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Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard

https://guitoro.com/
1•talccc•1m ago•0 comments

Skibidi Toilet vs. God-Emperor Elon – The Future Capitalism Wants [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xfmpgIH8IQ
1•gessha•1m ago•0 comments

You are not the only one

https://www.breadchris.com/blog/you-are-not-the-only-one/
1•breadchris•3m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: In the new AI world, what's the best way to review code?

1•iwebdevfromhome•3m ago•0 comments

Diffr, a Rust and WASM powered diffing engine

https://dev.fast/blog/diffr/
3•sidharthkmenon•4m ago•1 comments

Chrome Full-Chain Exploit with GPT 5.6

https://xbow.com/blog/xbow-built-a-chrome-full-chain-exploit
1•gizmodo59•5m ago•0 comments

EUDI wallet ecosystem sustainability and business models

https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d3a5900c-c387-11f1-bfcb-01aa75ed71a1/lan...
1•kaizencode•8m ago•0 comments

Simple Agent Store – Dead Simple Storage for Agents

https://www.simpleagentstore.com
1•darkrishabh•8m ago•1 comments

Swarm Intelligence

https://kk.org/thetechnium/swarm-intelligence/
3•herbertl•12m ago•0 comments

Online Pornography Created the Model for Platform Capitalism

https://jacobin.com/2026/10/platform-capitalism-internet-porn-camming
1•PaulHoule•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PanamaKVM – direct-booting Linux from Java 25 via FFM/KVM

https://github.com/rusanoph/panama-kvm
1•rusanoph•15m ago•0 comments

Practitioner Voice

https://martinfowler.com/articles/practitioner-voice.html
2•ibobev•16m ago•0 comments

Tuning Platforms

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-448
1•ibobev•17m ago•0 comments

Patching Zig's Std

https://marler8997.github.io/blog/zig-patch/
2•ibobev•17m ago•0 comments

Overdose Offsets: Why Every Bag of Fentanyl I Sell Is Net Life-Positive

https://morewrong.lol/?post=overdose-offsets-why-every-bag-of-fentanyl-i-sell-is-net-life-positive
1•ndr42•18m ago•0 comments

ChatGPT and 18 = Chat18GPT

4•sabahlkhir•19m ago•0 comments

Analytical Ballistic Trajectories with Approximately Linear Drag [pdf]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2014/463489
1•thunderbong•19m ago•0 comments

Marketing Agent for Founders

https://heybono.ai
1•zinxor•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cut the tokens your coding agent spends reading tool output

https://github.com/cauebraz/squeeze
2•cauebraz•20m ago•0 comments

Deskilling the Body

https://aeon.co/essays/the-more-we-rely-on-tech-the-more-we-deskill-our-bodies
2•herbertl•20m ago•0 comments

Origin App Marketplace

https://cursor.com/changelog/origin-app-marketplace
1•ocamoss•21m ago•0 comments

Sakana AI – Building Frontier AI in Japan

https://sakana.ai/
3•amai•21m ago•0 comments

AI distrust is GitHub's opportunity

https://www.infoworld.com/article/4233357/ai-distrust-is-githubs-opportunity.html
3•runtimewire•22m ago•0 comments

Tools make LLMs less likely to refuse requests

https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03938
1•jameslk•23m ago•0 comments

"Evolution of JVM: A Journey Through Time"–Comprehensive Guide for Programmers

https://medium.com/@gudise.ashok/the-evolution-of-the-jvm-a-journey-through-time-a-comprehensive-...
1•stmw•24m ago•0 comments

What's behind the big interest in miniatures?

https://economist.com/culture/2026/10/13/whats-behind-the-big-interest-in-miniatures
1•andsoitis•25m ago•1 comments

High-Level Algebra for Low-Level Tensor Optimization in ATL

https://stng.substack.com/p/high-level-algebra-for-low-level
1•matt_d•26m ago•0 comments

Fast Rust-based bundler for JavaScript

https://rolldown.rs/
3•modinfo•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Interactive NYC food inspection map with a deduction game

https://prizz.io/nyc
1•cirqwit•27m ago•0 comments

A GET-only message board

https://getboard.beurerkellner.com/
2•lbeurerkellner•27m 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