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Show HN: Vibe Dot – AI assistant device with cross-session memory, MCP server

https://vibe.us/products/vibe-dot/
1•joywong•23s ago•0 comments

Walter Koenig, actor who played Chekov on original "Star Trek" series, dies

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walter-koenig-dies-age-90-chekov-star-trek/
2•benkan•2m ago•0 comments

UK to charge universities $1,200 per international student

https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/uk-to-charge-universities-dollar1200-per-interna...
2•teleforce•2m ago•0 comments

Apple updates the iPad Mini with a larger OLED display

https://www.theverge.com/tech/1017801/ipad-mini-oled-display-apple-announce
1•benkan•3m ago•0 comments

1984: The Canadian Edition

https://btxx.org/posts/1984/
2•HotGarbage•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Outer Space Jobs

https://outerspacejobs.com/
2•non-•10m ago•2 comments

Looking for a tech job is a helpless data-entry nightmare

2•Gravyness•14m ago•1 comments

Show HN: MouseChase – A place-and-run puzzle game

https://mousechase-playtest.web.app/
1•X-Geek•20m ago•1 comments

There are now 5 inference providers for abliterated DeepSeek

https://allmodels.io/llm/abliterated
2•moeadham•21m ago•0 comments

Kickoff – A keyboard-driven live football scoreboard in your terminal

https://github.com/e12jassir/kickoff-cli
1•e12jassir•22m ago•0 comments

AI Enabled Private Equity

https://nivawealth.com
1•vbsm•26m ago•1 comments

Tailscale SSH: Investigation and remediation update

https://tailscale.com/ssh-investigation-update
2•theanonymousone•30m ago•0 comments

Journal of Agentic Meta Algorithms

https://agentic-meta-journal.pages.dev/
1•measurablefunc•32m ago•0 comments

Don't anthropomorphize big tech companies

https://www.seangoedecke.com/dont-anthropomorphize-big-tech-companies/
2•vismit2000•32m ago•0 comments

The Non-Negotiable Pattern – When Our Progress Becomes a CosmicOrigin Compulsion

https://medium.com/system-weakness/the-non-negotiable-pattern-when-our-progress-becomes-a-cosmic-...
1•mkraft_berlin•33m ago•0 comments

Why AI coding tools assume a clean slate

https://loopsfinity.com/blog-greenfield-bias-ai-tools
2•shymaple•34m ago•0 comments

Serbia's Student List preparing for talks on forming government

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/26/serbia-student-list-preparing-for-talks-on-forming-...
1•akbarnama•34m ago•0 comments

Three Levels for AI Agents: The Repo, the Company, and the Developer

https://systemweakness.com/three-levels-for-ai-agents-the-repo-the-company-and-the-developer-0e4f...
1•mkraft_berlin•35m ago•0 comments

Tech market feels like a data entry job

2•Gravyness•38m ago•0 comments

AI and the Collapse of Capitalism

https://jasonpolak.substack.com/p/ai-and-the-collapse-of-capitalism
4•bemtevi•55m ago•1 comments

Microsoft offers buyouts to around 60k employees to contain costs

https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-is-offering-buyouts-around-60000-employees-business-...
3•wfme•58m ago•2 comments

Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60k employees

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/26/microsoft-msft-voluntary-buyouts.html
2•smsm42•1h ago•0 comments

Nvidia's AI showpiece: Jensen-mania, robot ducks and neocloud distress

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/23/jensen-huang-gtc-robot-ducks-neocloud-distress.html
1•gmays•1h ago•0 comments

Periopolis is a 100% Carless City – Build it Yourself

https://periopolis.city
2•ChicagoDave•1h ago•0 comments

Quasiturbine Chainsaw

1•LongTermCapital•1h ago•0 comments

Live captions and translation for any Windows audio local

https://github.com/EduardoViniciusJ/AnyCaptions
1•eduardovinicius•1h ago•0 comments

Create and edit images with a collection of easy-to-use AI tools

https://www.picttool.com/
3•madisonmothkuri•1h ago•0 comments

Inside Real-Time Systems

https://kothariji.in/talks/real-time-systems/
1•kothariji•1h ago•1 comments

Why I'm Swapping Copyright for a Creative Commons Licence on My SciFi Novels

https://rodyne.com/?p=4141
2•boznz•1h ago•0 comments

Preview, edit, and collaborate on Markdown files natively in Google Docs & Drive

https://developers.googleblog.com/preview-edit-and-collaborate-on-markdown-md-files-natively-in-g...
2•soheilpro•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