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The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine (2001)

https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-coming-merging-of-mind-and-machine
1•vinhnx•39s ago•0 comments

Mdmanager.ai – Manage your Claude.md and AGENTS.md across machines and runtimes

https://github.com/manuelschipper/mdmanager
1•schipperai•2m ago•1 comments

Cultivating Trust

https://kaeruct.github.io/posts/2026/09/06/conquering-entropy-cultivating-trust/
1•kaeruct•3m ago•0 comments

Two party systems and the quartile voters

https://jslandy.com/two-party-systems-quartile-voters/
1•efavdb•4m ago•0 comments

Industry Standard Tools

https://industrystandard.tools/pending
1•bookofjoe•5m ago•1 comments

Linux support for Apple T1 hardware

https://github.com/standardagents/t1bridge
1•TiredOfLife•8m ago•0 comments

An actual music theory framework with note-for-note voice-leading resolutions

https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/1vktxsj/the_layout_of_modeschord_swings_in_cmam_w_all/
1•RockofStrength•9m ago•0 comments

Pumpkin: Building a Minecraft server in Rust, First release after 2 years

https://github.com/Pumpkin-MC/Pumpkin
1•alex_medvedev•11m ago•0 comments

Researchers Demonstrate 'Accelerator on a Chip' (2013)

https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2013-09-27-researchers-demonstrate-accelerator-chip
1•consumer451•11m ago•1 comments

The repo market is the 'dark matter' of finance: powerful and perilous

https://www.ft.com/content/8a7e8202-d800-4fb1-a8f0-eeb4536578f7
1•JumpCrisscross•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PixelDraw – simple drawing software for web(WASM) and desktop

https://akshy.codeberg.page/pixeldraw/
1•yhska•12m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: So many patterns I know only in theory

1•dakiol•13m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Whatthemovie.com, a movie-still guessing game

https://whatthemovie.com/
1•hivacruz•15m ago•0 comments

Qwen-Scope: Decoding Intelligence, Unleashing Potential

https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen-scope
1•Bluestein•20m ago•0 comments

Ignore files in Git without adding them to .gitignore

https://luisdalmolin.dev/blog/ignoring-files-in-git-without-gitignore/
2•Alifatisk•20m ago•0 comments

NetBSD 9.5 released and EOL for NetBSD-9

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_9_5_released_and
3•jaypatelani•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cucumbero, a(nother) focus timer to help you (well, me) focus (maybe)

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cucumbero/olcepfohjjcdnmejpabcbdbcjbacafea
1•campugnatus•23m ago•0 comments

LeanReact-v0.1: A Lean 4 framework to write web applications

https://github.com/theoriclabs/lean-react
1•hargup•23m ago•0 comments

Want a super power? Ask more questions

https://twitter.com/lemire/status/2096615245900923325
1•tosh•26m ago•0 comments

Mystery Science Theater 3000 foretells artificial sycophancy (1993) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C71Oj68sN5M
1•smorgasborg•26m ago•1 comments

Z1T: Sparse Transformer‑Like Models for Probabilistic Hardware

https://extropic.ai/writing/z1t/
2•mseri•27m ago•0 comments

The Liquid Network (Bitcoin sidechain) is stuck at block 4050335

https://liquid.network/es/block/aad24e4fb64ca8adf4961667da87820cd48e553957ac64e75de7cdb298b5d66b
3•tyfmnfn2gis•28m ago•0 comments

AI Work Simulator

https://runwork.ai/simulate
2•oytuntez•28m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Why is HN censoring this post about CVE-2026-85046?

1•roschdal•29m ago•1 comments

The Cost of Safetyism

https://www.stevemagness.org/p/the-cost-of-safetyism
2•chriscbr•31m ago•0 comments

How are you finding and managing AI skills?

1•imadtaieber•31m ago•0 comments

Sleeping Through the Night with a Baby

https://larrysalibra.com/sleeping-through-the-night/
1•amin•31m ago•0 comments

They Say I Blog

https://theysayiblog.com/
2•turtleyacht•33m ago•0 comments

Where Responsibility Exists, but Ownership Doesn't

https://medium.com/@gurvinder372/article-6-where-responsibility-exists-but-ownership-doesnt-01e00...
1•gps372•34m ago•0 comments

ESP32 Bit Pirate Hardware Hacking Kit with Web Tools That Speaks Every Protocol

https://geo-tp.github.io/ESP32-Bit-Pirate/
1•geotp•36m ago•1 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