MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ryuzaburo | 2026-01-20 13:47:11+00:00
Many financial services today treat eKYC as a silver bullet for identity assurance. However, my recent forensic analysis of a real-world breach on iOS 18.x suggests that the industry is confusing "verification" with "authentication."

In the incident I analyzed, an attacker used a virtual camera injection kit to feed deepfake video into the eKYC process, bypassing "liveness" detection entirely. The disturbing part wasn't just the tech—it was how the eKYC flow accepted the spoofed data as a "verified identity" because it matched the document, ignoring the compromised integrity of the capture process itself.

We are building a global financial infrastructure on a "source of truth" that can now be automated and scaled by exploit kits. I wrote this to argue that we need to stop treating a one-time document check as a persistent authentication factor.

I'm curious to hear from those working on WebAuthn or FIDO: Is it time to mandate hardware-backed attestation for all identity verification flows?
by JasonADrury | 2026-01-20 13:47:13+00:00
GP seems to live in a small European city with a pretty small market for this stuff. I seriously doubt there are any Zurich-based escorts earning $1200 hour.

In London anything between 200 and 1000GBP per hour is completely ordinary, there will not even necessarily be a strong correlation between pricing and the quality of service. It is not super unusual to see people charging more than 1000GBP/h either.

There's a huge discovery problem in the prostitution market, it's really hard for a customer to differentiate between providers without actually visiting them. In many places it's hard to find useful reviews, so you're stuck choosing a provider based on heavily photoshopped photos and hoping for the best. Charging more is probably a good strategy to differentiate yourself.
Show HN: Havyl OS – Decide what to do based on your energy
by limionaider | 2026-01-20 13:47:33+00:00
I built this to solve my own productivity problem:
forcing deep work at the wrong moments of the day.

Havyl OS learns energy patterns and suggests what kind of task makes sense right now
(deep work, light tasks, or rest).

I’d really appreciate honest feedback.
by alt227 | 2026-01-20 13:47:34+00:00
> so why do we tolerate sites systematically blending the lines between ads and content

Precisely because it has started to be regulated.

Pre regulation, companies were tiptoeing forward, creating a new market and seeing what they could get away with with their customers. Now there is regulation they have a line drawn in the sand for them, and they know exactly what they can and cant do to screw consumers. Therefore they all now toe that line, and push as close to it as they can without crossing it.

What follows is a never ending cat and mouse game of companies finding loopholes in the regulation and regulators rushing to catch up and close the holes.
by MonkeyClub | 2026-01-20 13:48:23+00:00
> I’m not willing to pay the apple tax any longer.

Problem here is that when you decide you no longer wish to pay the tax and want to exit the walled garden, you discover that there's a heap of functionality and convenience you'll have to let go, and add complexity and cost to your setup.

I actively avoided relying on iCloud even when it was the sane option, but many people that will feel like the walled garden is no longer suiting them will have to figure out ways to move files, emails, and (crucially) communication channels out of the ecosystem.

I think a large number of them will decide that it's not worth the hassle, and remain walled in. Which is the idea to begin with.

Sure, this is HN, and many will say "screw it, I'll Nextcloud my way out", but the genpop will remain within the gilded cage.
by markus_zhang | 2026-01-20 13:49:04+00:00
Well I didn't see anything last night (In Eastern Canada), probably because there was too much light in the suburb. Now the aurora "area" turns back to Europe and Asia, I hope you guys enjoy it!

