frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

You're paying for a WAF. Is it blocking anything?

https://plimie.com/blog/waf-log-only-is-it-blocking/
1•pcaminog•52s ago•0 comments

Aspire: Agentic /Skills Discovery for Robotics

https://github.com/nvlabs/aspire
1•gmays•53s ago•0 comments

What's the management thinking behind enshittification

1•chrisjj•4m ago•0 comments

Cloudera Faces 2 Year PERM Ban and Backpay for Discrimination Against US Workers

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-departments-justice-and-labor-secure-settlement-cloudera-enforc...
3•wmchen•5m ago•0 comments

What toke 10 years from terry Davis it toke me agents and days

https://github.com/salehdev-ux/holyrust
1•ptrerter•6m ago•0 comments

Religious Studies in Software Engineering

https://tombh.co.uk/religious-studies-in-software-engineering
2•birdculture•7m ago•0 comments

All Logic, No Bite

https://blog.coredump.cx/p/all-logic-no-bite
1•weinzierl•10m ago•0 comments

Musk came to Trump with the plan to throttle Ukraine's use of Starshield

https://twitter.com/Barnes_Joe/status/2111156654850847230
4•doener•11m ago•0 comments

Flux 3 Image Klein: open weights, 5.6B parameters

https://bfl.ai/blog/flux-3-image-klein
2•gmays•12m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why do developers hate Confluence?

1•hahnbee•15m ago•1 comments

Bug turns one of the biggest fears about Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses into reality

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses-found-recording-audio-without-...
1•MBCook•15m ago•0 comments

Emu Concept – Make AI Follows Your Rules. (Feedback Wanted)

3•JariwalaH•16m ago•1 comments

Outlines – Structured Outputs for LLMs

https://github.com/dottxt-ai/outlines
1•modinfo•17m ago•0 comments

On the painful prescience of Seinfeld

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/on-the-painful-prescience-of-seinfeld
1•CGMthrowaway•17m ago•0 comments

Prediction and Entropy of Printed English

https://archive.org/details/bstj30-1-50
1•Betelbuddy•19m ago•0 comments

I built a Claude Code terminal on the NDS

https://github.com/logancarrillo/ds-claude-terminal
1•tbgtech•20m ago•0 comments

Taco Bell drive-thru AI bot increased employee retention by making jobs easier

https://fortune.com/2026/10/14/yum-brands-executive-data-center-hate-ai-tools-improvement/
4•TMWNN•22m ago•3 comments

Cynical people are often seen as smarter. Here's why that might not be true

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2026/10/16/cynical-people-are-often-seen-smarter-heres-w...
1•bcaulfield•23m ago•0 comments

Framing Effect, Smoking Monks Parable

https://www.chrismeyer.blog/p/developing-perspective
1•whoishiding•24m ago•0 comments

Native, free and open-source WireGuard client for macOS

https://github.com/ventz/wombat-wireguard-mac-app
1•pkaeding•24m ago•0 comments

New Data Centers in NM and El Paso Could Undo Millions Spent on Climate Plans

https://elpasomatters.org/2026/10/14/el-paso-data-centers-meta-project-jupiter-climate-emissions/
1•hn_acker•25m ago•1 comments

Researchers Discover ChatGPT Can Drive a Car. Grok, on the Other Hand

https://www.thedrive.com/news/uh-oh-chatgpt-can-drive-a-car-and-grok-crashed-immediately
2•speckx•25m ago•0 comments

The Fatal Flaw of 911

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/10/16/911-book-policing-mental-health
10•plunge•27m ago•4 comments

Woman faces changing 211 accounts after .name domain termination

https://domainnamewire.com/2026/10/16/woman-faces-changing-211-accounts-after-name-domain-termina...
2•speckx•30m ago•0 comments

Infinite Jeffs

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTJ4P1PT
4•gregsadetsky•31m ago•1 comments

Google's Core Web Vitals with Soft Navigations, Reflecting SPA Performance

https://web.dev/blog/crux-experimental-soft-navs
1•powdercloud•32m ago•0 comments

Load-Bearing

https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/15/sovereign-it/
3•hn_acker•32m ago•0 comments

Mathematical Foundations of Generative AI, IISc Bangalore

https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106108004
2•yarapavan•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Make house walkthrough videos only from photos – TensorPix

https://tensorpix.ai/usecases/real-estate-video-maker
1•barty777•34m ago•0 comments

Trump Bought $5M in SpaceX Debt Two Days Before Space Transport Executive Order

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/10/16/trump-acquired-5-million-in-spacex-debt-two-days-before-space...
7•hn_acker•34m ago•1 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