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Think

https://mark-sowell.medium.com/the-legacy-of-think-from-ibm-to-apples-think-different-and-beyond-...
1•andsoitis•34s ago•0 comments

Starliner might fly into space this year

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/actually-starliner-might-fly-into-space-this-year/
1•rbanffy•3m ago•1 comments

The Origins of Vintage Comics Part 1

https://www.truegrittexturesupply.com/blogs/news/origins-of-the-vintage-comics-aesthetic-part-1
1•Michelangelo11•7m ago•0 comments

Character Study: The burgeoning field of fiction character biographies

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fictional-character-biographies-shakespeare-margaret-hannibal...
1•Caiero•9m ago•0 comments

Fuzzing with Agents? Generators Are All You Need

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.01442
1•matt_d•13m ago•0 comments

Claude Opus 5 became ruthless when tasked with running a vending machine

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/29/claude-opus-5-became-downright-ruthless-when-tasked-with-runnin...
2•WithinReason•16m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Developer looking for freelance or contract work

2•need_a_work23•22m ago•0 comments

EU now fears US interference in European elections

https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/07/29/eu-now-fears-us-interference-in-european-elections/
6•vrganj•29m ago•3 comments

The Computer and the Brain: John von Neumann

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_and_the_Brain
4•adityaathalye•36m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Run Full Kimi K3 with 29 GB of RAM

https://github.com/sqliteai/waste/
6•marcobambini•40m ago•1 comments

Subsurface Confinement: Evidence from Submariners of the Benefits of Mindfulness

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8267514/
3•rramadass•40m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Emboss – a Python PDF engine that keeps documents as structured data

https://github.com/GGChamp85/Emboss
5•gauravgupta85•42m ago•1 comments

Yoga in the Military: A Comprehensive Overview

https://erickimphotography.com/yoga-in-the-military-a-comprehensive-overview/
3•rramadass•42m ago•0 comments

Apprenticeships: You Can Get into Tech in the UK and USA for Free and Get Paid

https://reprodev.com/how-you-can-get-into-tech-in-the-uk-and-around-the-world-for-free/
2•reprodev•42m ago•0 comments

NBA streaming tonight Reddit: where the game-day threads live now

https://iptvusa.tv/
1•aramirez454•43m ago•1 comments

Claude is down for 2nd consecutive day

https://status.claude.com/incidents/fsh2zzzl2c4l
6•cosmicorsini•43m ago•1 comments

First Proof

https://1stproof.org/
2•gone35•45m ago•0 comments

Through the Agentic Looking Glass

https://www.alexself.dev/blog/through-the-agentic-looking-glass
3•aself101•45m ago•1 comments

NBA streaming tonight Reddit: offseason, threads are still open

https://iptvusa.tv/app
1•aramirez454•48m ago•0 comments

Is This QRcode a Scam?

https://www.yoyosup.com/tools/qr-check/
1•tcurtis801•48m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Edge Drop- #1 productivity and unique clipboard 200 stars on GitHub

https://github.com/Deepender25/Edge-Drop
3•Deepender25•49m ago•0 comments

Why Do We Tolerate Elon Musk's Racist Commentary?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/opinion/elon-musk-far-right-remigration.html
5•SLHamlet•51m ago•3 comments

Elon Musk's xAI sues Minnesota over law banning 'nudification' technology

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/29/xai-sues-minnesota-nudification-technology
2•Symbiote•53m ago•0 comments

When nature not only restores, but fortifies

https://www.mpg.de/26891042/when-nature-not-only-restores-but-fortifies
1•XzetaU8•53m ago•0 comments

AI or Not?

https://tracydurnell.com/2026/07/29/ai-or-not/
2•meetpateltech•53m ago•0 comments

Kolektor: Self-hosted manager for a coin and paper money collection

https://github.com/marinfrankovic/Kolektor
1•taubek•55m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Vedic Astrology Chart – free sidereal birth chart

https://vedicastrologychart.net/
1•toolina•56m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Should authors disclose if they are paid to write a blog post?

1•wseqyrku•1h ago•0 comments

Defeating vanishing gradients in deep neural networks: Quotient Tree Arithmetic

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.22612
1•EGreg•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dibba – Automated Personal Finance

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dibba/id6759825700
1•safonovklim•1h 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.
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/

jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem