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The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

https://www.semidoped.com/p/til-the-man-who-invented-the-future
2•johncole•3m ago•0 comments

2ez.sol Its 1999 again Free games. 2ez

https://2ez.sol.site
1•sgspace•11m ago•1 comments

Grid: E2EE Alternative to Life360

https://mygrid.app
1•thebiblelover7•16m ago•1 comments

Field of clones: How horse replicas came to dominate polo

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2026/cloned-polo-horses
4•gscott•18m ago•0 comments

Lego launches 12,060-piece Sagrada Família – its biggest ever set

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/05/style/lego-sagrada-familia-gaudi-scli-intl
1•giuliomagnifico•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LLM for Dummies

https://ronreiter.github.io/llm-for-dummies/
1•ronreiter•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: TakoVM – Isolated model and tool execution used by enterprises

https://github.com/las7/TakoVM
1•sakuraiben•22m ago•0 comments

The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e8e7g0r82o
1•breve•22m ago•0 comments

Ukrainian drones target St Petersburg in attack Russia calls 'unprecedented'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7498kz808o
3•MilnerRoute•22m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Ext-Infer – Native LLM Inference and Embeddings for PHP

https://infer.displace.tech
1•eamann•25m ago•0 comments

Agent in 50 Lines

https://minimal-agent.com/
3•andai•29m ago•1 comments

The oldest surviving animated feature film at 100

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260603-how-a-26-year-old-german-woman-made-the-worlds-oldes...
2•1659447091•29m ago•1 comments

New Biochemistry-Based Metabolic Protocol Seeking Alpha Concierge Members

1•joshwprinceton•31m ago•0 comments

NASA interested in Hubble reboost if costs can be reduced

https://spacenews.com/nasa-interested-in-hubble-reboost-if-costs-can-be-reduced/
2•defrost•47m ago•0 comments

How Liminalism Became the Defining Aesthetic of Our Time

https://hyperallergic.com/how-liminalism-became-the-defining-aesthetic-of-our-time/
4•zeech•52m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Oproxy – inspect and modify network traffic from the browser

https://github.com/sauravrao637/oproxy
3•sauravrao637•53m ago•1 comments

The Demon of the Gaps

https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/06/06/the-demon-of-the-gaps/
6•azhenley•58m ago•2 comments

Gnome OS Nightly

https://os.gnome.org
3•shaunpud•1h ago•0 comments

TSMC CEO: I envy their 80% gross margins, but I would never do that

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/tsmc-taiwan-semiconductor-ceo-sends-blunt-message-to-m...
3•teleforce•1h ago•0 comments

ForgeLite-The Most Minimalized Git

2•david3289•1h ago•0 comments

I made this word find game

https://word.1200tech.com
4•bosco_camera•1h ago•0 comments

Tokenomics: Quantifying Where Tokens Are Used in Agentic Software Engineering

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14470
21•Anon84•1h ago•2 comments

Gaia2: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Dynamic and Asynchronous Environments

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11964
2•Anon84•1h ago•0 comments

Bitcoin is cratering, but there is a new Wall Street crypto HYPE

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/06/bitcoin-price-crash-crypto-hype-hyperliquid-etfs.html
4•KnuthIsGod•1h ago•0 comments

HateArena – A free and open source arena shooter

https://github.com/hatearena/hate
5•death_eternal•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Where do you get the latest updates about AI?

3•d0able•1h ago•1 comments

An Ohio Valley 100k-Watt FM Signal Is Severed in Broad Daylight – Radio World

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/an-ohio-valley-100000-watt-fm-signal-is-se...
51•pkaeding•1h ago•43 comments

ICE detainees across the US describe medical neglect

https://apnews.com/article/ice-immigration-detention-medical-neglect-dhs-32c3fbeef0c44dfb02fcab89...
5•petethomas•1h ago•0 comments

Super El Niño Events

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_El_Ni%C3%B1o_events
4•rolph•1h ago•0 comments

When Can Amazon Block an Agentic AI Service?–Amazon vs. Perplexity

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2026/06/when-can-amazon-block-an-agentic-ai-service-amazon-...
3•HotGarbage•1h 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