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Turn Any Image into JPEG XL. Free and Private

https://anyjxl.com/
1•johnnyApplePRNG•2m ago•0 comments

GitHub denies Copilot Autofix wrote the bug Wiz's AI agent found

https://ai-news.ghost.io/github-denies-copilot-autofix-wrote-the-bug-wizs-ai-agent-found/
1•Striation•3m ago•0 comments

LLMs prefer machine-written prose over Austen and Shakespeare ~90% of the time

https://shivanshuag.com/blog/the-machine-never-raises-its-voice/
1•shivanshuag•6m ago•0 comments

More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/more-half-adults-us-say-they-lack-basic-statistical-under...
1•giuliomagnifico•7m ago•0 comments

Run several Linux kernels at the same time on bare metal, without a hypervisor

https://lwn.net/ml/all/ao34RJ7aZ2BLd67S@pop-os.localdomain/
1•NewJazz•8m ago•0 comments

Why Political Moderates Are Losing

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-political-moderates-are-losing
1•connor11528•13m ago•0 comments

I think printable objects are an underrated way to test physical products

https://deskidols.vercel.app/
1•Shmungus•14m ago•0 comments

First Findings of Mirror-Like Activity in Individual Human Neurons

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/first-findings-of-mirror-like-activity-in-individual-human-neu...
1•XzetaU8•20m ago•0 comments

DefCon 34 - Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=656058JxTM0
2•wizardforhire•24m ago•0 comments

Iran war supercharged EV sales everywhere except the U.S.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/trumps-iran-war-supercharged-ev-sales-everywhere-excep...
1•toomuchtodo•27m ago•0 comments

We run Postgres on local NVMe

https://pgrun.dev/blog/why-we-run-postgres-on-local-nvme
1•handfuloflight•28m ago•0 comments

Lab supply companies have been selling antibodies using manipulated images

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/lab-supply-companies-have-been-selling-antibodies-using-m...
1•OutOfHere•30m ago•0 comments

Fetch – control your Claude Code agents from the Mac notch

https://tryfetch.dev/
1•laithistaken•30m ago•0 comments

Recursive Self-Improvement (not yet). Also, we need a new definition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQanDOFJwvo
1•bradwmorris•31m ago•1 comments

Goodbye File Browser

https://hacdias.com/2026/07/28/filebrowser/
1•Ginop•32m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why are Claude models so verbose?

1•JacobWolf•42m ago•3 comments

Xiaomi's Xring Series suggests more OEM's switching to in-house SoCs

1•StizzurpXDD•42m ago•0 comments

Perplexity's Portable Computer tackling local AI services market

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/26/now-perplexity-is-trying-to-get-into-the-local-a...
1•Gaishan•42m ago•0 comments

Running out of money': Kraft, McDonald's, Whirlpool CEOs flag consumer concern

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/running-money-kraft-mcdonald-whirlpool-114500035.html
6•MrJagil•42m ago•0 comments

BanglaTools – Bengali Unicode and Bijoy text conversion tools

https://banglatools.com/
1•btref26hn•43m ago•0 comments

Front end skill pack for AI agents, with machine-enforced quality gates

https://krishna-modi12.github.io/frontend-design-pro/
1•KrishnaModi12•44m ago•1 comments

Show HN: LLM-powered webapp to build LLM-powered webapps

https://codeplusequalsai.com/dashboard
1•cryptoz•47m ago•2 comments

Secret Cold War IBM Supercomputer Was Built for One Job

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cold-war-codebreaker-nsa-ibm
1•jnord•47m ago•0 comments

Portable Computer: Local-First AI

https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/products/portable-computer
1•Garbage•47m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Propose and Dual-Control for DNS Changes

https://www.loom.com/share/16dff02ee5604b7daf3ebc7c9c93d8a4
1•xinbenlv•50m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: HN Was Down

3•dhruv3006•52m ago•1 comments

$234B in Enterprise Application Software Spend at Risk from Agentic AI

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-07-01-gartner-says-us-dollars-234-billion...
2•theshrike79•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Openspender gives your agents wallets

https://openspender.com/
2•KrishnaMadala•53m ago•0 comments

Handwritten Blog

https://handwritten.danieljanus.pl/
4•eric_khun•53m ago•2 comments

'Moronic' video deal buys Google legal woes? (2006)

https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2006/10/10/moronic-video-deal-buys-google-legal-woes/1043392
3•dotcoma•54m 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