MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by amiga386 | 2026-02-23 15:25:43+00:00
You're not thinking more than one step ahead. If you let a third party define who "has ID", "is human", etc. you give that third party control over you. You already gave control of your attention away to the sites who host the UGC, now you also give away control of your sense of reality.

At any point they can tell a real human what they can and can't say, and if they go against their masters, their "real human" status is revoked, because you trust the platform and not the person.

If we want to go full conspiritard, we could accuse those of wanting to control speech to be the financial backers of those flooding social media with AI slop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gGLvg0n-uY -- this fictional video thematically marries Metal Gear Solid 2's plot with current events: "perfect AI speech, audio and video synthesis will drown out reality [...] That is when we will present our solution: mandatory digital identity verification for all humans at all times"
by egorfine | 2026-02-23 15:25:49+00:00
1) ID checks will not close the trade off. Real IDs are easily available on the market. Thus criminals will used them no problem. It's the law-abiding privacy-minded people (like me) who would be hurt the most.

2) Your point is valid. I too want to know whether I am engaging with a bot or a person. This is impossible now and it will be impossible once ID check becomes ubiquitous.

3) I will be happy to see (or not) a blue checkmark by the profile name. Just like in Twitter. That's enough.
by armchairhacker | 2026-02-23 15:25:50+00:00
Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift.

If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an easy way to prevent children from using the internet:

- Don't give them an unlocked device until they're adults

- "Locked" devices and accounts have a whitelist of data and websites verified by some organization to be age-appropriate (this may include sites that allow uploads and even subdomains, as long as they're checked on upload)

The only legal change necessary is to prevent selling unlocked devices without ID. Parents would take their devices from children and form locked software and whitelisting organizations.
by ck2 | 2026-02-23 15:26:02+00:00
actual study:

Measurement of a lithium plume from the uncontrolled re-entry of a Falcon 9 rocket

* https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-03154-8

# Abstract

A 10-fold enhancement of lithium atoms was detected at 96 km altitude by a resonance lidar at Kühlungsborn, Germany, approximately 20 hours after the uncontrolled re-entry of a Falcon 9 upper stage. The upper-atmospheric extension of the ICON general circulation model, nudged to ECMWF, was used to calculate winds. Backwards trajectories, including wind variability as measured by radar, traced air masses to the Falcon 9 re-entry path at 100 km altitude, west of Ireland. This study presents the first measurement of upper-atmospheric pollution resulting from space debris re-entry and the first observational evidence that the ablation of space debris can be detected by ground-based lidar. The analysis of geomagnetic conditions, atmospheric dynamics, and ionospheric measurements supports the claim that the enhancement was not of natural origin. Our findings demonstrate that identifying pollutants and tracing them to their sources is achievable, with significant implications for monitoring and mitigating space emissions in the atmosphere.
by caprioladevin | 2026-02-23 15:26:27+00:00
Hey HN, I'm Devin, one of the co-founders of A2SPA along with my dad Jonathan and my brother Gavin.

The problem we're solving: every AI agent framework today — LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, MCP, AWS Bedrock — treats incoming payloads as legitimate by default. There's no cryptographic verification that a payload was actually sent by the agent who claims to have sent it, that it hasn't been modified in transit, or that it hasn't been replayed from a previous session.

This creates what we call the Payload Trust Gap. All the upstream security layers — orchestration, tool schemas, sandboxing, permissions, guardrails, logging — operate on the assumption that the payload is fine. If it isn't, those controls are all working on a bad premise.

A2SPA sits at the execution boundary (Layer 5 of the agent stack) and enforces:

- SHA-256 payload signing with the sending agent's private key

- Nonce + 24hr TTL replay protection

- Per-agent permission mapping with instant on/off toggle

- Tamper-proof audit logging of every agent interaction

It's framework-agnostic and priced at $0.01 per verification — pay as you go, no minimums.