Judging by this picture: https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/ovation/nor... , I think in a few hours the whole North Europe can see it very clearly.
Show HN: BlueMouse – AI Code Generator with 17-Layer Validation
by bluemouse_ai | 2026-01-20 13:49:25+00:00
Hi HN,

I built BlueMouse after watching too many junior devs (and myself) blindly accept AI-generated code that looked good but was fundamentally broken.
*The Problem:*
- AI hallucinates architecture
- Developers become "code monkeys" copying without understanding
- Production bugs from unchecked AI suggestions
*My Solution:*
BlueMouse acts as an "automatic architect" that:
1. Asks Socratic questions BEFORE generating code
2. Runs 17-layer validation (security, types, logic, etc.)
3. Forces you to think about architecture, not just syntax
*Tech Stack:*
- Python-based MCP server
- Knowledge base with 8 modules (115+ keywords)
- Integrates with Claude, Gemini, etc.
*Why it's different:*
Most tools validate AFTER generation. BlueMouse prevents bad code from being generated in the first place by constraining the AI's "probability space" using FSM (Finite State Machine) logic.
*Current Status:*
- Open source on GitHub
- Listed on Smithery & Glama MCP directories
- Zero infrastructure cost (parasitic architecture)
*Looking for:*
- Feedback from experienced devs
- Ideas for enterprise use cases
- Potential collaborators
Demo: https://bluemouse.app
GitHub: https://github.com/peijun1700/bluemouse
Happy to answer questions!
by Gazoche | 2026-01-20 13:49:30+00:00
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/plugins/...

So it's basically adding "don't delete my files pretty please" to the prompt?

EDIT: I misread, the natural language description of the rule is just a shortcut to generate the actual rule which is based on regexp patterns.

Still, it only protects you against very specific commands. Won't help you if the LLM decides to fill your disk with `cat /dev/urandom > foo` for example.
by goku12 | 2026-01-20 13:49:33+00:00
The article mentions the dangers lurking on social media and doom scrolling. Something that is not mentioned is how it affects the intelligence and its growth in children. Teachers from all over the world are reporting significant drop in intellectual proficiency of children, including in literary skills and even very basic reasoning skills. Some descriptions are very disturbing, but teachers don't seem surprised. This seems to be caused by AI in addition to social media.

Similar trends are seen in young adults too, especially with regards to their beliefs and culture. Many of them complain about being pressured into a life of vanity due to the race for attention on social media. I've seen research papers that indicate that the same culprits may be causing a drop in IQ among adults. I haven't seen anything so far that mentions elder adults, but I don't think that they're doing much better either. From my observation, these technologies also seem to be driving people into extreme ends of the beliefs that existed before they became popular.

None of this is surprising though, considering how they're designed
by 34679 | 2026-01-20 13:49:34+00:00
You should see what Google has done with the latest version of the Phone app. You used to be able to click on contacts and that would show you.. your contacts. Now it shows recent calls with a search bar for contacts. Say I want to call a friend named Dave. As soon as I start typing, search results begin populating, but none of the names it offers start with "D", they just contain "D" somewhere. It could be the middle of a last name. And I can't figure out why they'd fuck this up. There are no ads to be injected into my attempts to find a contact, so I have to wonder if this is just the beginning of a push to ruin every convenience so users will turn to Gemini for everything.
by berm_ | 2026-01-20 13:50:03+00:00
>Try driving 240+ km/h with any other large-volume-production car, you'll be sweaty.

This is just very much not true, Audi, Mercedes,Toyota, BMW breeze through it, hell my friends audi S4 from 2004 regularly shoots 240+ over the autobahn, and we never break a sweat.
by squeefers | 2026-01-20 13:50:24+00:00
> “What they have found is a 5D de Sitter solution, and we don’t live in 5D,” said > Antonio Padilla(opens a new tab) of the University of Nottingham.

> Still, the work is expected to launch a new era in matching the mathematical
> elegance of string theory to the actual world we live in."

yeah, sounds real promising. string theory all over. nice maths but who cares if it doesnt map to reality, its nice maths!
by bflesch | 2026-01-20 13:50:30+00:00
I call that "you are the garbage bin for other people's emotions". And once you realize this process you can't unsee it and re-evaluate some relationships. If it is each side taking turns being the "emotional garbage bin" then it's a healthy relationship.

But if people only reach out to drop their toxic waste and leave you without the chance to get rid of your own toxic waste you feel not good afterwards. Like where you have conversations and then afterwards notice that you were not able to actually speak about any of your own problems and worries.

