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Remembering the Future: Blade Runner

https://blue-continuum.com/remembering-the-future-blade-runner
1•dnetesn•1m ago•0 comments

Dutch designer made DE9: Closer to the Edit into a playable web-based instrument

https://www.creativeboom.com/work/why-merijn-straathof-turned-a-landmark-techno-album-into-a-play...
1•ChrisArchitect•1m ago•1 comments

Becoming more than a meat proxy

https://codeplusconduct.substack.com/p/becoming-more-than-a-meat-proxy
2•mooreds•2m ago•0 comments

Meta's Muse page can't even pass basic privacy requirements

https://scanner.getprivisy.com/#/sales/96a75bdd-7033-4b66-9ad3-11041432abe2?token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI...
1•patrickwdaly•4m ago•0 comments

New England Aquarium treating elderly penguin, 29, with acupuncture

https://www.neaq.org/about-us/press-room/press-releases/new-england-aquarium-treating-elderly-pen...
1•bookofjoe•5m ago•0 comments

Should we stop giving cyber threats fancy names?

https://www.techzine.eu/blogs/security/144469/should-we-stop-giving-cyber-threats-fancy-names/
1•VindtUMijTeLang•6m ago•0 comments

Why Buran Had Four Computers, Not Three

https://zatona.dev/blog/why-buran-had-four-computers
2•dzatona•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Public Browser MCP – +48% speed -33% token/session vs. AgentBrowser

https://github.com/Silbercue/public-browser/releases/tag/v3.0.0
1•silbercue•11m ago•0 comments

Education Consulting Industry Sucks

https://rivernova.vercel.app
1•roman9•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I rebuilt my company's old fire-station office as a Quake III map

https://sajarin.com/q3inc/
1•Sajarin•14m ago•0 comments

The New STOC Rules for the AI Era

https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2026/09/the-new-stoc-rules-for-ai-era.html
1•pcfwik•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Turn Your Voice into Art

https://reotoi.vercel.app
1•edimaudo•17m ago•0 comments

Empirical results fine-tuning π0.5 on a real manufacturing task

https://dream-machines.eu/blog/pi05-fine-tuning
1•mplappert•20m ago•0 comments

IR (2022)

https://github.com/dstogov/ir
1•lhmiles•22m ago•0 comments

Meta and the new VR glasses? Will Apple respond?

4•lathoa•24m ago•1 comments

China's new travel rules unsettle tech giants and talent

https://www.dw.com/en/china-technology-artificial-intelligence-expertise-capital-travel-rules/a-7...
10•billybuckwheat•25m ago•3 comments

Hail is a multibillion-dollar problem – and could get worse

https://www.hcn.org/issues/58-10/hail-is-a-multibillion-dollar-problem-and-could-get-worse/
4•littlexsparkee•25m ago•0 comments

Vibe Coding Production Kit – a production workflow for AI coding agents

https://github.com/Moeeryani/Vibe-Coding-Production-Kit
7•Moeeryani•29m ago•1 comments

Show HN: PipeFitter – Quick, Browser-Based, Parametric Pipe Connectors

https://mankyd.github.io/pipefitter/
2•mankyd•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free WCAG accessibility checker – no signup, results in ~2 minutes

https://www.wcagrepair.com/tools/accessibility-checker
1•xLFCx•30m ago•0 comments

AI Help for Biological or Chemical Weapons

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-help-biological-or-chemical-weapons
2•EA-3167•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Canary (YC) – Independent verification for AI code

https://www.runcanary.ai/
5•Visweshyc•34m ago•0 comments

Dampen camera motion and track the leftover, in WASM

https://residual.dog
1•jobsstevesux•35m ago•0 comments

International observers to investigate Swedish election fraud

https://www.tv4.se/artikel/37VDHaUBmbgXCIRAP1bR8f/internationell-valobservatoer-ska-foelja-upp-mi...
3•try-working•36m ago•1 comments

SkillOpt: Training Loop for Agent Skills

https://microsoft.github.io/SkillOpt/
3•DaveFr•36m ago•2 comments

Show HN: Kosh – Browser's native bookmark manager ui, done right

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kosh-bookmark-manager/meldjdfnfgefeoegccphimkmgmeamcce
3•havu12•38m ago•0 comments

The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/
11•neonate•38m ago•9 comments

How I changed teaching after AI managed to do all my homework assignments

https://thelastsoftwareengineer.substack.com/p/how-i-changed-teaching-after-ai-managed
3•azhenley•40m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A $25 DIY alternative to $159 AI voice recorders – BYOK or local

https://zephclick.com
7•shmlkv•40m ago•0 comments

Reddit mod ordered to pay Nintendo $4.5M in Switch piracy lawsuit

https://www.theverge.com/games/1000088/nintendo-switch-piracy-reddit-mod-lawsuit
6•MC995•42m 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