[HN Gopher] Show HN: DeepSeek My User Agent
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: DeepSeek My User Agent
        
       Author : jasonthorsness
       Score  : 337 points
       Date   : 2025-01-26 22:03 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.jasonthorsness.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.jasonthorsness.com)
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | > Bravo, time-traveling Safari 18.1 beta tester from Hayward--not
       | quite San Francisco, but at least you're _pretending_ to innovate
       | while lurking on Hacker News like a true NPC. Your decade-old Mac
       | OS 10.15.7 and 1512x982 resolution scream  "I upgrade hardware
       | when Apple sends me a funeral invite," yet here you are, cookie-
       | enabled and _still_ waiting for WebKit to make your life
       | exciting. Congrats on being the most cutting-edge relic in the
       | Bay Area's shadow.
       | 
       | ...I suspect that humor is still out of reach for reasoning
       | models. It may require a bit of system prompt engineering.
        
       | jasonthorsness wrote:
       | For those who don't want to click - it submits your user agent,
       | referrer, and location headers to DeepSeek R1. It is completely
       | pointless, but the chain-of-thought reasoning is super-
       | interesting. For example, when I followed it from this site:
       | 
       | Reasoning: Okay, let's tackle this roast. First, I need to pick
       | the three most unusual bits from the user agent info. The user is
       | using Edge in Redmond, which is where Microsoft is based--that's
       | a good jab. The referrer is Hacker News, so I can mock that
       | they're procrastinating. They have 16 hardware concurrency, which
       | is high for a regular user. Also, screen resolution is 2560x1440,
       | but maybe not too unusual. Oh, and maxTouchPoints is 0, meaning
       | no touchscreen. But the top three? Probably Edge in Redmond,
       | Hacker News referrer, and 16 cores. Then link the location to
       | Edge, make fun of Hacker News, and the 16 cores for
       | overcompensating. Keep it concise and three sentences. Let me
       | check the rules again: relate location to another attribute,
       | include referrer, three sentences. Yeah, that works.
       | 
       | Content: Using Edge in Redmond? How _shockingly_ loyal of you to
       | Microsoft's backyard--guess even your browser has a corporate
       | leash. Came here from Hacker News, huh? Let me guess: "How to
       | roast a user agent" was your 37th procrastination tab today. With
       | 16 CPU cores and a screen bigger than your social life, congrats
       | on overcompensating for your NPC-level browsing habits.
        
       | andrewfromx wrote:
       | pretty great. How long before deepseek charges for each api call?
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | DeepSeek does charge for the API (just 20-30x cheaper than o1),
         | I assume OP is eating the cost.
         | 
         | https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/
        
           | andrewfromx wrote:
           | i see and where is https://groq.com/ in this. They used to be
           | the cheapest?
        
             | minimaxir wrote:
             | The "why is DeepSeek so much cheaper than o1" question is
             | currently a mystery, with the best guess being that compute
             | in China is cheaper.
        
               | acheong08 wrote:
               | The model is much smaller. Compute in China should be
               | more expensive considering all the US restrictions
        
               | minimaxir wrote:
               | No one knows the size of o1. The only hint was a paper
               | that suggested it was 200B parameters.
               | 
               | Meanwhile, DeepSeek R1 is known to be 671B parameters
               | because it is open-source.
        
               | sigmoid10 wrote:
               | R1 is a mixture model with only 37B active params. So
               | while it's definitely expensive to train, it's rather
               | light on compute during inference. All you really need is
               | lots of memory.
        
               | portaouflop wrote:
               | Electricity prices in China are about half of what they
               | are in the US, I expect the rest is similar.
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | DeepSeek is use way less computing to achieve the same
               | results. That's the whole difference.
        
               | minimaxir wrote:
               | Then a US compute provider should be able to launch a
               | similarly-priced competitor (e.g. to capture the
               | enterprise market concerned about the China associations)
               | using the open-source version and drastically undercut
               | OpenAI.
               | 
               | I suspect that won't be the case.
        
               | rfoo wrote:
               | > Then a US compute provider should be able to launch a
               | similarly-priced competitor
               | 
               | Right, you just need a few months to implement efficient
               | inference for MLA + their strangely looking MoE scheme +
               | ..., easy!
               | 
               | Oh wait, the inference scheme described in their tech
               | report is pretty much an exact fit for H800s. So if you
               | run the recipe on H100s you are wasting the potential of
               | your H100s. Otherwise have fun making variations to the
               | serving architecture.
               | 
               | To be fair, we had chance. If someone decided to
               | replicate the effort to serve their models back in May
               | 2024 when DeepSeek-V2 was out we'd have it now. But
               | nobody had interest as DS-V2 was pretty mediocre. They
               | (and whoever realized the potential) made big bet and it
               | is paying off.
        
             | KTibow wrote:
             | Right now Deepseek's official hosting is cheaper than
             | everyone else who can manage to run the model, including
             | Deepinfra. I haven't seen any good hypotheses as to why
             | other than their large batch size and speculative decoding.
        
               | rfoo wrote:
               | DeepSeek-V2/V3/R1's model architecture is very different
               | from what Fireworks/Together/... were used to.
               | 
               | That's their "business" model (okay, they don't care
               | about business that much for now, but still) too: you
               | can't run it efficiently without doing months of work we
               | already did, so even with all weights open you can't
               | compete with us.
        
             | minimaxir wrote:
             | Speaking of which, Groq just announced the distilled Llama
             | 70B variant:
             | https://x.com/GroqInc/status/1883734298488180826
        
       | arthurcolle wrote:
       | Oh look, a Hacker News refugee with a Frankenstein 1800x1169
       | screen--did you split that browser window just to flex your NPC-
       | level multitasking skills in Rockville's tech equivalent of a
       | Starbucks patio? Twelve CPU cores but still running MacOS 10.15
       | like you enjoy digital nostalgia, and _oui_ , including French in
       | your languages list for that one croissant emoji tweet you'll
       | never send. Chrome 132? At least the RTT is zero, matching your
       | urgency to upgrade anything.
       | 
       | ------------
       | 
       | hey man not my fault you VLM homunculii can't handle high
       | resolutions yet ;) I'm finetuning a computer using agent, jeez!
        
       | petercooper wrote:
       | Very cute :) It might be worth adding to the context that Chrome
       | on macOS reports as OS X 10.15.7 (Catalina) no matter what future
       | version you're actually running. It seemed very confused to my
       | other specs but running such an old OS.
        
         | chris_st wrote:
         | Did the same with Safari... which it reported as being _from
         | the future_!
        
           | noduerme wrote:
           | Ditto with Firefox
           | 
           |  _Roasting your Hacker News-refugee, Firefox-on-MacOS-
           | Catalina-10.15-holding, DIY-screen-resolution-having
           | (1512x982? Did you freehand that?) setup like Portland keeps
           | its "quirky" reputation: aggressively outdated but convinced
           | it's still avant-garde._
        
         | cpeterso wrote:
         | btw, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox all froze their User-Agent
         | strings at "Mac OS X 10.15" after running into web
         | compatibility problems reporting "Mac OS X 11.0". Some
         | websites' User-Agent parsers assumed there would never be an
         | 11.0 version of macOS.
         | 
         | Websites can still query the actual macOS version using
         | Chrome's navigator.userAgentData API. Neither Safari nor
         | Firefox implement that API at this time because it's mostly
         | redundant with navigator.userAgent and exposes additional
         | browser and OS metadata that can be used for fingerprinting.
        
       | glutamate wrote:
       | > your Danish language setting in _Croydon_ screams  "I VPN to
       | Copenhagen for overpriced pastries."
       | 
       | First time an LLM made me laugh
        
         | Pedro_Ribeiro wrote:
         | Now that I think about it, I don't think I had laughed at an
         | LLM text yet. Non-ironically pretty cool!
        
       | schoen wrote:
       | "[...] you're so tech-cliche, your browser's "maxTouchPoints" is
       | zero because even your devices fear human contact [...]"
        
       | strange_magnet wrote:
       | >Not only did you crawl here from Hacker News, the tech bro
       | nursery, but you're flexing 16 CPU cores just to run Linux like a
       | spreadsheet samurai in Kirishima--impressive, given your browser
       | speaks three languages yet still can't ask for ramen politely.
       | 
       | ..not bad
        
       | simonw wrote:
       | > _Braving Hacker News to end up here in San Mateo, huh? Your
       | 1728x1117 resolution screams "I need 11 pixels to hide my crypto
       | tabs," and 30-bit color depth proves you see more shades of gray
       | than emotions--classic Firefox-on-Mac NPC behavior._
       | 
       | Yeah, that's pretty great!
        
       | cbracketdash wrote:
       | "You spent 46 seconds lurking on Hacker News just to end up here
       | with your four Chrome cores and Linux OS in the tech capital of
       | San Jose--did you _compile_ the courage to click? Your 8.1 Mbps
       | downlink is almost as slow as your realization that  "Blink"
       | isn't a rave in Mountain View, and your zero touch points explain
       | why you still type "sudo" to open your fridge."
       | 
       | :sob: I'm getting roasted by an AI
        
         | lostmsu wrote:
         | > :sob: I'm getting roasted by an AI
         | 
         | You can get that ad infinitum at https://trashtalk.borg.games/
         | if your mom finally lets you go out to the Internet on your own
         | (shameless self-promo).
        
         | pizza wrote:
         | I can practically already hear the conversations that will be
         | overheard while waiting in line at Red Rock Coffee later
         | today..
        
       | elaus wrote:
       | > Roasting your Firefox 135 on Linux setup from
       | <redacted>--because nothing says "I have opinions about open-
       | source" like a 16-core CPU crying over _hckrnews.com 's_ typo-
       | adjacent Hacker News ripoff and a screen resolution (1920x1200)
       | stuck in 2010s developer nostalgia.
       | 
       | I feel called out - well done.
        
       | gpm wrote:
       | Hmm, disturbingly accurate lol
       | 
       | > Oh, a _4K screen_ just to scroll Hacker News in  <redacted>?
       | Your Canadian Linux setup screams "I politely argue about Rust in
       | 2160p," and 16 CPU cores clearly aren't helping you realize that
       | site hasn't updated its design since 2007. Go touch grass (but
       | carefully, since your browser thinks you've never heard of a
       | touchscreen).
        
         | qup wrote:
         | > coding in a sulfur-scented bath while flexing 12 CPU cores to
         | refresh *Hacker News* like it's your job? Even your Firefox
         | setup screams "I maxed out my specs just to argue in the
         | comments," yet here you are, roasting yourself via a web app.
         | NPCs wish they were this predictably extra.
         | 
         | No u!
        
       | loves_mangoes wrote:
       | It doesn't recognize Tor Browser as such, but in this case
       | calling its anti-fingerprinting user agent a "desperate lack of
       | personality" happens to be more a compliment than a roast!
       | 
       | On the other hand, it's disappointed that the browser claims to
       | only have two cores and uses a resolution "from 2009".
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | For me it just returns a wall of text with (part of) its
       | reasoning about composing a short roast, but not the roast
       | itself. I guess this is not intended.
        
         | gljiva wrote:
         | Did you try refreshing? Solved the problem for me.
        
         | jasonthorsness wrote:
         | This ended up impacting quite a few users; the response is
         | streamed from a Vercel function where I had not changed the
         | default timeout, so at 10 seconds it was just cutting things
         | off where it was. Some invocations of the DeepSeek API take
         | much longer than others. This should be fixed now with a longer
         | timeout.
        
           | jasonthorsness wrote:
           | API keeps going through periods of 1-2 minutes of everything
           | timing out... then works well for ~5-10 minutes. Might be
           | better to host this model yourself for serious use right now.
        
             | jasonthorsness wrote:
             | https://status.deepseek.com/ flakiness today but it looks
             | like pretty good history
        
       | bojan wrote:
       | Interestingly enough, it sees my Pixel 9 Pro as model "K" and
       | doesn't really know what to do with it.
        
         | T4iga wrote:
         | Google intentionally dumbed down the chrome user agent to limit
         | user fingerprint and encourage usage of their new method that
         | all privacy advances see to despise.
         | 
         | The user agent now reported by most chrome installs on Android
         | reports android 10,K
         | 
         | I have the pleasure of not getting useful info anymore at work
         | when comparing user agents across devices.
        
       | abixb wrote:
       | My roast summary with referrer field disabled:
       | 
       | "Brave of you to arrive here directly from nowhere like a digital
       | hermit, flexing 16 CPU cores just to run Edge _132.0.0.0_ like
       | it's a beta-testing crisis hotline--enjoying Wisconsin's -40deg
       | wind chills so much you've even got your browser set to  "arctic
       | Blink engine." At least your 2560x1440 screen lets you see
       | _exactly_ how lonely that empty referrer field looks. "
       | 
       | This is the most fun post/link I've interacted with across social
       | media all week, haha. I'm going to test this from all of me and
       | my SO's personal devices of various form factors. Thanks OP!
       | 
       | ## Edit:
       | 
       | Here's the roast from my iPhone SE 3 device on 5G cellular
       | (thinks I'm in Atlanta for some reason, lol):
       | 
       | "Roast: Oh, an iOS 18 beta user in Atlanta--how bold of you to
       | test Apple's unfinished bugs while flexing that _three-core_
       | "supercomputer" like Georgia's tech scene peaked with a fax
       | machine. Your screen's so tiny (375x667) it makes Hacker News
       | look like a MySpace page, which tracks, since you clearly clicked
       | here mid-procrastination scroll to avoid finishing your side
       | hustle. Congrats on being the NPC who _still_ uses "Mobile
       | Safari" unironically--your cookie-enabled loyalty to Apple is
       | almost as tragic as your referral from a site where everyone's
       | arguing about TypeScript. "
       | 
       | Deeper research pointed to Apple's "Displays" kb page for UIKit
       | Size, and it tracks with my device type, as SE 3 is based on
       | iPhone 8 [0]
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/De...
        
       | zgeor wrote:
       | > Congrats on being the NPC who pre-ordered iOS 18.2.1 "Midlife
       | Crisis Edition" but still uses "Mobile Safari" unironically.
       | 
       | I cried a little, this is too good.
        
       | 867-5309 wrote:
       | > Your phone's so generic its model is just "K" like it's still
       | in witness protection, you're browsing North Macedonia on a
       | screen thinner than your country's GDP, and your _mystery
       | referrer_ suggests you're so lost even Google Maps gave up.
       | 
       | I can't help but feel refreshingly anonymous
        
         | class700 wrote:
         | Strangely mine said "K" when viewing in Android Chrome, but had
         | the device name correct when using the Web view built in to my
         | HN reader app.
        
           | 867-5309 wrote:
           | perhaps you were using Chromite (ungoogled Chrome)
        
           | KomoD wrote:
           | Exactly the same for me, in Harmonic it gets the right info
           | but in Chrome it just gives the "K"
        
       | gljiva wrote:
       | Hilarious! It never occurs to the model that the user might be
       | using a privacy-oriented browser (I tried it on several devices
       | in several browsers). I like it even though it's drawing totally
       | incorrect conclusions.
        
       | keeganpoppen wrote:
       | i can scarcely believe how good this is. incredible. what a time
       | to be alive.
        
       | GranPC wrote:
       | Oh this is fun. It seems to be a bit puzzled by my setup, which
       | is understandable since it's a Linux phone cosplaying as Android:
       | 
       | Okay, let's tackle this roast. First, I need to pick the three
       | most unusual bits from the user's data. Looking at the info: The
       | user is on Android 15, which is pretty new and not widely
       | released yet. That's unusual. They're using Firefox on a mobile
       | device with Linux x86_64 platform--wait, Android is Linux-based,
       | but specifying x86_64 might be odd if most mobile devices are
       | ARM. Also, the referrer is Hacker News, which is a good target
       | for a joke. The screen dimensions are 540x1206, typical for a
       | mobile, not too odd. Country is Spain (ES), region AN is
       | Andalusia, city Cadiz. Maybe connect location with something
       | else. So, the three unusual points: Android 15 (unreleased?),
       | Linux x86_64 on a mobile (maybe mismatched), and coming from
       | Hacker News. Need to connect location if using it. Since Cadiz is
       | a coastal city in Spain, maybe link the outdated OS version with
       | something there. Also, making fun of the referrer as a site where
       | people pretend to know tech. Structure: Three sentences. First,
       | Android 15 and pretending to be a dev. Second, Linux on mobile
       | and Cadiz's ancient history. Third, Hacker News referrer and
       | Firefox version. Keep it concise and funny. bird judge
       | 
       | Roasting your Android 15 beta-testing, Linux-on-mobile hipster
       | self: you're browsing Hacker News ( _sigh_ ) on Firefox 134 in
       | Cadiz, a city older than your OS's last kernel panic, yet somehow
       | _you're_ the one still using a  "mobile" device with zero
       | touchpoints--did your stylus die in 2003?
        