That's what I really like about the kids and their words of the year: They used "aura" and at first I thought what a bullshit term is that, but after a while I came to understand it. It's totally fine to listen to your stomach feelings, if someone's aura is negative or their vibes are off you don't need to give them a reason why you stop interacting, you just leave.

We've been trained to be helpful and nice to everyone but then wonder why we feel drained at the end of the day. It's because we're spending emotional bandwidth on people and things that don't give us any energy back.

The word "aura" for all of this is extremely nice. If you see a spooky person approaching you on the street at night you also don't need to explain to them what exactly put you off about them - you just switch sides.

I can only recommend to trust your feelings.
by vjerancrnjak | 2026-01-20 13:50:49+00:00
This internal compulsion is just learned behavior. The society conditions you to work instead of play.

Nothing wrong with that, I have that compulsion as well.

Having a compulsion to play, purely for the sake of playing is a much healthier view. Useful, not useful, hard problem, easy problem, should not matter, you're playing.

Sometimes you can't be useful, yet you can always play.

All stems from inability to have systems without labor. Work, work.

I like how Pope John Paul II flipped the narrative and said work exist for the person, as a way for person to express itself. Made me realize how even communism stays trapped in labor mentality.
by zimpenfish | 2026-01-20 13:51:54+00:00
> it's the same thing as the etched screen of the Steam Deck

Steam Deck nano-textured display: late 2023

Apple nano-textured display: late 2019

Might be the same but Apple have a 4 year headstart.

> Apple didn't invent anything

They do have the patent though - https://patents.google.com/patent/US11199929B2/en
by PaulHoule | 2026-01-20 13:52:39+00:00
If you're trying to do something with some people and there is trust you can just go do it and it's done -- and if there is no trust you can spend hours arguing and barguing.

I don't personally have an objection to the book but I know that a lot of people react cynically to things in that register, like I know I could recommend that people would read it and very few will.
by alt227 | 2026-01-20 13:53:22+00:00
> In fact, they had so many ChatGPT fake apps showing as top results that they had to do something as users couldn't find the real one and it reached the news.

This is after claiming for many years that the walled garden is a necessity to protect users, and their app store is a safely curated utopia which justifies the 30% fee cut.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-20 13:54:21+00:00
> It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution.

This can become toxic in itself, though. Some times venting and being angry is what someone wants to do, but in a workplace environment that’s not a good thing to implicitly condone and support.

I’ve had some team members who just wanted to vent but not discuss solutions and (again, in a workplace, not personal relationship) it was a sign that something deeper was amiss: Being a perpetual victim of their circumstances and believing those circumstances were beyond their control was a safe, comforting place to exist. It was always easier to build up excuses that problems were thrust upon them by others, who could be held solely responsible for the results. In some cases I had to be very clear that they were responsible for working with teammates to address these issues together, not become a passive receiver of everything that happens with their peers.

Swooping in as the hero to solve everything for someone else isn’t a good solution, but (in a workplace environment) getting someone to switch from the passive victim mindset to the active mindset of engaging with their own problems is very important.

This is one topic where carrying advice from personal romantic relationships into the workplace isn’t a good idea, IMO.
by funkyfiddler69 | 2026-01-20 13:54:35+00:00
> they're actually trying to process those feelings

Exactly, help exploring their problem, maybe direct them into one nook or the other, support a proper perspective from different angles (to a small extent within the context and constraints they provided!!!), but don't solve the riddle for them. They might not even know how they really feel about it all, yet.
by replete | 2026-01-20 13:54:54+00:00
It's a practical approach, I used vagrant many years ago mostly successfully. I also explored the docker-in-docker situation recently while working on my own agentic devcontainer[0]- the tradeoffs are quite serious if you are building a secure sandbox! Data exfil is what worries me most, so I spent quite some time figuring out a decent self-contained interactive firewall. From a DX perspective, devcontainer-integrated IDEs are quite a convenient workflow, though docker has its frustrating behaviours

[0]: https://github.com/replete/agentic-devcontainer
by encyclopedism | 2026-01-20 13:56:38+00:00
> But you could make the exact same argument for a human mind?

