Hacker News: wgrover

New comment by wgrover in "Identifying fake cosmetics using AI"

wgrover — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 05:24:05 +0000

I think my "cautious optimism" mostly came from the fact that Gemini found subtle problems with the counterfeit packages that I (someone who looks at fakes as part of my job) didn't notice - like mismatched info between the tube and box, and a malformed Irish postal code. If I didn't notice those, then I seriously doubt that a consumer glancing at a package would notice them. In that case, Gemini's insights would be valuable info for a consumer.

Gemini wrongly called an authentic product a fake, but that was mainly because there really were typographical errors in the authentic product's ingredient list. That's more of an indictment of the manufacturer than it is Gemini.

Finally, a lot of the things that Gemini got wrong seemed to me like they could reasonably be attributed to things like optical artifacts in the photos (glare, shadows, stuff like that). Better/more photos might improve that.

All that being said, this is obviously a tiny study of a single AI tool with a single brand of cosmetic product, so it's probably premature for me to optimistic, even cautiously. I've edited the last section of the writeup accordingly.

New comment by wgrover in "Identifying fake cosmetics using AI"

wgrover — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 01:01:33 +0000

That's fascinating! If any of your work using AI to identify reproductions is publicly sharable, I'd love to learn more about it (amateur antique collector here). But if not I understand.

New comment by wgrover in "Identifying fake cosmetics using AI"

wgrover — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:59:39 +0000

Regarding scaling - I think you're right if the AI mostly detects typos, like it did in this work.

I'm hopeful that future AI models (perhaps trained for this purpose, not a general-purpose model like I used here) might be able to identify more subtle variations in e.g. injection molding patterns, the surface finish of a pill, things that would be hopefully a lot harder for counterfeiters to fix than a typo.

New comment by wgrover in "Identifying fake cosmetics using AI"

wgrover — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 23:37:19 +0000

Thanks! I'm putting "doing cool stuff with really basic ideas" in my bio... :)

Identifying fake cosmetics using AI

wgrover — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:18:27 +0000

Article URL: https://groverlab.org/hnbfpr/2026-08-26-ai-counterfeit-cosmetics.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484925

Points: 59

# Comments: 25

Identifying fake cosmetics using artificial intelligence

wgrover — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 19:23:14 +0000

Article URL: https://groverlab.org/hnbfpr/2026-08-26-ai-counterfeit-cosmetics.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49454422

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by wgrover in "Go 1.27"

wgrover — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:48:43 +0000

Your comment makes me think of LabVIEW - if you're not familiar with it, it uses a visual programming language ("G") in which data flows down wires. The color of the wire indicates the wire's data type (blue for ints, orange for floats, green for bools, pink for strings) and the width of the wire indicates the dimensionality of the data (thin line = scalar, thick line = 1D array, double-thick = 2D array). The color is more than decorative or even assistive - it's essential to understanding the program.

New comment by wgrover in "Random numbers, Persian code: A mysterious signal transfixes radio sleuths"

wgrover — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:22:12 +0000

Fans of the band Wilco will recognize one of the Conet Project's recordings as the source of the woman repeating "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" in the song "Poor Places" from the eponymous album. Wilco failed to license the sample and the resulting lawsuit gave the Conet Project a portion of Wilco's royalties on that track.

New comment by wgrover in "A ternary plot of citrus geneology"

wgrover — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:02:10 +0000

Yes! And every day the California Citrus State Historic Park is open for tours and tasting of various citrus varieties:

https://www.californiacitruspark.com

New comment by wgrover in "The Old Robots Web Site"

wgrover — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 23:43:45 +0000

And I remember going to Radio Shack at the mall as a kid and wanting that Armatron robot so badly! Being able to get these things now for pretty cheap and fixing them and playing with them with my kids has been such a treat.

New comment by wgrover in "The Old Robots Web Site"

wgrover — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:53:30 +0000

A parenting tip for those with geeky kids:

You can get some of these (like the smaller TOMY robots) for pretty cheap on eBay. They're usually broken, but the innards of these robots are so interesting, just taking them apart is a learning experience. TOMY was brilliant at making seemingly sophisticated toys that were actually run by a single DC motor; all the movements, sounds, sensing etc. were implemented using gears and cam shafts and other mechanisms. A great way to learn about simple machines, and a bonus if you (or your kid) can repair them and bring a 40-year-old robot back to life.

New comment by wgrover in "Frame of preference A history of Mac settings, 1984–2004"

wgrover — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 04:29:53 +0000

In the site's defense, it is emulating like ten different operating systems as you scroll.

New comment by wgrover in "The Barbican"

wgrover — Mon, 12 May 2025 17:17:48 +0000

Here's a cross-section through the theatre portion of the Barbican showing the complexity of the engineering:

https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/5w9ep7/cross_...

New comment by wgrover in "The Smallest Thing in Go"

wgrover — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 04:15:55 +0000

I'm guessing the title was meant to be a nod toward the meaning of the English word iota, "an extremely small amount".

New comment by wgrover in "Can you get root with only a cigarette lighter?"

wgrover — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 14:41:18 +0000

Yup - the first few minutes of one of Technology Connections' videos on electromechanical pinball machines shows this mechanism in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3p_Cv32tEo

New comment by wgrover in "So thieves broke into your storage unit again"

wgrover — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 19:17:15 +0000

Your post reminded me of Mark Twain’s very funny short story “The McWilliamses And The Burglar Alarm”:

https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story...

New comment by wgrover in "Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer"

wgrover — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:40:40 +0000

Here's a Python script I wrote that generates storage bin labels and prints them using a cheap 2" by 3" label printer:

https://github.com/wgrover/jamie

The name 'jamie' is in honor of Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman's meticulously labeled storage bins at M5 Industries.

The code uses a brute-force search to fit the specified text on the label using the largest possible font size.

New comment by wgrover in "Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email"

wgrover — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 19:19:41 +0000

I miss Pine too. I could read/file/delete scores of plaintext emails in seconds using single keystrokes.

Every email client I've used since Pine has been better at dealing with all the stuff we've bolted on to email (HTML, attachments, calendar invites...) but none of them have been as efficient at the core tasks of email as Pine was.

New comment by wgrover in "Make your electronics tamper-evident"

wgrover — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 01:40:51 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion - I looked into music recognition algorithms early on but struggled to adapt them for image use. But I'll revisit them.

New comment by wgrover in "Make your electronics tamper-evident"

wgrover — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 21:16:51 +0000

Thanks! There are related structures in electronic circuits called physical unclonable functions (PUFs) that find uses in cryptography - you might find them interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_unclonable_function