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German tourist wins payout after losing sun lounger race

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y72g09d7jo
1•vrganj•1m ago•0 comments

A PHP license change is imminent

https://lwn.net/Articles/1063993/
1•tosh•3m ago•0 comments

Visualizing History: The Polish System

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/visualizing-history-the-polish-system/
1•sebg•6m ago•0 comments

Lazarus Group Uses Git Hooks to Hide Malware

https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/dprk-git-hooks-malware
1•speckx•6m ago•0 comments

From Stringly to Strongly Typed

https://eignex.com/posts/from-stringly-to-strongly-typed/
1•monom•7m ago•0 comments

3D-printed house could help solve Japan's construction crisis

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/07/business/japans-3d-printing-construction-sector-crisis-hnk-spc
1•breve•8m ago•0 comments

The Missing Piece in AI

https://twitter.com/ElironK300/status/2049640389565379013
1•Eli2315•9m ago•0 comments

AI coding agents read Git log as their first debugging step

https://thoughts.jock.pl/p/how-to-use-github-ai-builders-basics-2026
1•joozio•11m ago•0 comments

The AI fitness instructors selling unreal gains

https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/c5ye7dnxv86o
1•breve•11m ago•0 comments

When DNSSEC goes wrong: how we responded to the .de TLD outage

https://blog.cloudflare.com/de-tld-outage-dnssec/
1•jgrahamc•12m ago•0 comments

How to Work and Compound with AI

https://eugeneyan.com/writing/working-with-ai/
1•swyx•14m ago•0 comments

BTQ Technologies Corp – legal matter

1•nicolaslexandre•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SereneUI – A VSCode-inspired, open-source UI for Postgres

https://github.com/serenedb/serenedb/tree/main/serene-ui
2•gnusi•15m ago•0 comments

Spring: The Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gb1z-2SjHY
1•doppp•15m ago•0 comments

Linux Kernel 6.12.86 and 6.18.27 released

https://www.linuxcompatible.org/story/linux-kernel-61286-and-61827-released/
1•pamcake•17m ago•1 comments

What Changed My Mind About Dependency Injection in TypeScript

https://www.vswaroop04.com/writing/di-repository-adapter
1•vswaroop04•18m ago•0 comments

My Initial Thoughts on Thunderbird Pro

https://kevquirk.com/my-inital-thoughts-on-thundermail
1•herbertl•18m ago•0 comments

Llama and Spec: MTP Support

https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/pull/22673
1•jhoho•19m ago•0 comments

What it feels like to swap

https://ruibento.medium.com/what-it-feels-like-to-swap-96d83a545c5e
1•jgrahamc•19m ago•0 comments

Can I delete the Chrome's OptGuideOnDeviceModel safely? (2025)

https://superuser.com/questions/1930445/can-i-delete-the-chromes-optguideondevicemodel-safely-its...
1•jjgreen•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Design proteins from one formula, zero training data – runs in browser

https://aidoctrine.github.io/uct-protein/
1•AlekseN•20m ago•0 comments

Fooling large language models just keeps getting simpler

https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/29/fooling-large-language-models-just-keeps-getting-...
1•speckx•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I vibe-coded an illegal streaming platform

https://streamvaults.ru/
1•hannil55•22m ago•0 comments

Open-Source Framework to Stop Spamming Your Users (and Increase Conversions)

https://github.com/furkatkasimov/lamf/
1•qatlama•23m ago•0 comments

The GRU's Hogwarts: Inside[..]elite spy school for Russian military intelligence

https://theins.press/en/inv/292314
1•defly•26m ago•0 comments

PS5-Linux

https://github.com/ps5-linux/ps5-linux-loader
2•26d0•27m ago•0 comments

Two Chapters on Code Reviews Worth Your Afternoon

https://verbosemode.dev/p/two-chapters-on-code-reviews-worth
1•ablx000•30m ago•0 comments

Motivation, Productivity Barriers, and Engineering Friction

https://pankajpipada.com/posts/2026-05-07-motivation-productivity-barriers/
1•ppipada•31m ago•1 comments

VoidZero Announces Rolldown 1.0

https://voidzero.dev/posts/announcing-rolldown-1-0
3•crousto•31m ago•0 comments

Anthropomorphism Is the New Skeuomorphism

https://danielgrantco.substack.com/p/anthropomorphism-is-the-new-skeuomorphism
1•djgrant•33m 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/