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Tell HN: DigitalOcean's managed services broke each other after update

2•neilfrndes•1m ago•0 comments

Malicious Chrome Extension Steals MEXC API Keys for Account Takeover

https://socket.dev/blog/malicious-chrome-extension-steals-mexc-api-keys
1•feross•1m ago•0 comments

Nate the Lawyer breaks down the ICE shooting footage in detail [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDda-L_ZOE8
4•zahlman•2m ago•1 comments

Yes, You Can Use AI in Our Interviews. In Fact, We Insist

https://www.canva.dev/blog/engineering/yes-you-can-use-ai-in-our-interviews/
1•SupremumLimit•4m ago•1 comments

Vibe Engineering: What I've Learned Working with AI Coding Agents

https://twitter.com/mrexodia/status/2010157660885176767
1•thewavelength•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I made a physical app blocker with ESP32

https://github.com/benjamin-feldman/esp32-blocker
1•b_feldman•6m ago•0 comments

The Real Reason Trump Invaded Venezuela (Hint: It's Not Oil) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6pdRYGuwCw
1•Darryl191•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I found that Facebook made around 14K from my daily usage

2•puildupO•13m ago•1 comments

Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10303565/
2•jerlendds•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Blockchain-Based Equity with Separated Economic and Governance Rights

https://zenodo.org/records/18209805
2•iam_pri_s•15m ago•0 comments

Hotdog – Performant Bun Based Web-Server Framework

https://github.com/shedtheshade/hotdog
1•vednig•17m ago•0 comments

We're all just content for ICE

https://www.garbageday.email/p/we-re-all-just-content-for-ice
14•woggy•17m ago•12 comments

DeepSeek founder's hedge fund generated over 50% returns in the past year

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-12/deepseek-founder-liang-s-funds-surge-57-as-chi...
2•didntknowyou•18m ago•1 comments

Reject the Religion of Efficiency

https://www.digitalliturgies.net/p/reject-the-religion-of-efficiency
2•zdw•19m ago•0 comments

TR-100 Machine Report

https://github.com/usgraphics/usgc-machine-report
1•carlos-menezes•19m ago•0 comments

Stop Calling Everything an AI Agent

https://eagleeyethinker.substack.com/p/stop-calling-everything-an-ai-agent
2•eagleeyethinker•20m ago•1 comments

2025: A year in [Stack Overflow] moderation

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/437934/2025-a-year-in-moderation
1•zahlman•20m ago•0 comments

Trump Officials Are Sending 1k More Immigration Officers to Minnesota

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/us/politics/border-patrol-minnesota-surge.html
5•mickle00•20m ago•0 comments

Autohand

https://autohand.ai/
1•handfuloflight•22m ago•0 comments

Graideon – Frist Agentic AI Grading Assistant

https://graideon.com/
1•eyadabouker•22m ago•1 comments

Why the mad artistic genius trope doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny

https://theconversation.com/why-the-mad-artistic-genius-trope-doesnt-stand-up-to-scientific-scrut...
1•bikenaga•24m ago•0 comments

There Are 29,000 People on a Waitlist for Beans—and It’s Not for the Fiber

https://www.wsj.com/business/entrepreneurship/rancho-gordo-beans-fiber-protein-e27ec1ff
2•paulpauper•25m ago•0 comments

Elon Musk's X faces bans and investigations over nonconsensual bikini images

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/12/nx-s1-5672579/grok-women-children-bikini-elon-musk
6•mikhael•28m ago•1 comments

Grounding LLMs with Recursive Code Execution

https://yogthos.net/posts/2026-01-12-recursive-language-model.html
1•yogthos•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Endpoint Scaling Kubernetes Controller

https://github.com/nwindian/endpoint-scaler
2•IKnowMazin•34m ago•0 comments

The Pentagon Is Recruiting Elon Musk to Help Them Win a Nuclear War

https://www.mintpressnews.com/pentagon-recruiting-elon-musk-nuclear-war/289055/
2•testing43523•35m ago•0 comments

Asahi Linux – Porting Linux to Apple Silicon [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-apple-silicon
2•birdculture•35m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Signal – Newsletter digest with web dashboard and scheduling

https://hiddensignal.app
1•hookedonwinter•36m ago•0 comments

Anduril's Palmer Luckey thinks the future of tech is in the past

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/08/andurils-palmer-luckey-thinks-the-future-of-tech-is-in-the-past/
4•bookofjoe•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Modern Philosophy Course

https://readphilosophy.org/?w=course%2Fmilesians%2Fthales%2Fthales
2•bridelamb•40m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/