frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Mitigating Ongoing Supply Chain Attacks

https://hawksley.dev/blog/supply-chain-attacks/
1•ethanhawksley•58s ago•0 comments

Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

https://bsky.app/profile/404media.co/post/3mm2ivguvq22x
2•poisonfountain•1m ago•0 comments

The mistake of conflating intelligence and power

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/the-mistake-of-conflating-intelligence
1•crescit_eundo•3m ago•0 comments

The Long History of the Figurative 'Literally' (2023)

https://www.mentalfloss.com/language/words/famous-writers-used-literally-figuratively
1•theanonymousone•5m ago•0 comments

Microsoft warns of Exchange zero-day flaw exploited in attacks

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-warns-of-exchange-zero-day-flaw-exploit...
3•billybuckwheat•5m ago•0 comments

Enabling Resizable Bar on RTX 3080 Vbios via GitHub

https://github.com/danindiana/rtx3080-rebar-vbios/tree/master
1•linux_lorax•6m ago•0 comments

Smartmedia Card Spec Opened, available free (2000)

https://www.edn.com/smartmedia-card-interface-spec-opened-available-for-free/#google_vignette
1•brudgers•9m ago•0 comments

Growing Neural Cellular Automata

https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/
2•pulkitsh1234•11m ago•0 comments

Bun Audit: Add UB-exorcism audit workspace and executive guide

https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pull/30903
1•gmays•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: GPT-2 inference in pure C#, 0 bytes allocated per token

https://github.com/DevOnBike/Overfit
1•dev-on-bike•15m ago•0 comments

Ex150nosauce+ACV-6: new all-time low.. by 1lb

https://www.exfatloss.com/p/ex150nosauceacv-6-new-all-time-low
1•paulpauper•15m ago•0 comments

Swatch stores close for second day after crowds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c302vjqz563o
3•hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm•18m ago•0 comments

Consider the Sister

https://www.thesmallbow.com/p/consider-the-sister-2b94
1•NaOH•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cooklang Rich Preview

https://cook.sjer.red
1•shepherdjerred•19m ago•0 comments

Energy return in running shoes explained (2025)

https://runrepeat.com/guides/energy-return-in-running-shoes
4•jstrieb•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: HypergraphZ – directed hypergraph library in Zig with Python bindings

https://github.com/yamafaktory/hypergraphz
1•yamafaktory•23m ago•0 comments

Russia pressures university students to become wartime drone pilots

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/russia-pressures-university-students-to-become-wartime-dr...
2•Bender•24m ago•0 comments

Continuous Modeling, or What Happens to the Model on Tuesday?

https://docs.eventsourcingdb.io/blog/2026/05/18/continuous-modeling-or-what-happens-to-the-model-...
1•goloroden•27m ago•0 comments

Why Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Is a Masterpiece

https://yusufaytas.com/why-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-is-a-masterpiece
10•yusufaytas•27m ago•1 comments

Trapped in the dark web – a crisis growing in the shadows

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/business/trapped-dark-web/child-exploitation-exploding-online/
1•abawany•28m ago•1 comments

Classic 7 is Windows 10 LTSC cosplaying as Windows 7

https://www.theregister.com/oses/2026/05/17/classic-7-is-windows-10-ltsc-cosplaying-as-windows-7/...
2•Bender•28m ago•0 comments

Pause App

https://pauseapp.space
2•coldcosmas•29m ago•0 comments

AI-generated code is 'pain waiting to happen'

https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/16/ai-generated-code-is-pain-waiting-to-happen/5241574
4•Bender•30m ago•0 comments

Temperate super-Earth found orbiting nearby red dwarf Ross 318

https://www.stellarcatalog.com/news/ross-318-temperate-super-earth-found
1•speckx•31m ago•0 comments

How to Start Investing with $100

https://comuniq.xyz/post?t=1095
1•01-_-•33m ago•0 comments

Microsoft is 1.84 Peters, Google is 0.66. What's the Peter unit?

https://github.com/zozo123/peter-gt-your-org
7•zozo123OR0x90•34m ago•1 comments

OpenSparrow – Open-source admin panel builder with zero dependencies

https://opensparrow.org/
1•tomaszwrobel•35m ago•0 comments

Rolling Shutter Demo

https://chiuhans111.github.io/spin/
1•Eduard•36m ago•1 comments

Journey to King Edward VIII Falls, Tallest Waterfall in Guyana

https://twitter.com/bronzebust/status/2056038216994529329
2•telotortium•37m ago•0 comments

Subscription Bombing: Email Under Attack

https://cacm.acm.org/practice/subscription-bombing-email-under-attack/
1•birdculture•38m 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.
jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
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/