[HN Gopher] Predicting the tide with an analog computer made fro...
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       Predicting the tide with an analog computer made from Lego
        
       Author : RansomStark
       Score  : 90 points
       Date   : 2022-02-01 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pepijndevos.nl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pepijndevos.nl)
        
       | Syonyk wrote:
       | Excellent. I do feel like there's been a bit of a rejection of
       | the polished, streamlined, "Facebook/Reddit" internet of late,
       | and I love reading articles like this.
       | 
       | "I wonder if I can do..." ponderings, followed by a wonderfully
       | absurd, but still mostly functional way of doing it, that
       | involves going down all sorts of fun little rabbit holes to work
       | around nonsensical but entertaining constraints like "Lego gears
       | don't exist in an infinite number of forms."
       | 
       | Though as much as it doesn't _need_ to be https, I still think
       | random personal sites should be https. It makes it harder to
       | inject random bonus conntent in the responses, and I include any
       | form of modification there, not just malicious - ISPs have been
       | known to make changes to add their own little ad banners in the
       | past. Denver International is _particularly_ bad at this, or at
       | least used to be.
        
         | throwawayboise wrote:
         | > "I wonder if I can do..." ponderings
         | 
         | I feel a bit sad when I read about this sort of stuff. At one
         | time it was the sort of thing I would do, but nothing seems
         | interesting or motivating enough these days. My first thought
         | is "wow that would take a lot of time" and I abandon the idea.
        
       | ape4 wrote:
       | Perhaps he could have 3D printed the exact gear sizes needed.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | Lego is interesting, because on the other hand it is very
       | accessible (to a degree), but at the same time it tends to shift
       | projects from making a thing to working around the limitations of
       | Lego. Kinda reminds me of bash programming, it has similar
       | characteristic of being attractive because it is there, but then
       | actually engineering around the limitations of bash becomes quite
       | the exercise once you start implementing stuff.
        
       | neoneye2 wrote:
       | Awesome.
       | 
       | Please make a longer video, explaining how it works.
        
       | tombert wrote:
       | I'm a big fan of "mechanical solutions to computer problems." I
       | think it's extremely interesting to see how hard it is to encode
       | logic pre-transistor, and makes me feel spoiled today (in a good
       | way).
       | 
       | My favorite example is the writer automaton [1]. It's something
       | that never stops to impress me, just because it's something that
       | wouldn't be _that_ hard nowadays, but must have required
       | effectively PhD levels of understanding to do pre-computer.
       | 
       | [1] https://youtu.be/OehTO9l1Hp8
        
       | raldi wrote:
       | I'm having trouble figuring out what the output mechanism is.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | the string going downwards (visible in the last picture), he
         | shared a clip of an earlier stage on Twitter where it's clearly
         | shown:
         | https://twitter.com/pepijndevos/status/1487445805879500800
        
         | sparky_ wrote:
         | Same, it looks like a big rube goldberg machine without that
         | context.
        
       | usrusr wrote:
       | To save you some typing: this is the first hit if you google
       | antikythera mechanism lego:
       | 
       | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk
        
       | thbszzlrd wrote:
        
       | themaineking wrote:
        
       | abalaji wrote:
       | The author mentions they were inspired by the Veritasium video on
       | the same topic (without the Lego). [1] I thought I'd link the
       | previous HN discussion. [2]
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgF3OX8nT0w
       | 
       | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29645610
        
       | rootsudo wrote:
       | And in a couple centuries they're going to find this at the
       | bottom of the sea and wonder what went wrong. (In reference to
       | the "greek" computer that tells tides/lunar cycle and planets.)
       | If plastic will last that long, (I think it does?
       | 
       | But still, It is fun and I like these lego projects! I want to
       | buy a few sets and recreate it.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-01 23:01 UTC)