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Democratizing Abandonware

https://geopjr.dev/blog/democratizing-abandonware
1•latexr•1m ago•0 comments

Research "junkification" is caused by researchers, not journals

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1845947/full
1•giuliomagnifico•2m ago•0 comments

Is Starlink a Secret Radar Constellation? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A
1•TMWNN•3m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: Error: Claude-fable-5 is temporarily unavailable

1•throwaw12•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: An always-fresh memory that learns your repo, so agents stop re-reading

https://github.com/shofer-dev/claude-code-live-memory
1•alsterg•7m ago•0 comments

OpenCRA

https://github.com/borisRadonic/OpenCRA
1•BorisRadonic•7m ago•0 comments

The Math Behind Harmony – why a fifth sounds sweet and a piano is tuned wrong

https://m-ric.com/blog/math-of-harmony/
1•aubanel•12m ago•0 comments

List of Humorous Units of Measurement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement
4•pchr8•15m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Explain this – agent skills to create HTML explainer for topics or code

https://github.com/analyticalmonk/explain-this/
2•akashtndn•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Adkumo – Marketing Agent for SaaS

https://www.adkumo.com
1•gustavoauma•18m ago•0 comments

Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

https://www.map.signalbox.io
6•scrlk•19m ago•0 comments

SW Agent – an outbound-only connector for browser-based PostgreSQL IDEs

2•Vivek-KY•21m ago•0 comments

Bad Epoll (CVE-2026-46242)

https://github.com/J-jaeyoung/bad-epoll
3•birdculture•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ScreenCI – Always up-to-date product videos from E2E tests

https://screenci.com/
4•ollipal•31m ago•0 comments

Reliability Issues with Jira and Confluence

https://jira-software.status.atlassian.com
1•amaccuish•31m ago•0 comments

LinguaHover – Hover Any Word, Translate Instantly – Chrome Extension

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/linguahover-translator-pr/dnkpfkopeeilpfgnehheceebamlcbcgc
1•titan_tokyo•35m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mochi Analytics

https://www.mochianalytics.com
2•devtanna•37m ago•0 comments

In the Weights

https://intheweights.com
1•dash2•39m ago•0 comments

Bounding the Blast Radius: A Survey of Prompt-Injection Defenses for LLM Agents

https://fabraix.com/blog/nobody-has-solved-prompt-injection
1•ibrahim_abdu777•40m ago•0 comments

What Happens When AI Agents Can Pay Their Own Bills

https://self-sovereign-agent.github.io/
1•_pdp_•45m ago•2 comments

Higher blood glucose levels linked to faster brain aging

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-higher-blood-glucose-linked-faster.html
2•XzetaU8•46m ago•0 comments

Supply Chain Attack Campaign PolinRider

https://socket.dev/supply-chain-attacks/polinrider
1•_____k•46m ago•0 comments

Poll: Is there an AI bubble?

1•networked•47m ago•4 comments

Generative AI without guardrail can harm learning:Evidence from high school math

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2422633122
2•teleforce•48m ago•0 comments

Tribe in Colorado brings utility scale solar project online

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/06/nx-s1-5779756/despite-stiff-political-headwinds-tribe-in-colorado-...
2•geox•52m ago•0 comments

Claude Code deletes conversations after 30 days

1•mieubrisse•53m ago•2 comments

Adding Homemade TLS to a Homemade Web Server

https://www.dmytrohuz.com/p/adding-homemade-tls-to-a-homemade
1•dmyhuz•57m ago•0 comments

Euclid scientists discover most distant known quasars

https://www.euclid-ec.org/most-distant-quasars/
1•robin_reala•58m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What is your go-to prompt to prove AI can be wrong?

1•throwaway_887•1h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Do you guys struggle with finding a right person for your FDE role?

1•getelementbyiq•1h 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