It would be an argument and you are free to make it. What the human mind is, is an open scientific and philosophical problem many are working on.

The point is that LLM's are NOT the same because we DO know that LLM's are. Please see the myriad of tutorials 'write an LLM from scratch'
by limionaider | 2026-01-20 13:56:41+00:00
That’s a fair point — thanks for calling that out.

It’s not an operating system in the traditional sense. “OS” here is more of a metaphor for a personal decision layer, something that helps decide what to do now based on energy and focus, rather than managing hardware or processes.

That said, your comment makes it clear the website isn’t explaining this well enough yet, and that’s on me. I’ll work on clarifying that.
by JCattheATM | 2026-01-20 13:56:53+00:00
> It required to scan the QR code from a "mobile" app last time I tried.

Are you against using an Android (or LineageOS) emulator to do so?

> (You really have a lot of free time to write unsubstantiated dismissals to all my posts.)

You pop up in a lot of threads I'm interested in and seem to say a lot of incorrect things, that's all.
by proc0 | 2026-01-20 13:56:58+00:00
My experience is the same. In short, agents cannot plan ahead, or plan at a high level. This means they have a blindspot for design. Since they cannot design properly, it limits the kind of projects that are viable to smaller scopes (not sure exactly how small but in my experience, extremely small and simple). Anything that exceeds this abstract threshold has a good chance of being a net negative, with most of the code being unmantainable, unextensible, and unreliable.

Anyone who claims AI is great is not building a large or complex enough app, and when it works for their small project, they extrapolate to all possibilities. So because their example was generated from a prompt, it's incorrectly assumed that any prompt will also work. That doesn't necessarily follow.

The reality is that programming is widely underestimated. The perception is that it's just syntax on a text file, but it's really more like a giant abstract machine with moving parts. If you don't see the giant machine with moving parts, chances are you are not going to build good software. For AI to do this, it would require strong reasoning capabilities, that lets it derive logical structures, along with long term planning and simulation of this abstract machine. I predict that if AI can do this then it will be able to do every single other job, including physical jobs as it would be able to reason within a robotic body in the physical world.

To summarize, people are underestimating programming, using their simple projects to incorrectly extrapolate to any possible prompt, and missing the hard part of programming which involves building abstract machines that work on first principles and mathematical logic.
by harel | 2026-01-20 13:56:59+00:00
I evaluated a LOT of UI toolkits for React. The premise is always great - I want to save time by not having to build a UI toolkit for my application, so I'll use a great one off the shelf. But what I found was that the evaluation falls into three questions:

1. Does it look nice and professional?

2. Will it be here tomorrow?

3. How does it feel to work with - what does my instinct say?

The first question is easy. I either like it or not.
I can't answer the second one with certainty. Nobody can. I can only guess. Sometimes I'm wrong.

The third one is instinct driven. If the ergonomics feel off, my instinct will tell me. If something is not right, I'll feel it. I might not always be able to explain it, but I'll know it's a go or no go. ShadCDN came with big praise, but my instinct said a big Nope. It's stuff like that that make me think that, maybe, we add complexity because we get bored with the "boring" tech.
by tialaramex | 2026-01-20 13:57:39+00:00
I mean, this is a recurring theme of John Green's "Everything is Tuberculosis"

TB is "just" a bacterial infection. Today, in a wealthy industrialized country with universal healthcare, if I caught TB they'd "just" cure it here. Cures are possible, often even relatively easy.

But all three of the famous Bronte sisters probably died from it (TB == "consumption"), not far from where my mother lives today in that same industrialized country. And most years today it is still the leading cause of infectious disease deaths because even though we could cure it we just leave poor people to die instead.
by pelagicAustral | 2026-01-20 13:58:57+00:00
Unsurprisingly:

> To the small group of people who has actually been here, and understood what this work was and what it cost - you already know where to find me if it actually matters.