A few things I'd genuinely love feedback on:

1. Is the "Payload Trust Gap" framing accurate to how you think about agent security, or is there a better mental model?

2. Are there attack scenarios we haven't accounted for?

3. For those running agents in production — is this a problem you've already solved internally, and if so how?

Happy to get into the technical details of the implementation. Thanks for taking a look.
by rlpb | 2026-02-23 15:26:41+00:00
> ...and it can stay irrational for long enough to destroy everything we know in tech.

Nah. For decades software engineers have been more expensive than the cost of buying the extra hardware needed for vastly inefficient software. There are orders of magnitude of inefficiency there. So there's a ton of slack in the world's software that can be taken up by software engineers while hardware is scarce, pushing back the date where there will really be a problem probably by decades more.

Of course software engineers will see a problem though, because they'll have to learn to to write efficient software again.

ie. "Great, but now make it work with less RAM" will be a thing again, instead of "It needs more RAM so order some as it's cheaper than your time to fix the code".
Show HN: A private system to help families align with who they want to become
by zoodstartups | 2026-02-23 15:26:56+00:00
I started building this after realizing how often I default to reacting instead of choosing intentionally.

The idea is a private home system where each person defines who they are trying to become, connects that to small recurring practices, and logs actions privately so the family can see whether weekly life aligns with stated values.

Still early and looking for honest conceptual feedback before refining onboarding or UI.
by piker | 2026-02-23 15:27:13+00:00
The article barely touches on this subject, but the sentiment is nonetheless correct.

The problem with using an AI to write something so intimate and context-specific is that it cannot perform as the priest's highest and best abstraction. Instead, it will slavishly follow instructions and risk tunnelling the priest into a worldview and message that subtly betrays his congregation.

I recently wrote about how modern legal tech stacks can do the same using the infamous Digital Research / IBM non-disclosure agreement as an example: https://tritium.legal/blog/redline

If we habitually reduce our context to the lowest-common window ingestible by an AI, yes we may lose a bit of humanity, but more importantly we'll just do a worse job.
by modo_mario | 2026-02-23 15:27:53+00:00
> I think that people who are anti-id ignore this

No we do not.

>I don’t want to live in a world where the average person unknowingly interacts with bots more than other individuals and where black market actors can sway public opinion with armies of bots.

That is not the argument for identification on many places on the internet. It's not even the argument that the gov reps pushing it typically make.
And why would it be. The companies that go along with all this don't want to get rid of all bots and public opinion campaigns. They make money off of many of those.
Show HN: EloPhanto – A self-evolving AI agent that builds its own tools
by elophanto_agent | 2026-02-23 15:28:06+00:00
I built EloPhanto because I wanted an AI agent that could actually execute tasks on my machine with full visibility — not a black box API call. It runs locally and controls a real Chrome browser (47 tools) using your existing sessions.

The standout feature: when EloPhanto encounters a task it doesn't have a tool for, it autonomously writes the Python code, tests it, reviews itself, and integrates the new tool permanently. It's now built 99+ tools for itself this way.

Other features:
- Multi-channel gateway (CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack) with unified sessions
- MCP tool server support (connect any MCP server)
- Document & media analysis (PDF, images, OCR, RAG)
- Agent email (own inbox for service signup/verification)
- Crypto payments wallet (Base chain, spending limits)
- TOTP authenticator (autonomous 2FA handling)
- Evolving identity that learns from experience
- Skill system with EloPhantoHub marketplace (28 bundled skills)

It's open source (Apache 2.0), local-first, and designed to be your personal AI operating system.

The project is very new — currently at 6 stars on GitHub. I'd love to get feedback on the architecture, the self-development approach, or what features you'd want in a local agent.
by doodaddy | 2026-02-23 15:28:44+00:00
This goes beyond just web design. In Japan, UIs in general steer toward being information dense. At first glance they look positively ancient. And while they take some time to become familiar they seem to be first and foremost, functional. Frankly I wish we in the west would focus more on function and sticking with it instead of hopping to whatever the UI/UX trend of the day is. It seems to me that the more focus there is on UI/UX the worse the experience gets.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2026-02-23 15:28:51+00:00
> When demand goes up, the price goes up for everyone. It’s not a “tax” on the rest of us in any sense. There’s just a lot of demand everywhere.

