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AI music is flooding streaming services, but who wants it?

https://www.theverge.com/column/921599/ai-music-is-flooding-streaming-services-but-who-wants-it
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mqtt Broker for 10 Years

https://github.com/skittleson/mqtt_broker_esp
2•skittleson•2m ago•0 comments

Willis Lamm's traffic light collection

https://www.kbrhorse.net/signals/signals01.html
2•fanf2•2m ago•0 comments

My 15-year-old relative was killed for refusing to marry her cousin

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/01/kawthar-al-husayjawi-killed-refusing-f...
3•Anon84•3m ago•0 comments

Florida Sues OpenAI over Chatbot Safety Concerns

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/technology/florida-sues-openai-chatgpt-safety.html
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•3m ago•0 comments

Open Source Initiative Helps G7 Deliver Vision on AI Openness

https://opensource.org/blog/open-source-initiative-helps-g7-deliver-vision-on-ai-openness
1•jomaris•4m ago•1 comments

Debug Project

https://debug.com/
1•Eridanus2•4m ago•0 comments

Lyceum – visual lessons on history, science, and philosophy for curious adults

https://trylyceum.com/
1•LazarusK•5m ago•0 comments

Space race: Why Portugal is reaching for the stars

https://www.dw.com/en/space-race-why-portugal-is-reaching-for-the-stars/a-77303795
2•JoeDaDude•6m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Are multifocal lenses important for older people who don't drive?

1•amichail•8m ago•0 comments

AI is making it very easy for the government to spy on you

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/ai-making-easy-government-spy-lawmakers-are-worried-rcna341499
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•8m ago•0 comments

Equibles – Open-source, self-hosted mini Bloomberg Terminal for AI agents

https://github.com/daniel3303/Equibles
1•daniel3303•9m ago•0 comments

Déjà View: Looping Transformers for Multi-View 3D Reconstruction

https://research.nvidia.com/labs/dvl/projects/dvlt/
1•theschwa•10m ago•0 comments

AI is crushing a generation of startups built before ChatGPT

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/ai-startup-valuations-pre-chatgpt.html
2•judahmeek•10m ago•0 comments

A New Chapter for Contentful: Scaling Our Vision with Salesforce

https://www.contentful.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-contentful/
1•ipmb•11m ago•0 comments

Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/meteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-what-we-know-and-where-it...
2•1970-01-01•13m ago•1 comments

Resident group's objections to bar licences 'destroying Soho's reputation'

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/30/bar-restaurant-licence-challenges-destroying-soho...
2•mellosouls•15m ago•0 comments

Remote work, not AI, has sidelined recent college graduates, research finds

https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5843076
5•hi41•17m ago•1 comments

Rebuilding isitchristmas.com with Claude's dynamic workflows (and 484 agents)

https://benjaminste.in/isitchristmas/
1•benstein•17m ago•1 comments

Surf exposed webcams like TV channels

https://alec.is/posts/building-omegle-for-exposed-webcams/
1•arm32•18m ago•0 comments

NBD-VRAM Provides Swap Space on Your Nvidia GeForce GPUs

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-NBD-VRAM
1•Bender•18m ago•0 comments

Niri Is Not for Me

https://arijan.dev/posts/niri-not-for-me/
2•arijanj•18m ago•0 comments

Linux 7.2 Proceeding to Deprecate Af_alg Due to "Massive Attack Surface"

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-AF-ALG-Deprecation
2•Bender•19m ago•1 comments

Intel Preparing WiFi 8 "UHR" Support for Their Iwlwifi Linux Driver

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IWL-WiFi-UHR-Linux-7.2
1•Bender•19m ago•0 comments

Bringing Goodnotes to the Web with Swift and WebAssembly

https://swift.org/blog/bringing-goodnotes-to-web-with-swift/
1•frizlab•19m ago•0 comments

Remote Work Leaves Younger Workers Sidelined

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/06/remote-work-leaves-younger-workers-sidelined/
1•orthogonal_cube•20m ago•0 comments

Concord, an Alternative

https://github.com/ryttps94jq-gif/concord-cognitive-engine
1•dutchtropez•20m ago•1 comments

Running local RAG AI on MacBook neos

https://securethink.co.uk/
1•hubsy•20m ago•0 comments

You Don't Love Systemd Timers Enough

https://blog.tjll.net/you-dont-love-systemd-timers-enough/
2•birdculture•20m ago•0 comments

Stanley Cup Final Starts Tomorrow – VGK vs. Car

https://bet-props.com/
1•Julle•21m 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.
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/

jcgrillo•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem