TrickyRick (u/TrickyRick)

TrickyRick commented on Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining simonwillison.net/2025/Ap... · Posted by u/simonw

thegeomaster · 4 months ago

For all of the images I've tried, the base model (e.g. 4o) already has a ~95% accurate idea of where the photo is, and then o3 does so much tool use only to confirm its intuition from the base model and slightly narrow down. For OP's initial image, 4o in fact provides a more accurate initial guess of Carmel-by-the-Sea (d=~100mi < 200mi), and its next guess is also Half Moon Bay, although it did not figure out the exact town of El Granada [0].

The clue is in the CoT - you can briefly see the almost correct location as the very first reasoning step. The model then apparently seems to ignore it and try many other locations, a ton of tool use, etc, always coming back to the initial guess.

For pictures where the base model has no clue, I haven't seen o3 do anything smart, it just spins in circles.

I believe the model has been RL-ed to death in a way that incentivizes correct answers no matter the number of tools used.

[0]: https://chatgpt.com/c/680d011a-9470-8002-97a0-a0d2b067eacf

TrickyRick · 4 months ago

I had a similar experience, I tried with some photos from various European cities and while it pretty much always got the city correct it was hilariously confidently incorrect in the exact location within the city. They were plausible but nowhere near the level of accuracy the article describes. All the images had distinctly recognizable landmarks which a resident of said city would know and which also have images available online given one knows the name of the landmark so I'm not particularly impressed.

In fact some of the answers were completely geographically impossible where it said "The image is taken from location X showing location Y" when it's not possible to see location Y if one is standing at location X. Like saying "The photo is taken in Central Park looking north showing the Statue of Liberty".

TrickyRick commented on Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices · Posted by u/hyperknot

n144q · 9 months ago

In the US, DL works as an ID for almost anything other than voting in an election. You can fly to almost any US territory with that plastic card. And it is state-provided ID -- nobody questions that.

And we are talking about 300M people here, which is about 4 times the population for Germany.

If they hate US residents they should declare that clearly on their website, not wasting customers' (and their own) time.

TrickyRick · 9 months ago

Contrary to the belief of a lot of Americans, just because it works in the US doesn't mean it works elsewhere. In the rest of the world a driver's license is used for proving your right to drive and we have a thing called passports for proving your identity. Hetzner isn't an American company so why should they accept American drivers licenses?

TrickyRick commented on All the data can be yours: reverse engineering APIs jero.zone/posts/reverse-e... · Posted by u/noleary

pyrale · 10 months ago

On the defender side, it's much funnier to poison the data of identified scrapers than to immediately ban them. Let them work out that their data has been altered for a while, clean up their datasets, and work to understand what identifies them as scrapers.

TrickyRick · 10 months ago

Definitely, but it's also a lot more complex to present credible looking false data than to simply reject a request.

TrickyRick commented on Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages lagrangepoint.substack.co... · Posted by u/rithvikvibhu

bayindirh · 10 months ago

You generally get a custom mold for your ear canals and a specially tuned DSP for your frequency curves + BT connection to your phone for calls, at least. Your device can be retuned over and over as long as it functions, too.

What drives the prices up is a multitude of factors: High end DSPs, micro speakers which can do good sound reproduction at required frequencies, relatively low sales volume, R&D expenses and of course an insatiable appetite for profits.

These things always cost and arm and a leg in here, too.

TrickyRick · 10 months ago

Not to mention that this is paid by insurance in many countries which means there is little incentive for individuals to shop around.

TrickyRick commented on Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days stretchmytimeoff.com... · Posted by u/zachd

hackernewds · 10 months ago

Good luck traveling on work days!

TrickyRick · 10 months ago

Works great with an evening flight, you can work all day and leave for the airport after work.

TrickyRick commented on Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days stretchmytimeoff.com... · Posted by u/zachd

bittermandel · 10 months ago

I love this! Every year in Sweden around christmas, almost all popular magazines publish articles for how to optimally book your vacation days. We have quite a few bank days between christmas and new years, so certain years you can get like 3 weeks off by booking 6 days or so.

This year it looks like you can achieve the following: In december, take 23rd and 27th off and you get 9 days consecutive time off between 21st and 29th. Add 30th and 31st, and you'll get 12 days consecutive. Add 2nd and 3rd of January and tada, you have 17 days vacation for the price off 6 PTO days! The website linked in this post doesn't get this quite right, as 24th is technically not a public holiday but the vast portion of companies regard it as such.

TrickyRick · 10 months ago

The 24th of December is a weekend by law in Sweden (Semesterlag 3 a §)

"Lördag och söndag räknas inte som semesterdagar annat än i fall som avses i 9 § tredje stycket. Med söndag jämställs allmän helgdag samt midsommarafton, julafton och nyårsafton."

TrickyRick commented on All the data can be yours: reverse engineering APIs jero.zone/posts/reverse-e... · Posted by u/noleary

DeathArrow · 10 months ago

I wonder why didn't hey block all Digital Ocean IP ranges.They only need residential customers to access Robin Hood, so they can block everything else.

TrickyRick · 10 months ago

It's not exactly neither hard nor expensive to buy a residential IP proxy services to get around that.

TrickyRick commented on Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/chmaynard

shiroiushi · a year ago

Music? I don't think anyone listens to American music these days outside of America (and maybe Canada). America used to produce great music, back in the 60s-80s, that people around the world wanted to listen to, but that went away after the 2000s.

American movies, however, are still quite popular abroad. Offhand, I'd say it's one of America's biggest exports. "Microcode" is the other one, if you mean things like CPU design: all the biggest CPU makers are in America: Intel, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. (Many of the CPUs are manufactured elsewhere, usually by TSMC, but all the design work is done in the US.)

TrickyRick · a year ago

There's this Taylor girl who seems pretty popular but maybe you're right, the record concert sales probably implies nobody is listening to her.

TrickyRick commented on Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people fastcompany.com/91039401/... · Posted by u/belter

kristofferR · 2 years ago

I don't agree, I think Klarna is awesome.

Klarna BNPL is like a CC, good for those who can handle it. It doubles your credit period (so you get 30 days Klarna + 30 days Credit Card) for free, leading to higher returns if you believe you can handle credit profitably.

Not only that, but it's also quicker to pay with than CC (No 3DSecure) and you get all your ordered items in a usable list. Way more secure than giving my credit card information freely away to random webshops too. If you don't want BNPL you can pay right away through Klarna anyway, it's like Paypal in that regard.

They don't seem predatory at all to me TBH, if they were, they wouldn't have autopay and send you so many notifications if you don't have that enabled. They don't even charge me anything for semi-late payment of a few days late.

TrickyRick · 2 years ago

That's like saying gambling companies aren't predatory because personally I only bet on sports every once in a while and never more than I can afford to lose.