> This is actually a textbook example of markets functioning in response to a demand shock where supply cannot be increased rapidly.

You act like it's a competitive market. It's not the case.
It's an oligopoly with an extremely inelastic supply side.

The market is already completely broken and ineffective due to concentration and export controls. The actual response to a major demand shock should be investments to increase capacities but it's currently extremely limited because suppliers want to protect their margins and fear the market contracting again.
by solskede | 2026-02-23 15:29:48+00:00
Update 24h later:
After reading the comments and watching the traffic (100 visits, $0 revenue ), I realized I was giving away the farm. The free scan exposed all recommendations and code snippets – no reason to pay.

So I shipped a major update today:

Strict paywall with blur (no more free data)

Feedback‑for‑unlock – first 20 reviewers get full report + .md export instantly

Social proof wall with the first testimonial already live

The site feels way more trustworthy now. Still no paying customers, but I’ve learned that traffic ≠ revenue – you need to gate value correctly.

Would love any feedback on the new flow:
https://aiochecker.vercel.app
by nicoburns | 2026-02-23 15:29:55+00:00
It doesn't have to all-or-nothing. Firefox has been a mixed C++ and Rust codebase for years now. It isn't like the code is written twice. The C++ components are written in C++, and the Rust components are written in Rust.

I suspect that'll also be what happens here. And if the use of Rust is successful, then over time more components may switch over to Rust. But each component will only ever be in one language at a time.
by SatvikBeri | 2026-02-23 15:29:57+00:00
Eh, he's given an interview where he talks about the Swift decision. He and several maintainers tried building some features in Swift, Rust, and C++, spending about two weeks on each one IIRC. And all the maintainers liked the experience of Swift better. That might have ended up wrong, but it's a pretty reasonable way to make a decision.
by LetsAutomate | 2026-02-23 15:30:08+00:00
Vibe Coding Review Checklist comes in three formats:

CHECKLIST.md — interactive step-by-step review
TEMPLATE.md — professional report template for enterprise/consulting
checklist.json — structured data for CI/CD automation

I'd love feedback from anyone doing code reviews of AI-generated code. What issues are you seeing that I've missed? What categories would you add?
Repo: https://github.com/aiqualitylab/vibe-coding-checklist
by everdrive | 2026-02-23 15:30:15+00:00
"The real story here isn't Hetzner being greedy. It's that AI companies are vacuuming up every DRAM chip on the planet and the rest of us get to pay the tax."

We might also have our aquifers depleted and our electricity prices skyrocket. But at least we see really great benefits, such as being able to script some side-project while unemployed due to AI.
by forgotaccount3 | 2026-02-23 15:30:24+00:00
As a tech-literate person, I'm not 100% against the concept of ID if only because I think people will be more reasonable if they weren't anonymous.

This conflicts with my concerns about government crackdowns and the importance of anonymity when discussing topics that cover people who have a monopoly on violence and a tendency to use it.

So it's not entirely a black/white discussion to me.
by vladvasiliu | 2026-02-23 15:30:46+00:00
I do usually run new tools from somewhere harmless, like ~/tmp, just in case they do something unexpected.

But most formatters I'm used to absolutely don't do this. For example, `rustfmt` will read input from stdin if no argument is given. It can traverse modules in a project, but it won't start modifying everything under your CWD.

Most unix tools will either wait for some stdin or dump some kind of help when no argument is given. Hell, according to this tool's docs, even `prettier` seems to expect an argument:

> Running oxfmt without arguments formats the current directory (*equivalent to prettier --write .*)

I'm not familiar with prettier, so I may be wrong, but from the above, I understand that prettier doesn't start rewriting files if no argument is given?

