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Show HN: WriteRush – The writing app that feels like a game

https://app.writerush.net/
1•levihanlen•16s ago•1 comments

Google Paid the Media Millions to Avoid Regulatory Pressure

https://www.techpolicy.press/how-google-paid-the-media-millions-to-avoid-regulatory-pressure/
1•Improvement•39s ago•0 comments

Eye Strain Affects Productivity

https://lookaway.com/blog/2025/09/17/how-eye-strain-affects-productivity/
1•_kush•4m ago•0 comments

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford tells Borderlands 4 critics: "code your own engine"

https://www.techspot.com/news/109487-gearbox-ceo-randy-pitchford-tells-borderlands-4-critics.html
1•speckx•7m ago•0 comments

Building Stronger Networks (2013)

https://robertsmall.org/2013/11/12/building-stronger-networks/
1•gk1•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Collected Every Emoticon I Could Find – All Mood and Generator

https://emoticonhub.com/
1•AdityaGavit•8m ago•0 comments

I have divided (and partly uninformed) views on OpenTelemetry

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/OpenTelemetryDividedViews
1•valyala•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Restaurant Online Booking System

https://intuifood.com
1•aclarembeau•10m ago•1 comments

Show HN: TextGlitch – A Glitch Text Generator]

https://www.textglitch.com/
1•kazitasnim•10m ago•0 comments

Closely sown corn plants communicate to defend themselves

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-24/closely-sown-corn-plants-communicate-to-defend...
1•PaulHoule•10m ago•0 comments

XAI likely first AI company with Gigawatt plus campus

https://semianalysis.com/2025/09/16/xais-colossus-2-first-gigawatt-datacenter/
3•danielcampos93•12m ago•0 comments

In Defense of C++

https://dayvster.com/blog/in-defense-of-cpp/
2•todsacerdoti•13m ago•0 comments

Unikraft Cloud Launch Announcement

https://unikraft.com/blog/were-building-the-future-of-ai-cloud-infra/
1•83457•13m ago•0 comments

Exposing Pegasus: How the State Spies on You – John Scott-Railton [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz_8ELBJRF0
3•gnabgib•14m ago•0 comments

Optical Tweezers: Principles and Applications (2015)

http://opticaltweezers.org/
2•pillars•14m ago•0 comments

Fewer versus Less

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_versus_less
1•cainxinth•14m ago•0 comments

Original Star Trek Voyager Model in Amiga LW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBahTCOaoVs
2•doener•17m ago•0 comments

World Labs – Generate persistent, navigable, and controllable 3D worlds

https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/bigger-better-worlds
5•dmarcos•17m ago•1 comments

Good Times in River City: Bridgetown 2.0 Is Here

https://www.bridgetownrb.com/release/bridgetown-v2-river-city-released/
1•todsacerdoti•19m ago•0 comments

Should We Drain the Everglades?

https://rabbitcavern.substack.com/p/should-we-drain-the-everglades
3•ksymph•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: An LLM chat app using Apple's FoundationModels

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hal%C5%8D/id6748263839
2•alariccole•21m ago•0 comments

Taliban leader bans Wi-Fi in an Afghan province to 'prevent immorality'

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-internet-ban-balkh-0554049d724b8c8e0fb1e668ff34bbd2
2•giuliomagnifico•22m ago•0 comments

User Segmentation

https://fusionauth.io/blog/user-segmentation
1•mooreds•22m ago•0 comments

The philosophical – moral implications of a 1989 Honda Civic

https://crookedtimber.org/2025/09/16/on-the-philosophical-moral-implications-of-a-1989-honda-civic/
1•stareatgoats•24m ago•1 comments

OpenAI will apply new restrictions to ChatGPT users under 18

https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/16/openai-will-apply-new-restrictions-to-chatgpt-users-under-18/
1•michael-sumner•25m ago•1 comments

Check Point Acquires Lakera to Deliver AI Security for Enterprises

https://www.checkpoint.com/press-releases/check-point-acquires-lakera-to-deliver-end-to-end-ai-se...
1•ml_basics•25m ago•0 comments

Apple forgot the "Compact" tab layout in macOS Safari

https://manualdousuario.net/en/safari-compact-tabs-macos-sequoia/
1•rpgbr•25m ago•0 comments

DataTables CDN Outage – post incident review

https://datatables.net/blog/2025/july-29-outage
3•cristoperb•26m ago•0 comments

Setting Up and Configuring LibreSDR B210/B220 AD9361 on Windows and Linux

https://gainsec.com/2025/01/23/setting-up-and-configuring-libresdr-b210-b220-ad9361-on-windows-an...
1•transpute•26m ago•0 comments

CodeRabbit Competitors for Bug-Free, Faster AI Code Reviews

https://www.codeant.ai/blogs/coderabbit-alternatives
2•ritendn•29m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•4mo ago

Comments

thechao•4mo 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•4mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•4mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•4mo 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•4mo 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•4mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•4mo 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•4mo 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•4mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•4mo 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•4mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•4mo 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•4mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•4mo 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_•4mo 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•4mo 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•4mo 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•4mo 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/