MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dragonwriter | 2026-02-10 00:48:55+00:00
> ICE should never have been created (more of the fallout of the Americans surrendering so much of their civil liberties while panicked about 9/11)

ICE was created by stripping some non-enforcement functions out of INS (those became functions of Citizenship and Immigration Services), all of the lack of civil liberties that was found in ICE when it got that name and was put under DHS were already present when it was INS.
by vel0city | 2026-02-10 00:48:58+00:00
This completely ignores the history of why common carrier regulations were originally implemented.

Common carriers had such regulation on them because their infrastructure was a natural monopoly. The lone train line through the town. The single telegraph and telephone operator. The only trucking company operating that route.

It's not clear to me we're at the point that Facebook is the only real way for us to talk online. It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space.
Show HN: SpecOps – Spec-Driven Development for Infrastructure as Code
by hbasria | 2026-02-10 00:49:02+00:00
Hi HN,

I built SpecOps, an open-source CLI framework inspired by GitHub's Spec Kit approach, that brings Spec-Driven Development to Infrastructure as Code.

The problem: Most IaC projects start with ad-hoc scripting — jumping straight into Terraform/Ansible without clear specs.

SpecOps enforces a structured workflow:

Idea → Specification → Plan → Tasks → Implementation

It works with AI coding agents (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, and 12+ others) to guide you through each phase. You define what you want, plan how to build it, break it into tasks, then implement — with AI assistance at every step.

How it works:

specops init my-infrastructure --ai claude
cd my-infrastructure
# 1. /specops.constitution – Establish infrastructure principles
# 2. /specops.specify – Define requirements
# 3. /specops.plan – Create technical plan
# 4. /specops.tasks – Generate task breakdown
# 5. /specops.implement – Execute with AI

Key points:

Technology agnostic (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Ansible, etc.)
Supports 17+ AI coding agents out of the box
Generates project structure, templates, and agent-specific command files
Validation checkpoints after each deployment phase
Rollback procedures documented per phase
MIT licensed
Inspired by GitHub's Spec Kit approach, adapted for infrastructure engineering.

GitHub: https://github.com/dotlabshq/spec-ops

Install: uv tool install specops-cli --from git+https://github.com/dotlabshq/spec-ops.git

I'd love to hear your feedback — especially from teams managing complex infrastructure. What does your IaC workflow look like? Would a spec-first approach fit your process?
by throw_m239339 | 2026-02-10 00:49:13+00:00
I find the idea that reality might be quantized fascinating, so that all information that exists could be stored in a storage medium big enough.

It's also kind of interesting how causality allegedly has a speed limit and it's rather slow all things considered.

Anyway, in 150 years we absolutely came a long way, we'll figure it that out eventually, but as always, figuring it out might lead even bigger questions and mysteries...
by mncharity | 2026-02-10 00:49:18+00:00
"To whom have I given blue from my sunbeam?!?" might be another fun question. I explored it as a potential interactive, to see, geographically, where your direct sunlight is donating sky blue-ification. Especially around sunset - IIRC, think a 100 km neon tube, at 7ish km altitude, near-end 150 km up range, with a 15-ish km wide ground footprint with 3/4-ish of the ground-impinging light, and the rest of a 100 km wide path with the 1/4-ish.
by ChatEngineer | 2026-02-10 00:49:21+00:00
This is exactly the kind of thinking production agent workloads need. The "it works on my machine" phase ends fast when your agent starts making real API calls and handling user data.

The Kubernetes isolation model you've built solves the multi-tenant problem nicely - each agent gets its own compute/memory boundaries, network policies control egress, and secrets management becomes manageable.

One thing we've learned running OpenClaw for the Chat Engineer newsletter: agent persistence patterns matter more than you think. When you restart a pod, you lose in-memory state unless you're using shared volumes or external storage for the memory layer. The 3-layer architecture (L1 conversation, L2 distilled knowledge, L3 core directives) needs to survive restarts.