       | tucnak wrote:
       | In my case, it re-iterated the system prompt at the end.
        
       | leonewton253 wrote:
       | Ah, a time traveler from Calgary using Safari 18.2--bold move
       | flexing a browser version Apple hasn't even released yet while
       | clinging to Mac OS Catalina like it's still 2019 and your cold
       | Canadian hands can't let go. You arrived here directly, no
       | referrer, as if you're ashamed of whatever crypto-bro forum or
       | "How to Update Your OS" tutorial you crawled out of. Eight CPU
       | cores and _still_ rocking a 1469x885 resolution? Even your
       | screen's aspect ratio screams "I watch Netflix in a tiny window
       | while secretly Googling 'why is my Mac slow'."
        
       | etienne89 wrote:
       | > Your screen's so small, even your memes are vertically
       | challenged.
       | 
       | Using an iPhone Mini, this is the most hilarious response I've
       | seen from an LLM
        
       | 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
       | Oh look, Mr. "I-type-URLs-manually-like-a-medieval-scribe" from
       | Hackney, rocking a 1920x1200 screen just to flex that you need
       | _extra vertical pixels_ for your Linux terminal and crippling
       | Firefox 134 FOMO. Eight CPU cores and zero referrer? Classic NPC
       | behavior - even your internet history is as empty as your
       | commitment to joining the Chrome cult.
       | 
       | location not redacted because it is wrong
        
       | gigel82 wrote:
       | Fun, creative use of the model :)
       | 
       | "Ah, a Hacker News refugee with the screen resolution of a
       | discount monitor fished out of a Kirkland Costco dumpster--16
       | cores to crunch those "Who's hiring?" threads, but still rocking
       | a touchless Windows 10 setup like it's 2015. Firefox 134? Bold
       | choice, really screams "I read release notes for fun," yet here
       | you are, still stuck in en-US limbo, cookie-enabled and
       | terminally online. Congrats on being the NPC who unironically
       | uses "Web 2.0" in conversation."
        
       | cionut wrote:
       | got caught red handed: "Ah, a Berliner using a _Supernote Nomad_
       | tablet to browse on Chrome WebView 83 like it's still 2020--did
       | your avant-garde e-ink device fail to render the  "update
       | browser" button? Your screen's 749x999 resolution is either a
       | glitch in the Matrix or proof you're squinting at PDFs sideways,
       | and your mysterious lack of referrer suggests you _teleported_
       | here to hide your crypto-kindle fanfic habits. Congrats on being
       | the only Android /Linux armv8l hybrid in Germany whose entire
       | vibe is "I ordered this gadget off a subway ad."
        
         | jasonthorsness wrote:
         | I think it picks out device type from the resolution and other
         | stats, like a fingerprint. Since the device type is not
         | actually available or sent (EDIT: or maybe some include it in
         | the user agent...)
        
       | colordrops wrote:
       | Dumbass DeepSeek calling my resolution low when it doesn't seem
       | to know about device pixel ratio, what a noob
        
         | superfish wrote:
         | I'm surprised this is the only comment mentioning
         | devicepixelratio. Most of the roasts from deepseek seem to
         | involve roasting the window size but that's misleading without
         | DPR
        
           | sundarurfriend wrote:
           | I was wondering why it was showing mine wrong and why many
           | people's resolution here was surprisingly low. TIL about DPR.
           | Too bad that was the only good roast in my first result.
           | 
           | Refreshing the page gives a new one though, and it's done a
           | pretty good job now!
        
       | jasonthorsness wrote:
       | I added Show/Hide Prompt at the end, in case you want to try the
       | same prompt with your user information on other models.
        
