin.org/blog/2026/02/adding-api-auth-admin-panel-with-claude-code.html
1•msmolkin•39m ago•0 comments

Anthropic safety researcher quits, warning 'world is in peril'

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/11/2026/anthropic-safety-researcher-quits-warning-world-is-in-...
2•doener•40m ago•0 comments

Hacker News now thinks coding is solved

https://old.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1qynmuc/hacker_news_now_thinks_coding_is_solved/
12•Cheyana•42m ago•2 comments

AI Is Getting Scary Good at Making Predictions

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/02/ai-prediction-human-forecasters/685955/
2•cainxinth•43m ago•1 comments

Software Engineering Past, Present, and Future with Grady Booch

https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/software-engineering-past-present-and-future-wit...
2•weinzierl•44m ago•0 comments

Why the Economy Hasn't Crashed yet [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOR4wuiPeEQ
1•Wilsoniumite•45m ago•0 comments

Alphabet's Rare 100-Year Bond Tells Us That Money Is Easy

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/alphabets-rare-100-year-bond-tells-us-that-money-is-easy-77...
1•RyanShook•48m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•9mo ago

Comments

thechao•9mo 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•9mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•9mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•9mo 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•9mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•9mo 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•9mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•9mo 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_•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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/