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France's homegrown open source online office suite

https://github.com/suitenumerique
343•nar001•3h ago•172 comments

British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c205nxy0p31o
81•bookofjoe•1h ago•75 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
409•theblazehen•2d ago•150 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
76•AlexeyBrin•4h ago•14 comments

First Proof

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05192
29•samasblack•1h ago•17 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
765•klaussilveira•19h ago•240 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12501
49•onurkanbkrc•4h ago•3 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
23•vinhnx•2h ago•2 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
1017•xnx•1d ago•579 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
153•alainrk•3h ago•182 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
154•jesperordrup•9h ago•56 comments

Leisure Suit Larry's Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
5•thelok•1h ago•0 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
5•marklit•5d ago•0 comments

Software Factories and the Agentic Moment

https://factory.strongdm.ai/
8•mellosouls•1h ago•6 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
14•rbanffy•4d ago•0 comments

StrongDM's AI team build serious software without even looking at the code

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/
6•simonw•1h ago•0 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
100•videotopia•4d ago•26 comments

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
152•matheusalmeida•2d ago•40 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
260•isitcontent•19h ago•31 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
273•dmpetrov•19h ago•145 comments

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

https://github.com/sandys/kappal
15•sandGorgon•2d ago•3 comments

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/PEXRTN-ga68-intro/
33•matt_d•4d ago•9 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
543•todsacerdoti•1d ago•262 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
415•ostacke•1d ago•108 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
361•vecti•21h ago•161 comments

What Is Ruliology?

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/01/what-is-ruliology/
61•helloplanets•4d ago•61 comments

Google staff call for firm to cut ties with ICE

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgjg98vmzjo
96•tartoran•1h ago•21 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
331•eljojo•22h ago•203 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
454•lstoll•1d ago•298 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
370•aktau•1d ago•194 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/