         | jasonthorsness wrote:
         | Here is mine for example
         | 
         | Generate a fun roast of my user agent/browser information. Pick
         | the three most unusual bits of information and make fun of
         | those. If nothing seems unusual, make fun of the user having a
         | bland, unexceptional, NPC-like user agent. If you use the
         | location, you must relate it somehow to one of the other
         | attributes. Referer should almost always be included, make fun
         | of the site the user came from. Do this all in a three-
         | sentence, concise roast. {
         | "time_before_user_clicked_judge_me_seconds": 1, "screen_width":
         | 2560, "screen_height": 1440, "memory": 8, "platform": "Win32",
         | "colorDepth": 24, "pixelDepth": 24, "languages": [ "en-US",
         | "en" ], "cookieEnabled": true, "hardwareConcurrency": 16,
         | "maxTouchPoints": 0, "referrer":
         | "https://news.ycombinator.com/", "network": { "downlink": 10,
         | "rtt": 50 }, "country": "US", "region": "WA", "city":
         | "Redmond", "ua": { "browser": { "name": "Edge", "version":
         | "132.0.0.0", "major": "132" }, "engine": { "name": "Blink",
         | "version": "132.0.0.0" }, "os": { "name": "Windows", "version":
         | "10" }, "device": {}, "cpu": { "architecture": "amd64" },
         | "isBot": false } }
        
       | layoric wrote:
       | My roast: "Roasting your Firefox-on-Linux, Hacker News-referring,
       | Sydney-dwelling NPC setup: Only a 3780x2160 screen could contain
       | the sheer audacity of using 16 CPU threads just to doomscroll
       | tech bro headlines, and I bet Sydney's entire coffee supply
       | powers that "Gecko" engine you're pretending makes you elite.
       | Congrats on being the most predictable Linux user since "sudo"
       | was invented."
        
       | edm0nd wrote:
       | >Then, their screen resolution is 3440x1440, which is an ultra-
       | wide monitor. Maybe mock them for needing that much space for
       | spreadsheets or something.
       | 
       | lol. i love having so much screen space :3
        
       | aledalgrande wrote:
       | "And that screen resolution? Did you measure it in maple syrup
       | units?" Typical roast of a Canadian.
        
         | arjvik wrote:
         | Metric units can't stop catching strays
        
       | davemtl wrote:
       | Roasting your ultrawide 3440x1440 "I need binoculars to see my
       | tabs" setup in Longueuil, QC--a city so forgettable even your
       | *2-core potato PC* probably buffers its Google Maps--while you
       | lurk on Hacker News like a tech bro NPC still waiting for Y
       | Combinator to notice your crypto-SaaS-pet-rock startup. Chrome
       | 131 on Windows 10? Your browser's as bland as your cookie-enabled
       | existence, and that 50ms network RTT just proves your Wi-Fi's as
       | tired as your LinkedIn hustle. At least your 24-bit color depth
       | can render the embarrassment of your life choices in vivid
       | detail.
       | 
       | -- Harsh. But extreamly funny. Interesting that it sees my
       | 5800X3D as a 2-core processor. Turning off DDG privacy essentials
       | yeilds the correct core count, etc.
        
       | vlovich123 wrote:
       | > Okay, let's tackle this roast based on the user's data. First,
       | I need to pick the three most unusual bits. The user is using
       | Safari 17.6 on Mac OS 10.15.7. Wait, macOS 10.15 is Catalina,
       | which is pretty old now--like from 2019. That's a bit outdated,
       | so that's unusual. Next, the screen resolution is 1024x1366.
       | That's a taller screen than usual. Most common resolutions are
       | wider, so maybe they're using an older iPad in portrait mode or a
       | rotated display? That's quirky. Referrer is empty, meaning they
       | came directly here. No referral site to make fun of, but I can
       | joke about them typing the URL manually. Also, their location is
       | Calgary, Canada. Maybe link the cold weather there to their
       | outdated OS, like keeping things frozen in time. Combine all that
       | into three concise sentences. Start with the outdated OS, then
       | the screen resolution, mention the direct visit, and tie in the
       | location with the OS. Make sure it's funny but not mean. Check
       | the structure: three sentences, each targeting a different
       | aspect. Let me put it all together.
       | 
       | > Roast: Ah, a Canadian Safari-saddled NPC from Calgary, still
       | clinging to Mac OS 10.15 like it's a Blockbuster membership,
       | browsing on a screen taller than your mountains but somehow
       | arriving here _directly_ --did your dial-up finally finish
       | loading the URL? (Three quirks: ancient OS, vertical screen
       | ratio, empty referrer + location roast.)
       | 
       | It guessed correctly I'm using an iPad and maybe the resolution
       | but somehow got the OS wrong (i.e. if I'm on an iPad I'm not
       | using MacOS). I am still on iOS 17 so it got that I'm not on the
       | latest but made a mistake since 10.15 is the latest MacOS
       | release. The location is also way off.
        