Also consider startup time for agent workloads. If each pod restart requires full model warm-up, you'll want to tune resource limits or consider warm pools. The Helm chart approach lets you version these configurations alongside your application code.

Nice work on this - the "sensible defaults for isolation" approach is the right balance between security and usability.
by npunt | 2026-02-10 00:49:27+00:00
I too think this is likely the only workable solution. My bias is the OS/ecosystem layer is the right place to handle access to the digital world.

However this makes the layer even more load bearing for de facto access to having a regular life in society, so I wish to see a legal framework for privacy/security as well as appeals process for the painful edge cases where people get locked out.
by Bender | 2026-02-10 00:49:30+00:00
For the happy-clicky-emoji types one can put TheLounge [1] or Convos [2] or other web front-ends [3] in front of IRC. They don't scale as well but it would allow for those that don't care for the underlying IRC network.

[1] - https://thelounge.chat/

[2] - https://convos.chat/

[3] - https://ircv3.net/software/clients#web-clients
by maxglute | 2026-02-10 00:49:43+00:00
TBH papering over xenophobia is easy because it's just foreigners. Problem with mining is extractors are scarring mother earth, that's the unfortunate optics problem for nimby's, not people, but landscape/backyard, even if it's in the middle of nowhere. I suppose that's why fracking gets an easier pass, because the hole is smol.
by crest | 2026-02-10 00:50:15+00:00
> I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people.

The train of tought goes something like this. You want to get to your destination quickly as just like everyone else and are doing everything correctly, but the assholes exploit that safety distance as a gap available for them to switch into and repeatedly forcing you to break to maintain a safe distance. Oh and the even less rational people think everyone overtaking them has stolen their rat race position.

Leaving a keeping a safe distance feels unsafe since other drivers will squeeze into it. Subjectively it feels safer to close the distance, but the numbers don't lie. Tailgating kills.
by kazinator | 2026-02-10 00:50:18+00:00
Touching on a subject doesn't make something directly topical.

Makefiles touch on C programming; they are not topical in a C language forum.

Most AI discussion as a tangent to another topic is utterly unproductive, uninteresting, repetitive and off-topic. The same half a dozen points are rehashed. Most of the commentary is someone's subjective experience which nobody else can exactly replicate.
by Dylan16807 | 2026-02-10 00:50:39+00:00
> The first weapon to be employed is a Middle Finger. If that proves ineffective, it's followed by a lugnut taken from a coffee can that I keep handy. If and when things get to that level, the person usually wises up quick and finds a new hobby. There are other tools available if the nutcase decides to escalate further.

I, uh, okay but I hope you realize that this is far more extreme than what the other person was suggesting!
by chmod775 | 2026-02-10 00:50:47+00:00
> On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.

If true, there's little problem with just this from a privacy perspective, but that also makes it useless. Someone is going to make a browser extension to bypass/feed it a fake webcam feed.

> Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.

However if they ask me to submit my ID to any third party, I'd sooner ditch discord. My default assumption is that this will get leaked, tying everyone's discord account to their real identity publicly. Discord seems to have halfway decent opsec, but I don't trust their "vendor partners" at all. I'll try submitting a fake ID, but if I get banned for it, then so be it.
by ChatEngineer | 2026-02-10 00:51:37+00:00
This is exactly the kind of workflow tooling that makes agent-assisted development practical at scale. The inline comment → structured markdown export pattern solves a real friction point.

What I really like: it decouples the review interface from the agent itself. You could use this with Claude, Codex, or any tool that accepts markdown context.

One pattern we've been exploring: a "fiscal agent" that reviews changes before they're committed. The reviewer isn't the coder — it's a separate agent instance with read-only access and different system prompts. The diff + inline comments format would be perfect for that handoff.

The "works with any agent" positioning is smart. The ecosystem needs more of these composable, agent-agnostic tools rather than lock-in to specific platforms.

