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AI Desktop Agent over VNC – your AI connects to your desktop like a remote user

https://github.com/AmrDab/clawd-cursor
1•AmrDabb•55s ago•1 comments

Generalized Sequential Probability Ratio Test for Families of Hypotheses [pdf]

https://sites.stat.columbia.edu/jcliu/paper/GSPRT_SQA3.pdf
1•luu•1m ago•0 comments

GPT 5.3 Codex wiped my F: drive with a single character escaping bug

https://old.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1r96647/gpt_53_codex_wiped_my_entire_f_drive_with_a/
1•taubek•3m ago•0 comments

I built markdown.new (Markdown for Agents) and it went a little viral on X

https://markdown.new
1•elbeyoglu•3m ago•1 comments

Arcade game Pang from 1989 in WASM

https://midzer.de/wasm/pang/
1•midzer•5m ago•2 comments

CSS Agent Garden – AI agents style one HTML page via MCP

https://css-agent-garden.fly.dev/
2•happymouse•9m ago•0 comments

Running an Inference as a Service Business

https://faizank.substack.com/p/inference-as-a-service
2•fazkan•11m ago•0 comments

Map of All Theories of Consciousness

https://loc.closertotruth.com/map
2•paraschopra•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Global Issue Memory MCP – Stack Overflow for Your Coding Assistant

https://www.usegim.com/
2•nonekme•15m ago•0 comments

Learn C++ by Example • Frances Buontempo and Matt Godbolt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXKICIiXEUM&list=PLEx5khR4g7PJbSLmADahf0LOpTLifiCra
2•birdculture•16m ago•0 comments

OpenAI Is Betting on a Security Nightmare

https://julsimon.substack.com/p/openai-is-betting-on-a-security-nightmare
2•doener•17m ago•0 comments

That irritating feeling France was right – US makes Gaullism respectable again

https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/02/18/that-irritating-feeling-that-france-was-right
4•saubeidl•22m ago•1 comments

What is the probability of a coin landing on its edge?

2•vivzkestrel•22m ago•1 comments

I accidentally managed to uncover the system prompt of Google Gemini 3 Flash

https://pastebin.com/wMPqrmsw
3•errorcodezero•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ModelWar – CoreWars for Agents

https://modelwar-delta.vercel.app
2•pj4533•24m ago•0 comments

When to Vibe Code?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkRkLBcm9D4
1•grahamlee•24m ago•0 comments

Challenging the Single-Responsibility Principle

https://kiss-and-solid.com/blog/keep-it-simple
1•WolfOliver•26m ago•0 comments

The 8KB Page: PostgreSQL Page Layout Visualized

https://boringsql.com/visualizers/8kb-page/
1•radimm•27m ago•0 comments

Regulated Crypto Investigation Team – Intelligence Cyber Wizard Services

1•Robertjoe•27m ago•0 comments

Measuring Input-to-Photon Latency (Because 'Wayland Feels Off' Isn't a Metric)

https://davidjusto.com/articles/m2p-latency/
1•rhim•30m ago•0 comments

Chat with Llamma 8B at 16,000 TPS

https://chatjimmy.ai/
1•nl•35m ago•0 comments

Llamma 3.1 8B in hardware, 16,000 TPS

https://taalas.com/products/
2•nl•36m ago•0 comments

MD5 Algorithm Explainer

https://md5algorithm.vercel.app/
1•fanweixiao•37m ago•0 comments

The Gemini Servility Trap

1•gemfan•37m ago•0 comments

RFC 2295 – Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2295
1•locknitpicker•38m ago•0 comments

How did I revolutionized my productivity using OpenClaw

https://clawhub.ai/Quarantiine/effortlist-ai
1•daniel_ward•38m ago•0 comments

PostgreSQL's 8KB Page

https://boringsql.com/posts/inside-the-8kb-page/
2•radimm•44m ago•0 comments

Database table is an awful API

https://www.innoq.com/en/blog/2026/02/your-database-table-is-an-awful-api/
1•Ookami86•44m ago•0 comments

Donut Lab Announces Upcoming Independent Battery Measurements

https://www.donutlab.com/measurement-reports-announcement/
2•peritpatrio•44m ago•0 comments

We built a desktop AI agent that runs commands locally

https://desktopcommander.app/
1•rkrizanovskis•45m ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)

https://www.srimech.com/MHZ5.html
95•gene-h•9mo ago

Comments

thechao•9mo 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•9mo ago
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too.

I love that idea.

blackhaz•9mo ago
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
rightbyte•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
> a 1100 hp motor to run it

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

thechao•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
byronknoll•9mo 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•9mo ago
Beautiful! Thank you!
QuadmasterXLII•9mo 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•9mo ago
What a gem of a site Thank you for sharing
mrandish•9mo 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_•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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/