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Release of MonVisoer 0.1.0

https://github.com/linuxrebel/MonVisor
1•linuxrebe1•2m ago•0 comments

Companies to pay over $4M after gender reveal ignited deadly SoCal wildfire

https://ktla.com/news/inland-empire/settlement-gender-reveal-ignites-deadly-el-dorado-fire-califo...
1•Bender•2m ago•0 comments

LLMs are not the black box you were promised

https://www.jay.ai/blog/llms-are-not-a-black-box
1•_jayhack_•3m ago•0 comments

Second rabid bat found in crowded California neighborhoods sparks concern

https://www.dailymail.com/health/article-15865653/rabid-bat-san-francisco-rabies-exposure.html
1•Bender•3m ago•0 comments

Soon 80k-pound self-driving trucks could deliver packages to your door

https://www.dailymail.com/yourmoney/article-15868457/self-driving-trucks-fedex-aurora-texas.html
1•Bender•5m ago•0 comments

Will AI lead to the death of the internet? – DW Documentary [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qVbE9DHkEk
1•doener•12m ago•0 comments

The game from childhood is now multiplayer

https://tankolini-napierdolki.com/
1•symstu•13m ago•0 comments

Do Not Resign from Life

https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/do-not-resign-from-life
2•longdefeat•15m ago•0 comments

Project Brain – Persistent memory index for AI coding

https://github.com/OoneBreath/claude-code-project-brain
1•Slav_fixflex•17m ago•0 comments

databow: a Rust CLI for any database with an ADBC driver

https://columnar.tech/blog/introducing-databow//
1•hckshr•19m ago•0 comments

Pluto.jl 1.0 release – reactive notebook for Julia

https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pluto-1-0-release/137296
1•fons-p•21m ago•0 comments

The Mathematics of Multi-Tenancy

https://www.bitsxpages.com/p/the-mathematics-of-multi-tenancy
1•birdculture•27m ago•0 comments

Normetrics: A unified API for norm-based linear models (white paper)

https://github.com/PPenelle/-NORMETRICS-
1•ppenelle•27m ago•0 comments

Why China got rich and India didn't

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-china-got-rich-and-india-didnt
8•rochansinha•28m ago•0 comments

Audio software to increase focus (EEG)

https://www.hosaka.fi/
2•cslr•28m ago•1 comments

We're going to put Codex inside ChatGPT

https://openai.com/business/intelligence-at-work/
2•marcuschong•29m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Junco, turn newsletters into short audio episodes

https://www.tryjunco.com/
3•alex-onecard•30m ago•2 comments

Generating Random Factored Numbers, Easily [pdf]

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00145-003-0051-5.pdf
1•luu•31m ago•0 comments

DeepSeek-V4-Flash (official FP8) running across 2x DGX Spark

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/deepseek-v4-flash-official-fp8-running-across-2x-dgx-spark-...
1•pilooch•31m ago•0 comments

FBI charges two NIH researchers with smuggling monkeypox to US from Congo

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/feds-charge-foreign-nationals-working-national-institutes-he...
5•delichon•32m ago•0 comments

Python The Good Stuff: Humble Book Bundle

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/python-good-stuff-no-starch-books
2•teleforce•32m ago•0 comments

Use your Nvidia GPU's VRAM as swap space on Linux

https://github.com/c0dejedi/nbd-vram
19•tanelpoder•35m ago•0 comments

FullPAC files S-1 [pdf]

https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/gotv/sec/0001493152-26-026911/0001493152-26-026911.pdf
1•naryJane•36m ago•1 comments

Always Be Blaming: how Git blame answers the wrong question

https://matklad.github.io/2026/05/18/always-be-blaming.html
1•pgedge_postgres•41m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Reloops – Open-Source Frame.io Alternative for AI Agents and Teams

https://github.com/Reloops-App/reloops/
1•dheerajbhatia27•41m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Ordinary and Ordinaryd v0.6.0

https://codeberg.org/ordinarylabs/Ordinary/src/branch/main/docs/quick-start.md
1•seanwatters•42m ago•0 comments

Feds failing in bid to take a supercomputer from a climate research center

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/judge-blocks-part-of-trump-admins-effort-to-hurt-colorado...
3•yodon•43m ago•0 comments

I hadn't coded in 30 years. Then I built a space game with Godot

3•CosmicGoldRush•44m ago•0 comments

AI enthusiasts are in race against time, AI skeptics are in race against entropy

https://charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/ai-enthusiasts-are-in-a-race-against
1•wapasta•44m ago•0 comments

Eupago for Python – The First Python SDK for Portugal's MB Way/Multibanco

https://github.com/bilouro/eupago-python
1•bilouro•45m 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