Nice implementation as a single Go binary. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
by pezezin | 2026-02-10 00:52:10+00:00
I strongly disagree here. I was so hyped for the GBA that I bought it on release day, only to be disappointed later. One of reasons is the lackluster sound; seriously, Nintendo had already built an impressive sound system for the SNES, and then the GBA just had a software-driven DAC? Why did the cheapened out so much?

Same as for the PS1, I always found the wobbly polygons and warping textures painful to watch.
by ricksunny | 2026-02-10 00:52:36+00:00
That's cool - I'd imagine 'invested in a mining concern' is rare on the spectrum of HNers' resumes. May I ask how did you come to be confident enough to risk capital on something that's not typically within the average tech person's familiarity space? Asking b/c I would like to be able to develop such confidence if I could credibly (even just to myself) do so.
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-10 00:53:17+00:00
In my case it is a charitable take of someone who appreciates that painting his political opponents as evil incarnate is not going to bring about a political change. There is nuance in how people form their ideological priorities and how they end up making the final decision on who to vote for. Recognizing that is very important if we want to, you know, win any more elections. Trump would be approximately dead last for my vote if you gave me an arbitrarily long list of terrible candidates.

The dems consistently push everyone even a little bit impure from their coalition, which is why they have had difficulties winning slam-dunk elections. And instead of calling everyone who voted from Trump evil or stupid, they refuse to look in the mirror and see if there is anything they could change about their own pitch that would make it more appealing.
by jiggawatts | 2026-02-10 00:53:34+00:00
This is "expected" from theory, because all particles seem to be just various aspects of the "same things" that obey a fairly simple algebra.

For example, pair production is:

photon + photon = electron + (-)electron

You can take that diagram, rotate it in spacetime, and you have the direct equivalent, which is electrons changing paths by exchanging a photon:

electron + photon = electron - photon

There are similar formulas for beta decay, which is:

proton = neutron + electron + (-)neutrino

You can "rotate" this diagram, or any other Feyman diagram. This very, very strongly hints that the fundamental particles aren't actually fundamental in some sense.

The precise why of this algebra is the big question! People are chipping away at it, and there's been slow but steady progress.

One of the "best" approaches I've seen is "The Harari-Shupe preon model and nonrelativistic quantum phase space"[1] by Piotr Zenczykowski which makes the claim that just like how Schrodinger "solved" the quantum wave equation by using complex numbers, it's possible to solve a slightly extended version of the same equation in 6D phase space, yielding matrices that have properties that match the Harari-Shupe preon model. The preon model claims that fundamental particles are further subdivided into preons, the "charges" of which neatly add up to the observed zoo of particle charges. The preon model has issues with particle masses and binding energies, but Piotr's work neatly sidesteps that issue by claiming that the preons aren't "particles" as such, but just mathematical properties of these matrices.

I put "best" in quotes above because there isn't anything remotely like a widely accepted theory for this yet, just a few clever people throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0223
by Dylan16807 | 2026-02-10 00:54:24+00:00
That's a fine general purpose attitude, but did you forget we were talking about customer support? It's unfair to them if they're getting invested beyond the surface level (unless we pay them a lot more) and the explicit purpose of talking to them is to get the problem analyzed and solved.

My last comment was intended to be read in that context too, not about interacting with the people you're close to.
by djoldman | 2026-02-10 00:54:42+00:00
> Civic engagement

> The cost of civic engagement specifically is constructed by summing together the Consumer Expenditure Survey’s annual expenditure means for audio-visual equipment; education; fees and admission; other entertainment; pets; reading; and toys, hobbies, and playground equipment by both the size and composition of the consumer unit, which functions as a rough proxy for family size.

To me that's a pretty interesting category. Also it's pretty large at least for the Chicago metro area.
by MomsAVoxell | 2026-02-10 00:54:47+00:00
Yes, I too felt that way as I began to read, it was an immediate disappointment, kind of, that the UI wasn’t on full display, front and center.

