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The best AI dictation apps, tested and ranked

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/02/the-best-ai-powered-dictation-apps-of-2025/
1•oguzhaneksi•45s ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How long do you commute by car each day?

1•roschdal•2m ago•1 comments

LLMs can hide text in other text of the same length

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20075
1•m-hodges•3m ago•0 comments

Pitney Bowes Data Breach (April 2026)

https://haveibeenpwned.com/Breach/PitneyBowes
1•gnabgib•4m ago•0 comments

A Note on TurboQuant and the Earlier Eden Work

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18555
1•amitport•4m ago•0 comments

Outline of Thought

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_thought
1•cainxinth•5m ago•0 comments

The Dunning-Kruger effect is probably just from bimodal skill distributions

https://bosoncutter.substack.com/p/the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-probably
2•the_tyger•11m ago•1 comments

So, About That AI Bubble

https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/05/ai-bubble-revenue-anthropic/687022/
2•saikatsg•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A Universal Stability Criterion for Symbolic Complex Systems

https://zenodo.org/records/18883274
1•M_Samir333•13m ago•1 comments

From toroids to helical tubules: Kirigami-inspired programmable assembly

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2516695122
2•bryanrasmussen•15m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Rust library for Undo/Redo using deltas, snapshots or commands

https://github.com/mikwielgus/undoredo
2•mikolajw•15m ago•1 comments

Privacy Dependencies (2020)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3447384
1•wslh•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sentient OS – On-device intelligence layer for your entire digital life

https://sentient-os.ai
2•TechExpert2910•16m ago•1 comments

Unsigned Sizes: A Five Year Mistake

https://c3-lang.org/blog/unsigned-sizes-a-five-year-mistake/
6•lerno•17m ago•0 comments

Forgiving can improve well-being

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/04/how-forgiving-can-improve-well-being/
1•gnabgib•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Native agent runtime for Conductor OSS

https://github.com/agentspan-ai/agentspan
1•opiniateddev•19m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Where can I go to ask for help?

5•downbad_•20m ago•1 comments

Oscars says AI actors and writing cannot win awards

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21dl3v7d3o
2•Brajeshwar•22m ago•0 comments

Simplebanking: German open-source banking in your Mac menu bar (with CLI/MCP)

https://www.simplebanking.de
1•klotzbrocken•23m ago•0 comments

Tenacity: Cross-platform multi-track audio editor

https://codeberg.org/tenacityteam/tenacity
1•saikatsg•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Vim and centaur chess inspired app, where you choose from top moves

https://chess-cheaters.vercel.app/
1•lackoftactics•28m ago•0 comments

A silly little C++ quiz

https://katherinemohr.github.io/2026/04/20/cpp-quiz.html
1•kmohr•28m ago•0 comments

It's Hard to Get a British Driving License

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/world/europe/uk-driving-tests-backlog.html
3•saikatsg•29m ago•0 comments

Craig Newmark on Institutional Maintenance, Giving Away Control

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/craig-newmark/
1•momentmaker•34m ago•0 comments

In Amsterdam, Ads for Fossil Fuels or Meat Are Now Verboden

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/climate/in-permissive-amsterdam-ads-for-fossil-fuels-or-meat-a...
3•bookofjoe•34m ago•1 comments

Atomdns

https://codeberg.org/miekg/dns/src/branch/main/cmd/atomdns
1•themaxdavitt•35m ago•0 comments

Bieber Coachella performance leads to catalog boost

https://liveclip.substack.com/p/top-songs-billboard-20260502
1•firasd•38m ago•0 comments

Richard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion: The great skeptic gets taken in

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/richard-dawkins-and-the-claude-delusion
10•RedReign•43m ago•3 comments

LLMs Are Complex Coherence Resolution Engines

https://robmealey.substack.com/p/using-claude-or-any-llm-backed-tool
1•rbbymls•44m ago•1 comments

Seattle's mayor waves goodbye to prosperity

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/01/seattle-mayor-katie-wilson-waves-goodbye-busin...
1•loeg•45m 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•12mo 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•1y ago
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
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/