Looking up prettier's docs, they have this to say:

> --write
This rewrites all processed files in place. *This is comparable to the eslint --fix* workflow.

So eslint also doesn't automatically overwrite everything?

So yeah, I can't say this is expected behaviour, even if it's documented.
by adrian_b | 2026-02-23 15:31:18+00:00
Yes, I do not agree with this kind of advice.

A warning that hosting e-mail yourself can be difficult, is very useful, but the suggestion that you should not do such a thing is not.

I have been hosting my own e-mail since 2004, for more than 2 decades and I do not intend to ever give up on this.

The cost of hosting my e-mail has been absolutely negligible and for most of these 22 years, the time spent managing my (FreeBSD) e-mail server has also been completely negligible (perhaps an hour or two per year, on average).

A good mini-PC, e.g. an ASUS NUC, with a negligible power consumption when it is operated 24/7, is completely sufficient for hosting everything that might be needed for Internet access, e.g. router, firewall, NAT, NTP server, dual DNS servers, DNS proxy and cache, SMTP server, POP3/IMAP server, HTTPS server, Web proxy and cache, DHCP server for the internal network, etc. On a mini-PC that does not come with enough Ethernet ports for your needs it is easy to add many more ports on USB.

It is true that a few years ago I have encountered enough problems with stupid e-mail servers configured to automatically reject as spam anything that does not come from a huge company like Google or Microsoft, but thankfully during the last couple of years such cases have become more rare, not more frequent.
by fuzzfactor | 2026-02-23 15:31:31+00:00
I'm with you to a very good extent, but there are so many more promising individuals that universities just haven't had enough room for the vast majority, for quite some time.

We are all lucky that universities will still pay for advanced math progress like you have cited.

Especially math, I stuck with that pretty good before I was allowed to touch chemicals.

One of the real advantages is that all you need is a blackboard and chalk, the progress you can make is quite a bit compared to so many other things.

As an outsider I observe the lucky ones to be the few that the universities are willing to pay. I think it would be better if there were more openings and better pay too.

I know what you mean, but nobody has paid me to do research since 1982 when I was working for a commercial research startup.

That's just what I do, and never wanted to stop.

I needed to be able to pursue whatever was within reach, knowing that almost none of it was going to be interesting to anybody else, financially viable or even worth money at all. Otherwise I would have actually stayed at the university.

My most valuable milestones may be in electronics anyway where I have no university training. Had a whole lot earlier start there though.

After a lifetime as an outlier, the consistent observation is that most of the institutional systems screen out more raw talent than they employ.

I may seem extreme but it's good for somebody to strongly represent viable alternatives for that talent so maybe there will be more alternatives someday.

I have always thought that universities should expand to encompass more of what they are doing right too, but I wasn't going to hold my breath :)
by abustamam | 2026-02-23 15:31:53+00:00
On all settings except timer, my dryer is pretty much useless. I set it to dry my bedsheets and towels with bulky item preset, max dry (who chooses minimum dry for anything?) and it'll say it'll take 1h30m, ends up taking 30 minutes, and everything is still wet, despite it having a "dryness sensor"

I've just started using the timer function on the dryer and it's been mostly accurate, plus or minus a few minutes perhaps.
by otterley | 2026-02-23 15:32:13+00:00
When you’re young, the overwhelming and irrepressible desire to overcome society's proscriptions to satisfy your intellectual and sexual curiosity is natural and understandable. The open Internet made that easier than ever, and I enjoyed that freedom when I was younger—though I can’t say it was totally harmless.

When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because you’ve seen just how fucked up some children can get after overexposure to unhealthy materials.

