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Xhisper – Dictation for Linux

https://github.com/imaginalnika/xhisper
1•cc_ashby•2m ago•0 comments

Zork is now open source

https://blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork-is-open-source
2•susam•3m ago•0 comments

Wall Street is banking on too many Federal Reserve rate cuts, Vanguard warns

https://www.ft.com/content/22b5e0e8-1db9-44c3-bade-11269f2fa670
1•zerosizedweasle•5m ago•0 comments

Cool similarities between chaldean and arabic

https://nasmaofny.com/similarities-between-aramaic-and-arabic/
1•marysminefnuf•8m ago•0 comments

Share with everyone the trialable Nano Banana Pro website – VGenie

https://vgenie.ai/image-models/nano-banana-pro
1•funny_ai•10m ago•1 comments

Bridging GNNs and LLMs: A Survey and Unified Perspective

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/server/api/core/bitstreams/7e6f86c2-04cf-4866-8d2e-5ad08272ca0b/content
2•sadid•17m ago•0 comments

Zoox kicks off robotaxi rides in San Francisco

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/zoox-begins-offering-robotaxi-rides-in-san-francisco-t.html
2•gmays•20m ago•0 comments

Swedish musician teaches a highly intelligent octopus to play piano

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/swedish-musician-teaches-octopus-piano/
1•NoRagrets•23m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Pynote – Embed Python code and editor, notebooks in any HTML page

https://getpynote.net/
2•laurentabbal•28m ago•0 comments

New video shows solar thermal water tank manufacturing in Hawaii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MI0ZMWlhmw
1•LMSolar•34m ago•1 comments

AI in Practice Survey

https://theoryvc.com/blog-posts/ai-in-practice-survey
3•gmays•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nano Banana Pro – Real Physics, Real Lighting, 4K Quality in Seconds

https://nanobanana-pro.co/
2•nicohayes•37m ago•2 comments

A "cooked" Computer Science grad's perspective

https://pomogaev.ca/cooked/
2•arrakark•39m ago•2 comments

Meta Sam 3D – Image to Mesh Model

https://ai.meta.com/sam3d/
1•tsnl•40m ago•0 comments

Former Google chief accused of spying on employees through account 'backdoor'

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-20/former-google-chief-accused-of-spying-on-employ...
5•coloneltcb•41m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Dream Decoder AI – Jungian dream analysis with 3D visualization

1•brandonmillsai•42m ago•0 comments

How Children die from Indian cough syrup

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/safety-lapses-weak-oversight-how-chil...
3•petethomas•46m ago•0 comments

US cancels October's employment report after shutdown prevented data collection

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-canceling-octobers-employment-report-after-shutdown-prevented-da...
3•mgh2•48m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Tablecraft – instant in-browser table converter/exporter

https://tablecraft-web.vercel.app/
2•tultra•50m ago•2 comments

PolyAgora: A natural-language multi-agent OS built through conversation

https://github.com/Takeshi-Sakamoto5/PolyAgora
1•takeshi_sakamo•51m ago•1 comments

The Saudification of America is under way

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/18/saudi-arabia-america-jamal-khashoggi
5•JumpCrisscross•52m ago•3 comments

Gesture Control for Smartwatches: Would Anyone Use This?

3•WayneFung1992•53m ago•0 comments

Netflix, Comcast and Paramount Submit Warner Bros. Discovery Bids

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/business/media/warner-discovery-bids-paramount-netflix-comcast...
3•ChrisArchitect•1h ago•1 comments

Muddy Waters CEO Carson Block on Nvidia, What to Short in AI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3aFSliswho
1•mgh2•1h ago•0 comments

Gaps in youth sex education linked to relationship struggles in adulthood

https://www.psypost.org/gaps-in-youth-sex-education-linked-to-relationship-struggles-in-adulthood/
3•ashishgupta2209•1h ago•2 comments

I Tested the M5 iPad Pro's Neural-Accelerated AI, and the Hype Is Real

https://www.macstories.net/stories/ipad-pro-m5-neural-benchmarks-mlx/
4•raw_anon_1111•1h ago•1 comments

Never Gonna Shut Me Up [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Zpg5jQe-Q
1•mooreds•1h ago•0 comments

Adobe to Acquire Semrush for $1.9B

https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/11/adobe-to-acquire-semrush
2•thm•1h ago•1 comments

EstimateKit

https://estimatekit.com
1•travpaiv•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Study Timer – Online Pomodoro focus timer

https://studytimer.io/
1•Brysonbw•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•6mo ago

Comments

thechao•6mo 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•6mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•6mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•6mo 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•6mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•6mo 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•6mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•6mo 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_•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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/