Hacker News: yuvalr1

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Reasoning models reason well, until they don't"

yuvalr1 — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 11:39:03 +0000

You are making a wrong leap from non-deterministic process to uncontrollable result. Most of the parallel algorithms are non-deterministic. There might be no guarantee about the order of calculation or even sometimes the final absolute result. However, even when producing different final results, the algorithm can still guarantee characteristics about the result.

The hard problem then is not to eliminate non-deterministic behavior, but find a way to control it so that it produces what you want.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Microsoft only lets you opt out of AI photo scanning 3x a year"

yuvalr1 — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 20:44:28 +0000

Well, sometimes Microsoft decides to change your settings back. This has happened to me very frequently after installing Windows updates. I remember finding myself turning the same settings off time and again.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "What Does Consulting Do?"

yuvalr1 — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 15:29:28 +0000

There are two kinds of consultants: those who write code and those who only give advise. It seems to me that those who only advise lost their market to LLMs pretty completely.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:37:33 +0000

> Iran banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government

So more than fearing Israel, they actually fear the public that has an encrypted communication channel that can't be tapped by their police. Explains a lot.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:31:04 +0000

I'm surprised reading that the Iranian's regime concerns are centered on WhatsApp sharing information with Israel. It is much more likely that WhatsApp have 0-day vulnerabilities used by the Mossad to gain the info than WhatsApp actively sharing it.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:23:09 +0000

Security strength is not a binary measure, there are many levels of security between "no encryption at all" to "run your own server".

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth"

yuvalr1 — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 21:35:32 +0000

I am not involved in scraping, but to me this sounds like simply another tool in the arsenal. They say it's hard for the scraper to realize it has been caught this way because it's not being blocked. However, I don't see anything preventing scrapers from implementing heuristics to realize that.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Diagrams AI can, and cannot, generate"

yuvalr1 — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:07:10 +0000

This means the leading UI for LLMs - the chat - is the wrong UI, at least for some of the tasks. We should instead have a single query text field, like in search engines, that you continue to edit and refine, just like in complex search queries.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Big LLMs weights are a piece of history"

yuvalr1 — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:37:16 +0000

And yet, it's the best we currently have. I donate to them. We can come with demands of how it should be managed, but it should not prevent us from helping them.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "About Google Chrome's "This extension may soon no longer be supported" (2024)"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 10:03:05 +0000

exactly. I was not referring to ads, but to annoying suggestions in embedded videos (also when the video is paused!), and even to the long and mostly useless suggestions list on the right of the screen. I want to use YouTube as a useful tool, not to waste my time in endless loops of "oh, that looks interesting!"

New comment by yuvalr1 in "About Google Chrome's "This extension may soon no longer be supported" (2024)"

yuvalr1 — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 11:29:47 +0000

I simply cannot give up the option of zapping distractions off of my screen. I really cannot understand how people can use Youtube or even a Youtube embedded video without zapping away the distractions. There is no way I'm coming back to Chrome if they don't support manifest V2. It's Firefox for me.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Removing Jeff Bezos from my bed"

yuvalr1 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:34:39 +0000

If there was a similar product that does not upload any of your extremely personal data, like whether you're now in your bed, to some server on the internet, would you prefer it?

New comment by yuvalr1 in "I found a backdoor into my bed"

yuvalr1 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:32:14 +0000

Are there any consumer products offered that provide similar functions (heating, controlling with an app etc.), but which never try to connect to a remote server, other than looking for the control app in the local LAN?

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Rare Photos from Inside North Korea's 'Hotel of Doom' (2023)"

yuvalr1 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:58:36 +0000

I wonder what giant shadows this building casts, and how unfortunate it is for those live near it.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Humpback whale briefly traps young kayaker in its mouth in Chile"

yuvalr1 — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:32:43 +0000

You really don't have to wait even a single second if you use an ad blocker. I can recommend uBlock Origin.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Facebook ban on discussing Linux?"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 13:44:17 +0000

Maybe it is about time that we stop relying on closed gardens, censored and managed on a whim, and start reclaiming our internet and freedom back, publishing in open platforms?

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Subpixel Snake [video]"

yuvalr1 — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 20:55:43 +0000

This great video goes into a bit more detail about pixels. It also shows that there is an interesting difference with the color green not only in monitors, but also in camera sensors that detect the color:

https://youtu.be/PMIPC78Ybts?list=PLplnkTzzqsZTfYh4UbhLGpI5k...

I can recommend it, and all the other videos of Cem Yuksel. He is really great at presenting!

New comment by yuvalr1 in "Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control their jobs"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:08:16 +0000

This is true. it also hurts the public, as the drivers are dependent on the number of deliveries the succeed making, thus hurrying up and constantly stressed. This hurts not only their health and quality of delivery, but also increases the risk for traffic accidents.

It is in the best of interest of everyone that these people would get a normal salary.

New comment by yuvalr1 in "I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA"

yuvalr1 — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:36:07 +0000

Can you describe the changes that we are anticipated to see as a result of the change in the administration?

New comment by yuvalr1 in "How we used GPT-4o for image detection with 350 similar illustrations"

yuvalr1 — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:51:21 +0000

A completely different approach that don't require heavy AI would be an app on the user phone that does this:

1. Measure the distance from the wall (standard image processing)

2. Use the rotations of the gyro sensors on the phone to conclude which car is being looked at

I wonder if this could be as accurate though