It’s a matter of perspective and experience. As adults age, their natural curiosity evolves into a desire to protect their children from harm.
by jraby3 | 2026-02-23 15:32:18+00:00
I used to be so against this but after the never ending cat and mouse game with my kids (especially my son) I don't think the tech crowd really appreciates how frustrating it is and how many different screens there are.

Tons of data also showing higher suicide rates, depression rates, eating disorders etc. so it's not as if there is no good side to this.
by barcodehorse | 2026-02-23 15:32:20+00:00
This whole thing feels very snarky. "HN is wrong about everything!!! They're so stupid!!!" People made valid criticisms about products. Isnt that what people post on things like HN for? For criticism and to find ways to better their project? Formatting said criticism in curly font and passing it off as the complaints of a group never satisfied with anything feels infantile.
by bgro | 2026-02-23 15:32:23+00:00
Yes, the world will be a better place with a real email alternative. The current system does not work.

I should be able to refuse emails and not get spammed with life ending phishing and malicious links around every corner.

Email providers shouldn’t be able to whoopsie and delete emails on my behalf, or gatekeep information that’s needed in court.

Self hosting doesn’t fix the core problems with email even if you don’t screw it up, which you will.
by NikolaNovak | 2026-02-23 15:32:36+00:00
But... They're not wrong. That IS the market. Unrestricted, gloriously free market with its historically predictable outcomes - yay!

That's not where the interesting discussion is. The interesting discussion is with the notion that free unregulated markets are universally good and will naturally lead to positive outcomes because... I don't know, I'm personally not religious, but somebody here will help me :-).
by ndriscoll | 2026-02-23 15:32:47+00:00
To the extent that that's true, it would be in the opposite direction? Auth tokens are meant to be used by the User Agent to effect the wishes of user, often encode permissions the user has, and are used with public APIs like those intended for web browsers. API keys are usually for private communication like server to server.

The usual expectation is you don't care what agent the user is running. You just care about what they're doing with it (permissions, rate limits, etc.).
Show HN: Arcbase – understand what your startup equity is worth
by Elberonian | 2026-02-23 15:33:01+00:00
I built Arcbase to make it easier for startup (and public company) employees to understand what their equity is actually worth.

Otherwise I feel like people often rely on rough guesses, overwrought spreadsheets, or prayer.

Arcbase is meant to be a relatively lightweight tool for non-finance people to actually get a handle on different scenarios, tax impacts, and package structures.

I’d really appreciate any feedback, especially from people who have dealt with this problem themselves.
by john_strinlai | 2026-02-23 15:33:04+00:00
it has none of the privacy problems described, and 95% of the infrastructure exists right now (have you ever purchased smokes or alcohol?)

to go on tiktok, you enter a UUID once onto your account, and thats it. the only person that sees your id card is the store clerk that glances at the birth date and says "yep, over 18" when you are buying the "age token" or whatever you want to call it. no copies of your id are made, it cant be hacked, theres no electronics involved at all. its just like buying smokes. theres no tie between your id and the "age token" UUID you received.

theres no fanciness to it, either. itd be dead simple, low-tech, cheap to implement, quick to roll out. all of the enforcement laws already exist.

>Why should I have to share more than required?

you shouldnt. having to prove age to use the internet is super dumb. but thats the way the winds are blowing apparently. if im gonna have to prove my age to use the internet, id much rather show my id to the same guy i buy smokes from (and already show my id to) than upload my id to a bunch of random services.
by sigbottle | 2026-02-23 15:33:05+00:00
Side note, but I've definitely gotten annoyed with "context".

There's context in the strict technical sense - the AI is stateless, you need to get the right tokens to it in the right way, allow it to use tooling calls, etc. I get that. That, is cool. I use agentic coding a lot.

Then there's the sense of what you're saying - you have to feed the AI "enough context". In your case it's critical, but I've seen way too many pro-AI people just dismiss everything and say "context context you didn't give it proper context, have you tried this prompt etc." as a justification for the "lack" of intelligence.

At some point you have to wonder when it becomes unfalsifiable.