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Free tools for Etsy sellers, podcasters, and indie devs

https://thesellermind.com/tools/fee-calculator
1•haimo•1m ago•0 comments

FBI gets voter's IP address in new fraud probe tactic

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/31/fbi-voter-ip-address-investigation
1•_tk_•4m ago•0 comments

How to Do Great Work

https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html
1•tosh•7m ago•0 comments

The Chatbot Act Forces One Parenting Model on Every Family

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/chatbot-act-forces-one-parenting-model-every-family
1•mdp2021•9m ago•0 comments

Leopold Aschenbrenner Built a Hot A.I. Hedge Fund. Then It Melted Down

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/business/situational-awareness-leopold-aschenbrenner.html
2•sbulaev•19m ago•1 comments

Google Just Ruined One of Its Most Important Tools

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/google-earth-ai-images/688145/
1•eloisius•20m ago•1 comments

Perplexity AI loses bid to toss Reddit lawsuit over data scraping

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/perplexity-ai-loses-bid-toss-reddit-lawsuit-over-data-sc...
1•thm•22m ago•0 comments

What makes good magnet programs attractive?

https://www.educationprogress.org/p/what-makes-good-magnet-programs-attractive
1•barry-cotter•27m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How did your boss's behavior change with the rise of AI?

1•aredirect•28m ago•0 comments

Granola Class Action Lawsuit

https://twitter.com/RobertFreundLaw/status/2083350273758728216
1•freestylematt•29m ago•0 comments

WTF Happened in 1971?

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
2•baxtr•30m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Wisp – a Linux shell with Lua scripting and structured pipelines

https://github.com/Hinikaa/wisp
1•hinikaa•31m ago•0 comments

Bloom Filters

https://arpitbhayani.me/blogs/bloom-filters/
1•vishwajeet_thok•33m ago•0 comments

AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

https://weeraman.com/the-prototype-isnt-the-product/
2•smckk•34m ago•1 comments

Amgen Reports Breach to SEC

https://databreaches.net/2026/07/31/amgen-reports-breach-to-sec/
1•WaitWaitWha•41m ago•0 comments

How Functional Is Human Tetrachromacy? (Ooqui) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLC38iB7deE
1•zeristor•43m ago•0 comments

Google plans to exempt sanctioned nations from Android developer verification

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/google-plans-to-exempt-sanctioned-nations-from-android-de...
1•01-_-•44m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Habit Dungeon – RPG gamification that helps good habits stick

https://gamifyhabits.app/
1•jackedv•44m ago•1 comments

Solid Queue 1.6.0 now supports fiber workers

https://github.com/rails/solid_queue/releases/tag/v1.6.0
2•earcar•44m ago•0 comments

Silicon Valley loves young founders. Until it doesn't

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/31/build-in-public-fail-in-public-what-its-like-to-be-a-founder-un...
1•01-_-•45m ago•1 comments

Situated Software (2004)

https://devonzuegel.com/situated-software
1•chr15m•45m ago•1 comments

Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
51•milkshakes•49m ago•24 comments

Is AI Conscious? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRbZyuY8EN8
2•abc42•55m ago•1 comments

Ats Resume Checker

https://www.apply-tracker.com/en/resume-checker
1•mirnumbing•57m ago•0 comments

The OpenCode default session prompts for plan and edit

https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/tree/dev/packages/opencode/src/session/prompt
2•walrus01•1h ago•0 comments

Marketing sucks when all you want to do is build."builder's dopamine"

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1vblhwy/comment/p0z1i6b/
2•absolutedev•1h ago•0 comments

Future euro banknote design proposals

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/html/design-proposals.en.html
2•austinallegro•1h ago•0 comments

Most speed readers break on Japanese, Chinese and Thai

https://www.readkinetic.com/blog/speed-reading-japanese-chinese-thai
1•SamuraiLion•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Lightweight, S3-compatible object storage server

https://vaults3.com/
1•open_source_new•1h ago•0 comments

Police in US are using the power of podcasts to crack unsolved murders

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpw9q0ekd9eo
1•zeristor•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