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Ford to start selling certified used cars on Amazon

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ford-amazon-selling-used-cars-online/
1•rawgabbit•2m ago•1 comments

Cline-Bench: A Real-World, Open-Source Benchmark for Agentic Coding

https://cline.bot/blog/cline-bench-initiative
1•janpio•5m ago•0 comments

Amazon Greenlights a New Stargate Series

https://www.gateworld.net/news/2025/11/amazon-greenlights-new-stargate-series/
3•BiraIgnacio•6m ago•2 comments

Post-Capitalism for Martians (2015)

https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/postcapitalism-lecture-london-school-of-economics-580c68efef83
1•bookofjoe•6m ago•0 comments

Bill Watterson Returns with The Mysteries (2024)

https://www.comicsbeat.com/graphic-novel-review-bill-watterson-returns-with-the-mysteries/
1•crescit_eundo•8m ago•0 comments

Grok: Yep, Elon Musk Is More Fit Than LeBron, More Handsome Than Brad Pitt

https://au.pcmag.com/ai/114329/grok-yep-elon-musk-is-more-fit-than-lebron-more-handsome-than-brad...
3•TheAlchemist•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Facetime Influencer AI Avatars Real-Time

https://popclone.io/bre
1•spolanki•14m ago•1 comments

HP and Dell disable HEVC support built into their laptops' CPUs

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/hp-and-dell-disable-hevc-support-built-into-their-laptops...
3•stalfosknight•15m ago•0 comments

CDC website changed to contradict conclusion that vaccines don't cause autism

https://apnews.com/article/cdc-autism-vaccines-7b1890f626dd5921fafd00fdd1e6425a
2•petethomas•16m ago•0 comments

Data Science Weekly – Issue 626

https://datascienceweekly.substack.com/p/data-science-weekly-issue-626
1•sebg•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: 0Portfolio – AI-powered portfolio builder for everyone

https://0portfolio.com/
1•adityamallah•18m ago•0 comments

Trustworthy Systems Group: secure and performant real-world computer systems

https://trustworthy.systems/
1•doener•18m ago•0 comments

Are cellular towers the next landlines?

https://ssg.dev/are-cellular-towers-the-next-landlines/
1•sedatk•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CampaignTree – A visual alternative to spreadsheets for planning ads

https://campaigntree.app
1•advanttage•19m ago•0 comments

RI judge intervenes after ICE mistakenly detains Superior Court intern

https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/providence/ri-judge-intervenes-after-ice-mistakenly-detains-...
5•chmaynard•20m ago•0 comments

I Let a Brain Organoid Make My Investment Decisions

https://epicquest.bio/brain-organoid.html
2•kemmishtree•21m ago•1 comments

Is C++26 getting destructive move semantics?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79817124/is-c26-getting-destructive-move-semantics
2•todsacerdoti•21m ago•0 comments

Federal prosecutors move to dismiss charges against woman shot by Border Patrol

https://apnews.com/article/chicago-immigration-crackdown-woman-shot-border-e58ca635feeb2ef8ddb0b4...
2•petethomas•21m ago•0 comments

The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown (2010)

https://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and-hobbes-search-takedown/
1•thunderbong•21m ago•0 comments

Mudyla: Multimodal dynamic launcher, a DAG-based bash script orchestrator

https://github.com/7mind/mudyla
1•pshirshov•25m ago•0 comments

PrivateCut – Trim videos 100% in the browser, no upload, works offline

https://privatecut.app
2•privatecutapp•27m ago•1 comments

Putting Down Your Phone May Help You Live Longer (2019)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/well/mind/putting-down-your-phone-may-help-you-live-longer.html
1•abixb•28m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How Do you undo or checkout changes from Codex CLI and others?

1•elpakal•28m ago•1 comments

Suppression of pair beam instabilities in a laboratory analogue of blazar jets

https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09040
2•PaulHoule•29m ago•0 comments

Nvidia pushes hotfix after Windows 11 October update tanks gaming performance

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/20/nvidia_windows_11_hotfix/
2•Bender•30m ago•0 comments

Morgan Stanley Delays Data Center Debt Sale Amid Alibaba Risks

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-20/morgan-stanley-delays-data-center-debt-sale-am...
1•petethomas•31m ago•0 comments

Apple Watch's algorithm detects 89% of sleep apnea

https://www.empirical.health/apple-watch-sleep-apnea
2•brandonb•35m ago•1 comments

Humanoid robot Figure 02 helps build over 30k BMW X3s

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Humanoid-robot-Figure-02-helps-build-over-30-000-BMW-X3s-11085687.html
1•thenaturalist•38m ago•0 comments

Abstractive Thinking Model

https://github.com/Jonathan-Monclare/Abstractive-Thinking-Model-ATM-
1•J_Monclare•42m ago•0 comments

Over-Regulation Is Doubling the Cost by Peter Reinhardt

https://rein.pk/over-regulation-is-doubling-the-cost
3•bilsbie•43m 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/