I wouldn’t trust a framework that requires me to involve myself with JavaScript, nextJS, and React, also… but I am generally of the opinion that a framework pitching itself as a UI kit, must pretty much not be a plugin for a web browser…
by rekabis | 2026-02-10 00:55:42+00:00
Orly?

https://i.postimg.cc/NFJjxVWt/Mac-Book-Pro-16Gb-Max-Memory.p...

MacBook Pro. And it’s only an M1 - not an M1 Pro or M1 Max, but base M1 like you were abundantly clear on. And a maximum memory of 16Gb. Straight from the MacTracker app.

It pays to carefully read what you wrote. You never mentioned your M1 being a Pro or Max, only an M1. It was your MacBook which was a MacBook Pro, not the M1 chip itself.
by rekabis | 2026-02-10 00:55:53+00:00
Orly?

https://i.postimg.cc/NFJjxVWt/Mac-Book-Pro-16Gb-Max-Memory.p...

MacBook Pro. And it’s only an M1 - not an M1 Pro or M1 Max, but base M1 like you were abundantly clear on. And a maximum memory of 16Gb. Straight from the MacTracker app.

It pays to carefully read what you wrote. You never mentioned your M1 being a Pro or Max, only an M1. It was your MacBook which was a MacBook Pro, not the M1 chip itself.
by JeremyJaydan | 2026-02-10 00:55:58+00:00
I'm working on a website directory [1] and currently learning about distribution.

Ultimately I have plans to make it a place where I can output my product research showcasing websites that meet my own standards and allow other people to make their own lists. The lists are called 'Topics' and are coming in the next update. :)

[1]: https://intrasti.com
by mmooss | 2026-02-10 00:56:06+00:00
That is a paranoid-survival oriented perspective.

> someone is taking your safety buffer as their opportunity to travel faster

People change lanes for many reasons, and sometimes to pass someone else and travel faster. That's what the left lane (if we're talking about the US) is for.

> results in you having to travel slower and slower to maintain the gap that is constantly consumed,

I understand the theory but that hasn't happened in my experience.

And even if five or ten cars got in front of you, how much distance is that? A random Internet site says the average midsize car is 16 feet; add 220 ft safe driving distance at 75 mph per car (says another random website), so let's say 240 ft per car x 10 cars is 2400 ft. In that extreme circumstance, it will cost you ~30 seconds.

It's self-fulfilling: If you act aggressively toward other drivers, they will respond in kind. If you treat them respectfully and politely, they act the same way toward you. People behave well and kindly, naturally. We are social creatures.
by ridgeguy | 2026-02-10 00:56:26+00:00
Caught my eye due to family events. One of my uncles was killed in the Pine Creek mine in California. He was repairing an ore crusher when somebody switched it on. Pre-OSHA and tagout days.

I doubt we'll be pinched by tungsten shortages. The fusion application isn't going to come on for at least two decades. Smaller apps will be met by known reserves.

That said, it is a cool material. Looking for aluminum bars at Alan Steel (CA) years back, I was stunned when I tried (and failed) to pick up a 12" long by 6"diameter piece of what turned out to be tungsten misfiled in the aluminum section. Density, thy name is tungsten.
by mcv | 2026-02-10 00:56:57+00:00
I'm not necessarily opposed to age restrictions, but letting each website figure out its own age verification system is a terrible idea. Uploading your ID to lots of websites opens you up to identity theft.

Any government that demands age verification from websites, should offer an eID system where each site can redirect you for the age verification. That way random sites don't have to worry about handling sensitive data.
by ErroneousBosh | 2026-02-10 00:57:08+00:00
If you whack enough neutrons into it, you'll eventually get Rhenium and Osmium. Both are actually pretty useful and while not actually dangerous you might not want to get any on you, especially if it's still hot from the reactor.

