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Slides from my AI presentation I gave to seniors, feel free to share

https://aititus.com/presentations/superpower/
1•titusblair•3m ago•0 comments

Fun with Algebraic Effects – From Toy Examples to Hardcaml Simulations

https://blog.janestreet.com/fun-with-algebraic-effects-hardcaml/
1•weinzierl•3m ago•0 comments

How did Windows 95 get permission to put the Weezer video Buddy Holly on the CD?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260210-00/?p=112052
1•ingve•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Claworc – Manage multiple OpenClaw instances from a single dashboard

https://github.com/gluk-w/claworc
1•Dm_Linov•6m ago•0 comments

Yazi – fast terminal file manager written in Rust, based on async I/O

https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi
1•modinfo•7m ago•0 comments

Code Archaeology: Two Minute Time Lapse of Claude C Compiler [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9P89fe4WQk
1•crondee•7m ago•0 comments

Howard Lutnick admits visiting Epstein island during family vacation

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/10/lutnick-epstein-island-vacation-congress.html
1•belter•8m ago•1 comments

Games Console (2018)

https://mitxela.com/projects/console
1•kohlschuetter•8m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How to handle a 'Junior' title when Im doing Mid-level work? Time to go?

1•sieep•8m ago•0 comments

Schedules of Reinforcement in Psychology (Examples)

https://www.simplypsychology.org/schedules-of-reinforcement.html
1•walterbell•9m ago•0 comments

Ashwagandha is having a moment–researchers want to take this shrub further

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-ashwagandha-moment-shrub.html
2•PaulHoule•9m ago•0 comments

Mirage: A new breed of sampler, powered by tiny generative audio models

https://evanking.io/posts/mirage/
1•evmaki•9m ago•0 comments

I made Seedance 2.0 accessible before the official API launches

https://seedance2-pro.com
1•samidatikakr•9m ago•0 comments

Deepfaking Orson Welles's Mangled Masterpiece

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/09/deepfaking-orson-welless-mangled-masterpiece
1•CharlesW•10m ago•0 comments

China's Data Center Boom: A View from Zhangjiakou (2025)

https://sinocities.substack.com/p/chinas-data-center-boom-a-view-from
2•fzliu•11m ago•0 comments

Video can be "recovered" from Nest cameras even without cloud subscription

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/authorities-release-surveillance-photo-potential-subject-nan...
2•mv4•11m ago•1 comments

ICE defies judges' orders to release detainees, step by step

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/10/ice-immigration-detention-court-orders-00771727
2•SilverElfin•12m ago•0 comments

Introducing winpulse

https://xenodium.com/introducing-winpulse
1•xenodium•13m ago•0 comments

'E-bike for your feet': How bionic sneakers could change human mobility

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/10/nx-s1-5698195/nike-amplify-bionic-sneakers
2•apparent•14m ago•0 comments

New ARIA research funding programme: nearly £50M to secure AI agents in the wild

https://www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/trust-everything-everywhere/scaling-trust/funding/
1•multiagent•14m ago•0 comments

Digital Sovereignty Won't Save Us from Internet Shutdowns

https://www.ictworks.org/digital-sovereignty-wont-save-us-from-internet-shutdowns/
1•laurex•17m ago•0 comments

Build a AI coding agent in less than 700 lines of Python code

https://leanpub.com/build-your-own-coding-agent
1•jingweno•17m ago•0 comments

The Day I Realized Recovery Affects VO₂ Max More Than Effort

https://vo2maxpro.com/blog/recovery-affects-vo2-max-more-than-effort
1•GoodluckH•18m ago•0 comments

A pattern for safe database access with AI coding agents

https://docs.getpochi.com/tutorials/secure-db-access-in-pochi/
2•gyxlucy•18m ago•0 comments

A Deep Dive into Ruby C Extension Memory Management: embedded vs. separate (2025)

https://medium.com/@m.mastrodonato/a-deep-dive-into-ruby-c-extension-memory-management-embedded-v...
1•ciconia•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AIOpt – local-only guardrail for LLM token/cost regressions

https://github.com/tkddlr0716-collab/aiopt
1•psi0716•21m ago•0 comments

Hard Work and Success

https://almowry.com/writing/hard-work-and-success/
1•amukbils•21m ago•1 comments

I want a phone I can fix, and Fairphone's growth shows the world does too

https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/i-want-a-phone-i-can-actually-fix-and-fairphones-record-gro...
2•NoboruWataya•22m ago•0 comments

FBI releases surveillance video in Guthrie case recovered from Nest cam back end

https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2021281103454072983/photo/1
1•tokyobreakfast•22m ago•0 comments

Jeffrey Epstein's digital cleanup crew

https://www.theverge.com/report/876081/jeffrey-epstein-files-seo-google-digital-footprint-emails
5•imartin2k•24m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•9mo ago

Comments

thechao•9mo 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•9mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•9mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•9mo 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•9mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•9mo 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•9mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•9mo 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_•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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/