frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Second hand is now better than new

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/why-secondhand-is-now-better-than
1•rwmj•1m ago•0 comments

Should I uninstall every GUI app I use?

1•ankushkun_•2m ago•0 comments

Create a semi-working desktop only based on runtime Windows 3.10 shipped with W

https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115871854239918291
1•todsacerdoti•6m ago•0 comments

India's surveillance state and the future of democracy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/09/india-surveillance-state-democracy/
1•thunderbong•6m ago•1 comments

One Man Rowing Alone in the South Atlantic Rescued

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/28401-rescue-of-finnish-rower-jari-saa...
1•SebaSeba•6m ago•1 comments

Disposable software as extended cognition – discussion on R/PhilosophyOfMind

https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofMind/s/Kw6t4rM7kq
1•mcauldronism•7m ago•0 comments

I Worked at a Google Data Center: What I Saw Will Shock You [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLX_w0TtBpY
1•mgh2•7m ago•0 comments

Investigating Record-Based Domain Models

https://coding-mischief.com/?p=1
1•luca_takahashi•8m ago•1 comments

Solving the Founder Control vs. Capital Dilemma with Modular Equity Tokens

https://zenodo.org/records/18209805
1•iam_pri_s•12m ago•1 comments

The Linux audio stack demystified(2024)

https://blog.rtrace.io/posts/the-linux-audio-stack-demystified/
1•birdculture•14m ago•0 comments

How Grok's nudification tool went viral

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/11/how-grok-nudification-tool-went-viral...
1•n1b0m•16m ago•0 comments

Joy and Curiosity #69

https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-curiosity-69
1•swah•18m ago•0 comments

AI Systems Engineering Patterns – Alex Ewerlöf Notes

https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/ai-systems-engineering-patterns
1•kiyanwang•19m ago•0 comments

Moving Away from Agile: What's Next?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZStlIhyTCY
1•kiyanwang•20m ago•0 comments

Keeping 20k GPUs Healthy

https://modal.com/blog/gpu-health
2•birdculture•20m ago•0 comments

Outcomes > Learning Opportunities – By Shreyas Doshi

https://shreyasdoshi.substack.com/p/outcomes-learning-opportunities
1•kiyanwang•22m ago•0 comments

Show HN: pgwire-replication - pure rust client for Postgres CDC

https://github.com/vnvo/pgwire-replication
1•sacs0ni•23m ago•1 comments

Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

https://antirez.com/news/158
4•todsacerdoti•23m ago•0 comments

Timeline of the Human Condition|Milestones in Evolution and History

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~cpd/history.html
1•hkhn•23m ago•0 comments

Why AI Agents Replaced the Arduino IDE in My ESP32 Projects [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DG0-_lseR4
1•zeristor•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ESPTimeCast – DIY WiFi Clock and Weather Station for ESP32 / ESP8266

https://github.com/mfactory-osaka/ESPTimeCast
1•m-factory•27m ago•0 comments

Is Orion's heat shield safe? New NASA chief's review on eve of flight

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-orion-heat-shield-expresses-full-confide...
2•smurda•28m ago•1 comments

Ad Blockers helped kill the open web

https://christianheilmann.com/2025/12/17/ad-blockers-helped-kill-the-open-web/
3•saeedesmaili•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ambient Shield – Cinema mode for dual-monitor setups

https://ambient-shield.xyz
1•haka_•31m ago•0 comments

Live Coding Trance Music from Scratch in Strudel [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu5rnQkfO6M
1•sieste•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bound – local code autocomplete LLM fine-tuned on your repository

https://bound.sh
1•misterchocolat•34m ago•0 comments

Exa.ai is indexing personal site data ignoring robots.txt

https://twitter.com/rbbydotdev/status/2010290966138396950
1•rbbydotdev•40m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Building a Recommender System for GitHub Repositories

https://gorse.io/posts/github-recsys.html
1•zhenghaoz•47m ago•0 comments

To Close or Not to Close

https://www.matsimon.dev/blog/to-close-or-not-to-close
1•close2•49m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is Web Development in a rut?

1•falloutx•54m ago•2 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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.
jcgrillo•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/