frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/

Examining Iran's Internet Status Amid Escalating Protests

https://filter.watch/english/2026/01/09/network-monitoring-january-2026-internet-repression-in-ti...
1•todsacerdoti•1m ago•0 comments

Life in Emojis – visualize the rest of your life

https://www.findfreetime.com/life
2•nicole-kelner•2m ago•0 comments

ProxLB 1.1.11 for Proxmox clusters released

https://gyptazy.com/blog/proxlb-proxmox-ha-affinity-rules-version-1-1-11/
1•gyptazy•4m ago•1 comments

SELinux Alternative – BPFJailer Implementation

https://github.com/gen0sec/bpfjailer
1•davidpapp•4m ago•1 comments

Ozempic reduced grocery spending by an average of 5.3% in the US

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/ozempic-changing-foods-americans-buy
2•giuliomagnifico•7m ago•0 comments

Beyond Python: Why LLMs Need More Stable, Open Source Code

https://thenewstack.io/beyond-python-why-llms-need-more-stable-open-source-code/
1•jboss10•7m ago•0 comments

Amazon insists I return a phone it says 'may be lost'

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/jan/12/amazon-return-phone-may-be-lost
2•n1b0m•8m ago•0 comments

Launch a Debugging Terminal into GitHub Actions

https://blog.gripdev.xyz/2026/01/10/actions-terminal-on-failure-for-debugging/
2•martinpeck•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Pairlane – P2P file sharing, no file bytes on server (WebRTC)

https://getpairlane.com/
1•kiyo-e•11m ago•0 comments

We still live in Fast Food Nation

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jan/06/we-still-live-in-fast-food-nation-eric-schlosser
1•ravel•12m ago•0 comments

Replit CEO Amjad Massad says vibe coding empowers CEOs to act on their ideas

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/this-ai-tool-is-helping-disempowered-ceos-with-a-major...
1•alina_valyaeva•12m ago•0 comments

Discussion: Shared state breaks most distributed multi-agent systems

1•mmmehulll•13m ago•0 comments

Managing the development of large software systems (1970) [pdf]

https://www.praxisframework.org/files/royce1970.pdf
1•showsover•16m ago•0 comments

Friction Logs (2018)

https://thagomizer.com/blog/2018/08/22/friction-logs.html
1•rmoff•16m ago•0 comments

Do comment threads not 'fold' anymore on HN?

1•wompapumpum•17m ago•1 comments

Apple Opposes India's Plan to Access iOS Source Code

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/12/apple-opposes-india-plan-access-ios-source-code/
1•tosh•17m ago•1 comments

I Built My Second Brain in a Day

https://malvik.de/blog/mbrain
1•svenmalvik•18m ago•0 comments

I Gave Up on No-Code Workflow Engines

https://malvik.de/blog/ai-workflow-engines
1•svenmalvik•18m ago•0 comments

Real-time talking avatar pipeline?

1•rakan1•20m ago•0 comments

Universal Commerce Protocol

https://ucp.dev/
1•h1fra•20m ago•0 comments

Letting Claude Play Text Adventures

https://borretti.me/article/letting-claude-play-text-adventures
1•ibobev•21m ago•0 comments

Tiobe Index for January 2026: C# is programming language of the year 2025

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
1•ksec•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built an open source Grafana Alerts Dashboard

https://github.com/mms-gianni/grafana-alerts-dashboard
1•2cpu1container•22m ago•0 comments

China's Top Paid App Is a Tool to Help Grandma Check In

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-01-12/china-s-top-paid-app-is-a-tool-to-help-gran...
1•Amorymeltzer•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zelda like dungeon clone written in Phaser and TypeScript

https://dungeon.uber.space/
1•eder13•25m ago•0 comments

Quantization and distillation effects on code LLMs

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02563
1•nkko•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built an auto-scheduler to help me decide what I'm watching

https://app.showshowshow.app
1•rubb3rDucc•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: RSS.Style – better UX for RSS/Atom links, now using JS instead of XSLT

https://www.rss.style/
1•Fileformat•27m ago•0 comments

Vibe Engineering: From Random Code to Deterministic Systems

https://medium.com/@andreworobator/vibe-engineering-from-random-code-to-deterministic-systems-06e...
1•boomchaos•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PSP,A vector retrieval algorithm like HNSW and NSG for MIPS

https://github.com/ZJU-DAILY/PSP
1•snasan•30m ago•0 comments