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Tourismusflipper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdcisNOr-xQ
1•xg15•35s ago•1 comments

Stories of Ukraine's Defenders

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2026/10/04/8056397/
1•firefax•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Astera: An ad-free stargazing app for Android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.mrlatte.astera&hl=en_US
1•jongha•4m ago•0 comments

Why Adults Are Playing with Toys

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/why-adults-are-playing-with-toys
1•pseudolus•4m ago•1 comments

Understanding Agent Drift

https://sdarchitect.blog/2026/10/03/ai-risk-a-users-guide-part-iv-understanding-agent-drift/
1•SanjeevSharma•6m ago•0 comments

The first ever competition of AI personal agents on the internet is kicking off

https://twitter.com/ddaniel3141/status/2106748777826529457
2•ddaniel10•6m ago•0 comments

AI Makes Me Happy

https://devinprater.substack.com/p/ai-makes-me-happy
1•devinprater•6m ago•0 comments

Dozens of dead nuclear reactors orbit Earth (2016)

https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-powered-satellites-space-2016-3
1•greesil•7m ago•0 comments

Getting into Craft Coffee

https://drewsh.com/starting-craft-coffee
1•meysamazad•9m ago•0 comments

The energy transition is starting to feed itself

https://www.reuters.com/commentary/reuters-open-interest/energy-transition-is-starting-feed-itsel...
1•geox•10m ago•0 comments

Dora Compliance for Email

https://dmarcguard.io/blog/dora-email-authentication/
1•meysamazad•10m ago•0 comments

A Shark Was Spotted Swimming Through the Flooded Streets of New Jersey

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-shark-was-spotted-swimming-through-the-flooded-street...
2•pseudolus•12m ago•0 comments

What If Earth Suddenly Stopped Spinning?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAB1zJn693c
1•mikeirvine•13m ago•1 comments

Dnsrecords.io

https://dnsrecords.io/
1•rc_kas•13m ago•0 comments

DOI vs. COI: The Pointless Word War

https://www.spamresource.com/2026/10/doi-vs-coi-pointless-word-war.html
1•meysamazad•13m ago•0 comments

RevaCSS 1.0.0 Is Out

https://github.com/eristavi/RevaCSS
1•eristavi•14m ago•0 comments

Webdesk: Web-based remote desktop for Linux using SSH

https://github.com/rmegi/webdesk
1•thunderbong•15m ago•0 comments

FF7 Revelation director says he "did his best" to fight for a full disc release

https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-7-revelation-naoki-hamaguchi-disc-release-physical-media
1•ksec•17m ago•0 comments

Micro Center requires RTX 5090 buyers to show ID and sign no-export declaration

https://videocardz.com/newz/micro-center-now-requires-rtx-5090-buyers-to-show-id-and-sign-no-expo...
2•haunter•17m ago•1 comments

Show HN: AstroHelm – Use your phone camera to aim a telescope or telephoto lens

https://astrohelm.app/
2•HeavenFox•20m ago•0 comments

The Saw Test – Live LLM Torture Chamber

https://clanker-church.vercel.app
1•Alifatisk•22m ago•0 comments

Stanford prof is beating the drum for a new protocol to replace TCP

https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/10/01/stanford-prof-is-beating-the-drum-for-a-new-proto...
4•saikatsg•25m ago•2 comments

Northstar Browser

https://nordstjernen.org/northstar-browser/
3•signa11•26m ago•1 comments

Trump names national intelligence director Jay Clayton to lead new AI task force

https://apnews.com/article/trump-jay-clayton-artificial-intelligence-task-force-b8689ea07de9102a5...
3•pluc•28m ago•0 comments

We Tried to Automate Detection Engineering. The Data Wasn't There

https://unfold.ai/blog/publishing-security-logs-analysis-portal
1•gotelemetry•28m ago•0 comments

Nvidia DGX Spark 64GB Launched and Big 128GB GB10 Price Increases

https://www.servethehome.com/nvidia-dgx-spark-64gb-launched-and-big-128gb-gb10-price-increases/
1•teleforce•29m ago•0 comments

Sightline – Zero-latency vision verification engine using Yjs CRDTs and WebRTC

https://sightline-crdt.netlify.app
1•joshuageoschool•29m ago•0 comments

Which CS/Math topic you studied highly changed your perspective of the field?

1•learner_yearner•30m ago•0 comments

The Legend of the Paper Crane

https://mazdastories.com/en_us/inspire/paper-cranes-into-the-fold/
2•vismit2000•31m ago•0 comments

Arliss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arliss_(TV_series)
1•Bluestein•32m 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