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Medical Groups Will Try to Block Childhood Vaccine Recommendations

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/health/vaccine-schedule-children-kennedy.html
1•doener•26s ago•0 comments

Terry Tao: "LLMs Are Simpler Than You Think – The Real Mystery Is Why They Work" [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpCHo5v-Gc
1•gmays•39s ago•0 comments

Starlink Users in Iran Get Free Internet Access, Nonprofit Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/technology/iran-starlink-elon-musk.html
1•doener•2m ago•0 comments

One Simple Arrow Changed Automobiles Forever [video]

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/on-the-news/how-one-simple-arrow-changed-automobiles-forever/C33...
1•fortran77•4m ago•0 comments

Qualcomm's RISC-Ventana Fusion

https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/qualcomms-risc-ventana-fusion
1•chmaynard•4m ago•0 comments

What's Ahead: Alien Processes, Domains, and Data Models

https://practicaldatamodeling.substack.com/p/whats-ahead-alien-processes-domains
1•gmays•6m ago•0 comments

Why IRC is better than Real Life

https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20IRC%20is%20better%20than%20Real%20Life
1•jskherman•8m ago•0 comments

A new generation of Chinese companies is expanding around the world

https://www.economist.com/business/2026/01/13/a-new-generation-of-chinese-companies-is-expanding-...
2•petethomas•10m ago•0 comments

Southern New Zealand hospitals experienced major IT outage

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/584026/public-service-association-says-southern-hospitals-exp...
3•billybuckwheat•10m ago•0 comments

What will enshittification of LLMs look like?

1•scoofy•11m ago•1 comments

An Updated Dentist Office Software Story

https://avc.xyz/an-updated-dentist-office-software-story
1•turadg•12m ago•1 comments

BioNTech Provides Strategic Business Update and Outlines 2026

https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/biontech-provides-strategic-busi...
2•doener•14m ago•0 comments

How to Store the Web in S3

https://exa.ai/blog/exa-d
1•willbryk•15m ago•1 comments

Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike wants to do for AI what he did for messaging

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/signal-creator-moxie-marlinspike-wants-to-do-for-ai-what...
3•abolishme•17m ago•0 comments

Lawsuit: DHS wants "unlimited subpoena authority" to unmask ICE critics

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/instagram-user-fights-dhs-for-the-right-to-post-ice-s...
1•duxup•19m ago•0 comments

OpenAI buys tiny health records startup Torch for, reportedly, $100M

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/12/openai-buys-tiny-health-records-startup-torch-for-reportedly-100m/
1•nsoonhui•19m ago•0 comments

China's durian craze has turned this tropical fruit into a tool of diplomacy

https://theconversation.com/chinas-durian-craze-has-turned-this-tropical-fruit-into-a-tool-of-dip...
2•PaulHoule•20m ago•0 comments

Our Slapdash Cultural Change

https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/our-slapdash-cultural-change
1•paulpauper•21m ago•0 comments

MoneyRank – a daily 60-second game that scores your financial risk instincts

https://moneyrank.onrender.com/
1•abbster52•22m ago•1 comments

Vanderbilt University Plans New Campus in San Francisco

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/vanderbilt-san-francisco-cca-california-college-arts-expans...
1•noleary•22m ago•0 comments

Toyota remained top automaker by sales for 6th straight year in 2025

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/automobiles/toyota-remained-top-automaker-by-sales-for-6th-year-...
1•breve•23m ago•0 comments

Device that may be tied to "Havana Syndrome" obtained by U.S. government

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/device-havana-syndrome-obtained-by-u-s-government/
5•mhb•23m ago•1 comments

Why China Is Suddenly Obsessed with American Poverty

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/business/china-american-poverty.html
4•xnhbx•26m ago•1 comments

More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are...
2•paulpauper•27m ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Preserving knowledge long-term without a central authority

1•SERSI-S•28m ago•0 comments

Claude Coworks

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/claude-coworks
1•paulpauper•28m ago•0 comments

Former NYC Mayor Eric Adams accused of $2.5M rug pull as NYC Token crashes 80%

https://www.theverge.com/news/861269/former-nyc-mayor-eric-adams-accused-of-2-5-million-crypto-ru...
3•beeandapenguin•28m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Demo of Rust Lettre crate for sending email using SMTP

1•jph•30m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Agentic Equities – track ChatGPT sentiment around stocks

https://www.agenticequities.com/dashboard
1•subtlesoftware•31m ago•0 comments

AI Tools: Image Generation, Video Creation, Website Builders (2026)

https://curateclick.com/blog/2026-best-ai-tools-websites
2•czmilo•32m ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•8mo ago

Comments

thechao•8mo 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•8mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•8mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•8mo 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•8mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•8mo 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•8mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•8mo 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_•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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/