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Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#251

Post by Bjartr »

29athrowaway wrote: post #240
calamari4065 wrote: post #235

Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…

Like Soviet water computers?

Like naval mechanical targeting computers that use clever cam and gear arrangements.

https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?si=oHHJGRqnFx-ydQu1

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#253

Post by calamari4065 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #240
calamari4065 wrote: post #235

Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…

Like Soviet water computers?

Look around on YouTube. There's some fascinating videos from the 1950s on US Navy mechanical firing computers.

These machines can calculate ballistic trajectories with incredible accuracy, accounting for the relative motion of the ships, wind speed, and even the curvature of the earth. Those calculations are not at all trivial!

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#254

Post by calamari4065 »

Bjartr wrote: post #251
29athrowaway wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Soviet water computers?

Like naval mechanical targeting computers that use clever cam and gear arrangements. https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4?si=oHHJGRqnFx-ydQu1

Hah, this is the exact video I was referring to in the sibling comment. This is what really captured my imagination with regard to mechanical computers

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#255

Post by calamari4065 »

phillypham wrote: post #245
calamari4065 wrote: post #235

Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…

In ML/AI space, at least some people thing analog computing is the next big thing, https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlfreund/2021/09/23/ibm-resea... . It hasn't taken off, yet, though.

I know, I've had my eye on this topic for a while.

Honestly it seems like a perfect application. Neural networks are analog systems. An analog computer can represent neurons very accurately and the entire network is inherently parallel, for free!

I can't wait to see what comes out of this research

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#256

Post by calamari4065 »

jvm___ wrote: post #248
calamari4065 wrote: post #235

Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…

Analog tide-predicting machines are fascinating. The tide height is a function of the earth/sun/moon systems. Earth and Moon aren't at a fixed distance from eachother, and neither is the sun, so every day is a unique tide but you can predict the range. The analog way to do it is to make a gear for each point of data in the system and synchronize all their gears. Then you use them all to rotate one final gear, which w…

I think this is a great example. It's pretty easy to mentally connect the orbit of a planet with the ratio of gears.

Once you really understand how these systems are an analog of a physical problem, everything makes so much more sense

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#257

Post by kolinko »

calamari4065 wrote: post #235

Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…

Yes!

Also, most people don’t know that the word „Analog”, as in „analog circuits” comes from „analogy”.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#258

Post by splittingTimes »

For writing documentation: AsciiDoc [1] as fileformat.

For publishing documentation / to build the web site: Antora [2].

AsciiDoc has a bit more features compared to Markdown which allows for a richer and more pleasant presentation of the docs.

Antora allows you to have the project documentation in the actual project repositories. It then pulls the docs from all the different repos together to build the site. This also allows you to have the released product versions go in-synch with the docs versions. Antora builds each version of the product as part of one site. The reader can explore different product versions or navigate between pages across versions.

===

[1] https://asciidoc.org/

[2] https://antora.org/

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#259

Post by gemstones »

mb7733 wrote: post #147
yeck wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was using Nim for some of last years Advent of Code problems. I was mostly liking the syntax. Was a bit bother by the standard library have a snake case and camel case reference for each function (if I'm remember that correctly). At the time nimble also required me to have NPM to install the the Nim package manager, Nimble. This was not ideal, but looking at [the nimble project install docs]( https://github.com/nim…

I believe the whole language is "style insensitive" for variable names. So it's not just a feature of the stdlib.

Are you serious?
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