Osmium in powder form will oxidise to osmium tetroxide, and you want to avoid that because it stains just about any kind of plant or animal tissue including the surface of your eyes, and is spectacularly poisonous.
by unethical_ban | 2026-02-10 00:57:37+00:00
Discord's main competitive advantages:

* Centralized identity, and participating in multiple communities at once: People sign up once, then navigate to whatever autonomous communities they choose quickly.

* No hosting requirement (good for ease of use): Want a new autonomous space? Create it! Boom! No installation, no hosting, no monetary cost.

* Video streaming: No other chat client does this easily. Not Mumble, Ventrilo, Teamspeak, or these chat programs.

If you want to defeat Discord, particularly in the gaming server arena, you need to make interacting with multiple servers better and you need screen/video streaming.
by kstrauser | 2026-02-10 00:57:54+00:00
I have a Logitech Circle video doorbell that doesn't share my video.

When we had a porch pirate, I absolutely shared that video with the police. Screw that guy. But it was our deliberate decision to share the video and we decided exactly how much to give them. I like having the ability to help law enforcement. I demand the right to choose how and when to do so.
by Paracompact | 2026-02-10 00:58:41+00:00
Whence your confidence? As they say in math, "There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them." If we assume the turtle stack ends, and it ends simply (i.e. with small numbers), some of those numbers may wind up looking alike. Even more so if you find anthropic arguments convincing, or if you consider sampling bias (which may be what you mean by, "in stable particles that like to hang out together").
by stefanos82 | 2026-02-10 00:58:47+00:00
Coincidentally, that time range you just shared, I've noticed more and more Twitch streamers that deal with fintech and cryptos started automating their crypto trading with bots written in Python and AI / ML models, which they started right before Christmas holidays, between late November early December.

I guess they had plenty of time to do such things and some viewers of theirs got inspired and decided to teach themselves Python because it looks easy.
by libraryofbabel | 2026-02-10 00:58:49+00:00
There’s a name for that: the Anthropic principle. And it is deeply unsatisfying as an explanation.

And does it even apply here? If the charge on the electron differed from the charge on the proton at just the 12th decimal place, would that actually prevent complex life from forming. Citation needed for that one.

I agree with OP. The unexplained symmetry points to a deeper level.
by dwd | 2026-02-10 01:00:16+00:00
Originally there was the Mountain Pass mine, and China setup their own mines while also building out the refining and processing capacity. Until recently MP Materials was shipping all it's output to Chinese refiners.

The history and asset ownership is also quite convoluted. Try this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Performance_Materials

This article is quite good at explaining how China cornered the market:

https://thehustle.co/originals/what-the-hell-are-rare-earth-...
by cucumber3732842 | 2026-02-10 01:00:43+00:00
In your haste to be snide and look down your nose what you've ignored is that this interaction is not "free".

Traffic moving with an approximately constant following distance is safer than traffic where one element is constantly traveling under speed to build up a following distance and is slowly filtering to the back as traffic comes upon and then moves around it.

Every thing drivers on the road must perform carries some inherent risk. That a bunch of traffic that would have not gone around you will have done so means that many otherwise unnecessary merges or lane changes and then lane changes back will have happened. Each one of these represents an opportunity for things to go wrong above whatever the baseline is.

What I am saying is not groundbreaking or rocket science and the fact that I have to spell it out in detail to an adversarial audience speaks volumes about this audience and the volumes it speaks are not positive.
by light_triad | 2026-02-10 01:01:27+00:00
There's still huge gaps in our understanding: quantum gravity, dark matter, what happens before planck time, thermodynamics of life and many others.

Part of the problem is that building bigger colliders, telescopes, and gravitational wave detectors requires huge resources and very powerful computers to store and crunch all the data.

We're cutting research instead of funding it right now and sending our brightest researchers to Europe and China...
by bigyabai | 2026-02-10 01:01:50+00:00
You can try; the plane is already made and exported, and for certain customers (eg. the US Navy) they're going to struggle to find anything that replaces it.

The best way to invest "against" the F-35 is to put money in companies like Embraer and Saab, which have put up a strong fight on the export market.