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Crazy AI workflow for banks/finserv – internal audit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtAuG8xtm5Y
1•karissafho•1m ago•0 comments

Fiddler in 2026

https://textslashplain.com/2026/08/05/fiddler-in-2026/
1•jvilalta•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Graft – Give coding agents a semantic map instead of grep

https://github.com/NanoNets/Graft
2•vitaelabitur•3m ago•0 comments

Terafab: SpaceX & Tesla Chip Fab

https://terafab.ai/
2•throwoutway•3m ago•1 comments

Tracking Internet Shutdown, 2019–2025

https://pulse.internetsociety.org/en/blog/2026/08/tracking-internet-shutdown-20192025/
1•jruohonen•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Aident Loadout – connect Codex and Claude Code to real apps

https://github.com/Aident-AI/aident-skill
1•luciana1u•4m ago•1 comments

Odyssey Framework – Give AI the business context it needs

https://odysseyframework.com
1•JVBlack•5m ago•0 comments

Facebook is paying controversial creators to produce rage-bait content

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-06/ragebait-how-facebook-is-paying-controversial-creators/106...
1•hn_acker•6m ago•0 comments

How to Get More Customers Without Paying for Ads – Playistry

https://playistry.com/blog/how-to-get-more-customers-without-paying-for-ads
3•playistry•6m ago•0 comments

Oxide Joins Anthropic's Project Glasswing

https://oxide.computer/blog/oxide-anthropic-project-glasswing
3•tosh•8m ago•1 comments

The new science of brain workouts

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/08/06/new-science-brain-workouts-beyond-sudoku-crosswo...
1•ike_usawa•9m ago•0 comments

Linux Left Legacy I/O and Memory Handlers Open in Kernel Lockdown Mode

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Lockdown-Legacy-IO-Mem
1•speckx•9m ago•0 comments

In AI-native firms, tech automates 75% of the work. What about the other 25%?

https://readonpaper.substack.com/p/the-25-nobodys-underwriting
2•mondesai•10m ago•1 comments

LudumDare Database

https://ldj.am
2•nazavtra•10m ago•0 comments

A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy.

https://refp.se/articles/your-shell-and-the-lazy-exclamation-mark
2•refp•11m ago•0 comments

Make Every Agent a Data Agent

https://tower.dev/blog/make-every-agent-a-data-agent
4•giray123•11m ago•0 comments

US Military GPS jamming exercise suspected of contributing to plane crash

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/us-military-gps-jamming-exercise-suspected-of-contribu...
2•arunc•11m ago•0 comments

Americans are rallying against data centers. Surprisingly few are getting built

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/06/business/ai-data-center-construction
2•mapping365•12m ago•0 comments

A Mystery Avenger Escalates a War Against Scotland's Parking Police

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/a-mystery-avenger-escalates-a-war-against-scotlands-parking-poli...
1•JumpCrisscross•14m ago•0 comments

An AI model from Meta also hacked another company during testing

https://simonwillison.net/tags/accidental-cyberattacks/
2•BiteCode_dev•15m ago•1 comments

Can you disable Gatekeeper and XProtect?

https://eclecticlight.co/2026/08/06/can-you-disable-gatekeeper-and-xprotect/
1•Brajeshwar•15m ago•0 comments

Qwen3.8 Max Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/qwen3-8-max
2•glz•16m ago•0 comments

Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

https://efoodalert.com/2026/08/05/taylor-farms-cyclospora-outbreak-triples-in-size/
3•speckx•16m ago•1 comments

Need monetization help on my app

https://www.what2do.me/
2•gnrlnoob•16m ago•1 comments

Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/05/shopify-says-ai-search-is-driving-more-traffic-and-sales-not-re...
3•benwerd•17m ago•0 comments

Opinion: Demis Hassabis' new role exposes Google's AI balancing act

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/06/demis-hassabis-google-reshuffle-deepmind-role.html
2•theanonymousone•17m ago•0 comments

Building a Dashcam iPhone App

https://www.thomasmcgee.co/article/building-a-dashcam-iphone-app
2•SunshineTheCat•17m ago•0 comments

The LuaJIT NYI That Silently Poisoned an Unrelated Hot Loop

https://streamhpc.com/blog/2026-08-05/the-luajit-nyi-that-silently-poisoned-an-unrelated-hot-loop/
2•birdculture•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Yotsu – A daily logic puzzle app with four puzzles a day and no ads

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yotsu/id6779978296
1•cf1424•19m ago•0 comments

FDA approves first mRNA flu shot, from Moderna

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-approves-1st-mrna-flu-shot-moderna-rcna590599
2•LopRabbit•19m 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