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Reuse Less Software

https://wiki.alopex.li/ReuseLessSoftware
1•birdculture•30s ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mesmereyes – classic HN demos, mashed up and remade for multitouch

https://kmewhort.github.io/vizlib/
1•kmewhort•1m ago•0 comments

AI Breaks the Monopoly of Elegant Software

https://tselai.com/ai-elegant-software-monopoly
1•fforflo•2m ago•0 comments

Chili Peppers of the World: Cultivars, Species, and Heat

https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/desertmexico/chili-peppers.html
2•Tomte•5m ago•0 comments

Pelican, or pelican't? A hint at Claude evals

https://noperator.dev/posts/pelicant/
1•noperator•6m ago•0 comments

70th Anniversary of the first hurricane seeding experiment (2017)

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hurricane_blog/70th-anniversary-of-the-first-hurricane-seeding-experiment/
1•thunderbong•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Whim-proxy, a vibe-coded tool to reverse-tunnel webhooks to your laptop

https://github.com/kakwa/whim-proxy
1•kakwa_•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Portfolio simulator using trend-following indicators and rebalance API

https://algorithmicfire.com/user/alerts
1•paulfdunn•10m ago•0 comments

Treating pancreatic tumours may have revealed cancer's master switch

https://economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/06/12/treating-pancreatic-tumours-may-have-reve...
2•andsoitis•10m ago•0 comments

Has AI Killed How-To Nonfiction?

https://tim.blog/2026/06/12/has-ai-already-killed-nonfiction/
2•Michelangelo11•13m ago•0 comments

Making our AI coding agent the only way we build our product

https://anyframe.dev/blog/we-hired-an-intern-named-gilfoyle
1•nurdtechie98•14m ago•0 comments

Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to overturn crypto fraud conviction

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/sam-bankman-fried-loses-bid-overturn-crypto-fraud-convic...
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•21m ago•0 comments

When Washington switched off Fable/Mython 5: What happened, hour by hour

https://twitter.com/kimmonismus/status/2065774154968711429
2•s-macke•21m ago•0 comments

AI can control your Desktop

https://clawdcursor.com
2•AmDab•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: IssunDB – a new embedded graph database with vector and text search

https://github.com/IssunDB/issun-db
2•habedi0•24m ago•0 comments

How we made continuous trace intelligence possible at scale

https://twitter.com/ankrgyl/status/2062635408182427859
3•gmays•26m ago•1 comments

Show HN: NixOS on Hetzner with OpenClaw in 15 Minutes

https://iraklijani.com/blog/installing-nixos-on-hetzner-metal/
3•ika•31m ago•2 comments

Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles (2016)

https://6it.dev/blog/infographics-operation-costs-in-cpu-clock-cycles-741
3•tosh•32m ago•0 comments

An O(x)Caml book that runs

https://kcsrk.info/ocaml/oxcaml/teaching/nptel/llm/2026/06/13/an-oxcaml-book-that-runs/
4•anirudh24seven•33m ago•0 comments

Rust reflection and a multi-array list

https://fnordig.de/2026/03/25/rust-reflection-and-a-multi-array-list/
1•tosh•34m ago•1 comments

Dangerous Technology for Americans Only

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/6/13/americans-only/
5•Tomte•38m ago•4 comments

The only policy tool that cannot be gamed

https://julienreszka.com/blog/the-only-policy-tool-that-cannot-be-gamed/
1•julienreszka•38m ago•0 comments

How iPhones Became Birth Control

https://spectator.com/article/iphones-became-birth-control/
3•pseudolus•42m ago•1 comments

U.S. Military Helping Move 7M Bpd Out of Persian Gulf, Wright Says

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Military-Helping-Move-7-Million-Bpd-Out-of-...
3•netfortius•44m ago•1 comments

Elon Musk Becomes the First Trillionaire. Is That Such a Bad Thing?

https://reason.com/2026/06/12/elon-musk-becomes-the-worlds-first-trillionaire-is-that-such-a-bad-...
4•abc42•46m ago•1 comments

Pentagon forbids export of Apple computers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxvLq0dFvw
5•Ecco•46m ago•1 comments

Zig: Extend @Vector for SPIR-V

https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/issues/35376
2•tosh•46m ago•0 comments

Wifärt Gallery

https://wifartgallery.com/
3•jasoncartwright•49m ago•0 comments

Good Design Disappears

https://hari.computer/good-design-disappears
2•andytratt•51m ago•0 comments

DVD-JEPA – a JEPA world model that dreams a bouncing DVD logo

https://dvd-jepa.vercel.app
4•mandarwagh•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