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tom_usher commented on Show HN: Any-LLM – Lightweight router to access any LLM Provider   github.com/mozilla-ai/any... · Posted by u/AMeckes
CuriouslyC · 5 months ago
LiteLLM is kind of a mess TBH, I guess it's ok if you just want a docker container to proxy to for personal projects, but actually using it in production isn't great.
tom_usher · 5 months ago
I definitely appreciate all the work that has gone in to LiteLLM but it doesn't take much browsing through the 7000+ line `utils.py` to see where using it could become problematic (https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm/blob/main/litellm/utils.p...)
tom_usher commented on Tell HN: Camelgate NPM Outage (Cloudflare)    · Posted by u/bavarianbob
tom_usher · 9 months ago
Seems to be a change in Cloudflare's managed WAF ruleset - any site using that will have URLs containing 'camel' blocked due to the 'Apache Camel - Remote Code Execution - CVE:CVE-2025-29891' (a9ec9cf625ff42769298671d1bbcd247) rule.

That rule can be overridden if you're having this issue on your own site.

tom_usher commented on Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think   usher.dev/posts/2025-03-0... · Posted by u/tom_usher
jasode · 9 months ago
>by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone watch.

I get what your advice is about but to add some nuance which didn't cover... you should consider that I learned of Alec's Technology Connections channel 9 years ago because the Youtube algorithm suggested it to me.

Why did Youtube do that? It was because I had watched Ben's Applied Science excellent video showing vinyl grooves under an electron microscope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCdsyCWmt8

So the first Alec video I got exposed to was his related topic on vinyl records (click "Oldest" to see them) : https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/videos

I'd argue that the Youtube algorithm is very good at finding adjacent videos of interest especially in educational topics and DIY repair tutorials.

You're suggesting people go to Youtube subscriptions feeds but people have a list of favorites in their subscriptions often because of the algorithm. There's a bit of chicken-vs-egg situation going on there.

What a good algorithm does is help users with the Explore-vs-Exploit tradeoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitati...

- Explore --> Youtube algorithm sidebar recommendations of related videos.

- Exploit --> add a worthy creator to subscription feed and get alerted to new releases from that person

The "explore" part is helped by algorithms because they can suggest videos you would have never thought of because you don't know the keywords or jargon to type into a Youtube search box to get to it directly. "You don't know what you don't know."

But don't use the algorithm for politics or click on anything that has a thumbnail with the shocked Pikachu face. That just starts a feedback loop of crap.

Arguably, the algorithms could put one into a non-productive engagement loop never to escape. Personally, I don't think it's a big risk for educational/DIY topics because your brain gets saturated with "too much information" and hits a stopping point where you don't want to learn any more.

So... Algorithms can be bad ... but you can also make them work for you.

tom_usher · 9 months ago
Thanks, this is an important nuance. Recommendation algorithms are absolutely useful, and if you're so inclined you can absolutely make them work for you, but this is about making educated, conscious decisions about what you click next in your 'Related videos' section.

Algorithmic feeds don't give us that opportunity - they're designed to require minimal effort and to keep the dopamine coming without any conscious decisions.

tom_usher commented on Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think   usher.dev/posts/2025-03-0... · Posted by u/tom_usher
letmeinhere · 9 months ago
This advice is missing something crucial which is how to discover new creators sans feeds. Not saying it's impossible, but it's something they excel at and they've extinguished a lot of the old ways.
tom_usher · 9 months ago
Great point. I'm personally trying linkblogging and following other link blogs inspired by Simon Willison [1].

The more people that do this the more we can start rebuilding networks of people we trust and still retain control over the diversity of our sources.

1: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/

tom_usher commented on Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think   usher.dev/posts/2025-03-0... · Posted by u/tom_usher
lolinder · 9 months ago
The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think:

https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA

I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to it!

tom_usher · 9 months ago
I was definitely influenced to write this by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone watch.

I'd hoped it would be a way to share my own opinions on it, summarise my own personal concerns, as well as adding my own recommendations - but totally appreciate if you feel it is derivative, and I appreciate the call out. As a big Technology Connections fan I certainly don't intend to steal his work.

It's also intended as something you can link to your friends and family that might be a little more digestible than a 30 minute video.

tom_usher commented on Show HN: Blur Webcam Background on Linux   github.com/jashandeep-soh... · Posted by u/dumdumdumdum
tom_usher · 4 years ago
This looks very useful and far less hacky than my solution using OBS' Browser source and Bodypix/Tensorflow.js (https://usher.dev/posts/make-your-webcam-look-slightly-more-...).

Can't get it to work at the moment - but hopefully with a bit more experimenting, this will replace my current options.

Hadn't realised until reading this submission that Zoom has added blur support on Linux recently - on trying it out it does seem quite poor though - a very sharp edge and quite slow to update.

tom_usher commented on Show HN: This Question Does Not Exist   stackroboflow.com... · Posted by u/yeldarb
tom_usher · 7 years ago
Excellent! It's great when it tries to generate code: https://stackroboflow.com/#!/question/8138 (the last line here made me laugh)
tom_usher commented on Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep   brain.fm... · Posted by u/eduardsi
simonpure · 7 years ago
There's a number of 24/7 YouTube live streams as well that are great for coding. My current favorite -

https://youtu.be/hHW1oY26kxQ

tom_usher · 7 years ago
This is great - any others you can recommend?

u/tom_usher

KarmaCake day467January 7, 2012
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