>To everyone else: This is where we part ways. No hard feelings. It's just time.

https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/blob/master/MIRROR.md
by encyclopedism | 2026-01-20 13:59:23+00:00
We know what an LLM is in fact you can build one from scratch if you like.
e.g. https://www.manning.com/books/build-a-large-language-model-f...

It's an algorithm and a completely mechanical process which you can quite literally copy time and time again. Unless of course you think 'physical' computers have magical powers that a pen and paper Turing machine doesn't?
by wolrah | 2026-01-20 13:59:45+00:00
> They don't fit the image if they drive an e-truck because e-trucks aren't great at those "truck things. At least that's my theory why the e-trucks aren't doing well, even if they should be.

A lifted dually with rubber band tires on giant wheels isn't good at truck things, and everyone who actually does truck things knows that, but a lot of the crowd that will complain about electric trucks has no problem with one of those.
by smallerfish | 2026-01-20 13:59:51+00:00
I've been working on a TUI to make bubblewrap more convenient to use: https://github.com/reubenfirmin/bubblewrap-tui

I'm working on targeting both the curl|bash pattern and coding agents with this (via smart out of the box profiles). Early stages but functional. Feedback and bug reports would be appreciated.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-20 13:59:52+00:00
> they're actually trying to process those feelings: to understand where the feelings are coming from, to be validated, and to be able to take a broader perspective.

If you’re speaking to a rational person with good intentions and good self-management this can help a lot.

If the other person doesn’t have good emotional regulation and is prone to catastrophizing, exaggeration, or excessive self-victimization then validating and reinforcing their emotions isn’t always helpful. It can be harmful.

I had a relationship long ago where the other person would always find a way to be the victim in their personal and workplace relationships. I made the mistake of following the advice to only listen, withhold suggestions and attempts to help, and to validate their emotions. The problem was that frequently their emotions and reactions were not valid, and I was only making things worse by providing a sounding board to validate those reactions. Once I stopped being an emotional validator for every reaction things started improving a lot, though it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.
by wrsh07 | 2026-01-20 14:00:10+00:00
For what it's worth, I wanted to downvote this because it doesn't provide much additional context. Which verses? Is there a link?

(I didn't downvote)

Saying "oh yeah the bible mentions that" doesn't really add to a conversation - the bible mentions a lot of stuff!

However, if I downvote you because you didn't provide context, you might misinterpret it as "wow, hacker news hates the bible" (I have no opinion on hn audience feelings towards religion)

So for additional context, one could look up the "speck vs log" which seems most straightforwardly about taking care of your own issues first (although it's in the context of hypocrisy, which doesn't quite match the original thread iiuc)

I found a few others, but none quite seemed like the close match I was hoping for (Mark 12:31, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, etc)
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2026-01-20 14:00:32+00:00
In my case, I really do want to be of use. In fact, I often tend to stay well in the background, and deliberately eschew credit.

That said, I do tend to get upset, when I’m taken for granted, but that’s really my own fault. I know it, rationally, but my inner brat still wants to throw a tantrum.
by lazarus01 | 2026-01-20 14:01:08+00:00
It’s great to be useful as living for your purpose is the best way to achieve life satisfaction. But it’s important to establish boundaries and avoid developing codependency and not to define yourself through the perception of your acts towards others. Having a skill that helps others gives you a sense of mastery. The fact that you have this skill and apply it in good faith should be enough to establish a good sense of self without feedback from others.

I love being an engineer and solving problems that I’m good at, which are problems too complex for most people to approach. But not everyone feels that way, some or most people don’t care or don’t understand the motivation, as they may have different motivations of their own. Learning to accept that and be confident without validation from others is very tough but possible, as you apply yourself consistently with focus and clarity, you gain a stronger sense of purpose. You are never fulfilled, but continue to pursue anyway, that is the trick I learned for myself. The trait is called equanimity and is more of a sustainable attitude vs a feeling, that is transactional. It’s easier as you get older and comes with maturity.