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Craigslist Charitable Fund

https://www.craigslistfund.org
1•Yctg•44s ago•0 comments

JGuard v0.4.0 – Capability-based security for the JVM (post-SecurityManager)

https://github.com/jguard-io/jguard
1•nknize•2m ago•0 comments

Quantum Computing Expert Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWJCfOvochA
1•gmays•2m ago•0 comments

Apple TV 12% market share, reaping benefits of stale content

https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/20/apple-tv-reaping-the-benefits-of-stale-content-on-bigg...
1•mgh2•4m ago•0 comments

NCEES discontinuing PE Software Engineering exam (2019)

https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineering-exam/
1•consumer451•12m ago•0 comments

AI for the Real World: A Conversation with Yann LeCun

https://twitter.com/AnneliesGamble/status/2054219457451733382
2•gmays•12m ago•0 comments

The Evolution of Team Appwrite

https://appwrite.io/blog/post/the-evolution-of-team-appwrite
1•gauravmeena95•14m ago•0 comments

Production Is a Compiler Input

https://aicoding.leaflet.pub/3mjx4erlboc2l
1•ankitg12•16m ago•0 comments

Two computers, one monitor, zero fiddling – Alex Plescan

https://alexplescan.com/posts/2025/08/16/kvm/
1•ankitg12•20m ago•0 comments

New Issue Tracker

https://lightningtrack.io/login
1•garyeterry•20m ago•0 comments

Terence Tao: My recollections on the early history of compressed sensing

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114967650999562435
4•johnbarron•35m ago•2 comments

Used to manage a collection of AI workflows for a single vertical domain – Wasup

https://github.com/EdwardJoke/Wasup
1•EdwardXie•36m ago•1 comments

The IndieWeb Is Wonderfully Dionysian

https://brennan.day/the-indieweb-is-wonderfully-dionysian/
2•gm678•36m ago•0 comments

Fix pathological performance in trait solver

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/155355
2•Jyaif•45m ago•0 comments

Pinote – A lightweight floating Markdown scratchpad app

https://github.com/ImFeH2/pinote
2•indigodaddy•46m ago•0 comments

I built a machine that can make you rich with math [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UM4j1_xEs0
1•tzvc•47m ago•1 comments

Senior NIAID Official Indicted for Concealing Records During Covid Pandemic

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-senior-niaid-official-indicted-concealing-federal-records-d...
5•Jimmc414•49m ago•2 comments

YC startup Luel appears to have copied Kled

https://twitter.com/avipat_/status/2055384102409253056
3•tjek•52m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Nexa-Gauge – LLM eval framework, now with self-hosted model support

https://github.com/harnexa/nexa-gauge
1•Sardhendu•54m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What happened to ssh-audit.com?

2•Bender•55m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Plan-Graph based code generation with LLMs

https://github.com/agrin96/VibegraphGenerator
1•ag_rin•58m ago•0 comments

Kinetic typography: the what, why, and how

https://www.linearity.io/blog/kinetic-typography/
1•argee•1h ago•0 comments

Symposia AI

https://www.trysymposiaai.com/landing
2•CarlosEdu•1h ago•1 comments

Solving CartPole in 8 Weights

https://cartpole.neocities.org/
4•georgehotz•1h ago•0 comments

Magical Realism: "Northern Exposure" 25 Years Later (2015)

https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/magical-realism-nothern-exposure-25-years-later
2•walterbell•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Wyndup – share a live countdown with your podcast guest

https://wyndup.net
1•ardwino•1h ago•0 comments

Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes, simplified: zone awareness, restarts, and mTLS

https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/elasticsearch-kubernetes-zone-awareness-restarts-mtls
1•eigenBasis•1h ago•0 comments

Jane Street's approach to AI adoption throughout their SDLC [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUYP4C29yCw
3•devdoshi•1h ago•1 comments

Brovan: Binary user-mode emulator for x86_64

https://github.com/AdvDebug/Brovan
2•AdvDebugy•1h ago•0 comments

WikiProject Editor Retention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Editor_Retention
1•sshh12•1h 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.
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/