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ESP32-S31 dual-core RISC-V SoC is getting official Linux support

https://www.cnx-software.com/2026/08/22/espressif-systems-releases-a-linux-bsp-developer-preview-...
1•pyprism•1m ago•0 comments

Meta $1.4T threat could mean 'turning in the keys and walking away'

https://fortune.com/article/meta-faces-1-4-trillion-threat-stakes-of-case-reach-across-tech-08-20...
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•8m ago•2 comments

GPT 5.6 Sol 20% price reduction

https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-5.6-sol
2•izakfr•9m ago•1 comments

Suspicions of hitting daughter between a congressman and his ex-wife

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/08/21/inside-police-investigation-how-rep-max-...
2•doctorpangloss•11m ago•1 comments

Fighter jets help destroy Russian drone boat near European offshore gas platform

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/explosive-russian-drone-boat-destroyed-near-european-offs...
1•jnord•11m ago•0 comments

I built an open-source FACEIT stats Browser Source for OBS

https://faceitwidget.com/
1•nachete•15m ago•0 comments

Firezone REST API generally available

https://www.firezone.dev/blog/rest-api-ga
1•jamilbk•19m ago•0 comments

Prevention of myopia in a near-primate by supplemental indigo light

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42612637/
1•OutOfHere•24m ago•1 comments

I tested 20 "agent-ready" Shopify stores –> 25% silently break at add-to-cart

https://github.com/MythrilS/agent-ready-checkout
1•MythrilS•31m ago•0 comments

Limnic Eruption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnic_eruption
2•tchalla•33m ago•0 comments

EchoCoT: Extracting Hidden Chain-of-Thought from Large Reasoning Models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20055
1•sbulaev•35m ago•0 comments

Finding a hidden Mersenne Twister inside a 15 year old game binary

https://medium.com/@jizoskasa/i-reverse-engineered-plants-vs-zombies-to-answer-one-very-specific-...
1•signa11•37m ago•0 comments

New U.S. tariffs to take effect after midnight, Canada plans to match levies

https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7310605
3•morkalork•41m ago•1 comments

France issues warning over substandard condoms

https://www.dw.com/en/france-issues-warning-over-thousands-of-substandard-condoms/a-78462877
2•tchalla•41m ago•0 comments

Inevitable Architecture

https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/inevitable-architecture/
1•cl42•43m ago•0 comments

Chinese regulators tell Tesla: fix 3M cars

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/08/chinese-regulators-tell-tesla-to-fix-nearly-3-million-cars/
2•worik•45m ago•0 comments

King of the Indie Hacker? Will You Claim the Throne?

https://www.kingoftheindiehacker.lol
1•mattmerrick•45m ago•0 comments

Neo: A novel writing tool from Hugh Howey

https://hughhowey.com/introducing-neo/
1•js2•48m ago•0 comments

Getting Freaky in the Age of AI

https://www.iankduncan.com/engineering/2026-08-07-getting-freaky-in-the-age-of-ai/
1•jbott•56m ago•0 comments

Ebb: A Privacy-First Period Tracker

https://ebb.lyfmail.com
1•LYFMail•59m ago•1 comments

People are vandalizing Flock surveillance cameras

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/21/nx-s1-5939851/flock-cameras-police-block-surveillance-vandalize
2•0in•1h ago•0 comments

Linus: And this was a debug session from hell, enormously helped by an AI

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=818bebeb63dd6bf5f4e...
2•Garbage•1h ago•0 comments

Giving an LLM your prod database is easy. Taking access away is the hard part

https://deepsql.ai/blog/giving-an-llm-your-database-is-easy-taking-access-away-is-hard
2•venkat971•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: A fruit fly on the web powered by the real FlyWire connectome

https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS
1•DustinBrett•1h ago•0 comments

Open-source field operations system for construction

https://taskfleetai.github.io/fieldfleet/
1•iguardo•1h ago•0 comments

The Cognitive Barrier to Teaching

https://educationrealist.substack.com/p/the-cognitive-barrier-to-teaching
1•barry-cotter•1h ago•0 comments

Instinct on X

https://instinctonx.com/2026-08-21
2•ajwaxman•1h ago•0 comments

Direct light-to-token conversion with integrated 2D photosensitive memory

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44460-026-00122-3
1•eunos•1h ago•0 comments

Startup Founders Are Working Harder Than Ever to Keep Up with Their AI Agents

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-agents-startup-work-culture-fa10494d
2•fortran77•1h ago•1 comments

Google MADE A MISTAKE – Pixel 11 Pro Fold durability test [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUT3rUZGqLA
1•canucker2016•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.
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