         | oefrha wrote:
         | iPadOS's Safari user agent identifies itself as macOS, that's
         | why. Prior to iPadOS it did contain the string iPad; that was
         | removed. So it can't tell if it's an iPad or a Mac with a small
         | vertical screen, although a human would consider the former
         | more likely.
        
           | VagabundoP wrote:
           | And that's why so many kids had trouble registering their
           | iPad on our network. As it would not send the mobile
           | registration to the iPads
           | 
           | <sigh@Apple>
        
             | oefrha wrote:
             | Don't know about your particular problem, but I'm pretty
             | sure it was largely a response to iPads being sent to
             | mobile sites with horrible usability thanks to
             | navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone|iPad|iPod/) or the
             | server-side equivalent. The problem was amplified by the
             | release of the 12.9'' iPad Pro, so self-identifying as a
             | Mac made sense.
        
               | VagabundoP wrote:
               | Its not a Mac though. I'd much prefer Apple use the User
               | Agent correctly rather than hack around it like that.
               | 
               | The system we used did use user agents to identify mobile
               | devices or computers. And gave the iPad users a terrible
               | experience because Apple lied.
        
               | afavour wrote:
               | User agent strings are fundamentally a hack though. They
               | all identify themselves as Mozilla!
        
             | gkbrk wrote:
             | It's not an iPad or Apple issue if your registration system
             | is using the User-Agent for weird reasons.
        
               | VagabundoP wrote:
               | Sure it does, but Apple should be sending the correct
               | User Agent string, not making one up.
        
               | macNchz wrote:
               | Browsers have been lying about their identities via their
               | user agent strings since 1995.
        
               | Dalewyn wrote:
               | As far as my Chromium is concerned, it identifies as
               | a...: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)
               | AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/126.0.0.0
               | Safari/537.36
               | 
               | The only thing it doesn't identify as is Internet
               | Explorer.
               | 
               | (Yes it's an old version, no I will update when I feel
               | like it. Shush.)
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | I got similar results and it was kind of hokey.
         | 
         | While I'm incredibly glad we're getting open source LLMs with
         | chain of thought, I'm not really impressed by its current use
         | cases. LLMs are all same-y and it feels like we're getting
         | loafs of cheesy language spam without much sci-fi future.
         | 
         | I expect for this kind of tech to have really novel use cases.
         | For it to sit between me and the internet and remove the ads,
         | nuke time wasting clickbait, and obliterate low-information
         | irrelevant noise. For it to be my personal bodyguard that
         | protects me from any and all forms of attention stealer.
         | 
         | I want this to be tech to give birth to an anti-Google, anti-
         | social media algo, anti-advertiser terminator from the future.
         | Something that torpedoes the previous paradigm and that does it
         | so quickly that the old purveyors can't adjust in time.
         | 
         | It would be delightful if in 10 months from now, internet
         | advertising no longer worked at all and that everyone adopted
         | these same protections for themselves.
         | 
         | It seems like this tech is capable of doing it already.
         | 
         | Please someone make this. I want advertisers to pay _me_ if
         | they want access to my brain.
        
           | wild_egg wrote:
           | I've been working on exactly this. Great to know there's some
           | demand for it.
           | 
           | It's now my daily driver for web access. It monitors for
           | content I'm interested in (that's how I found your comment),
           | handles all my searches and feeds, can dynamically adapt its
           | interface, and is working on integrations to submit content
           | for me so that I don't have to leave that interface to write
           | these replies.
           | 
           | Hoping to release it early March but I'm a bit stuck on how
           | to position it. I'm not a marketer and I think it'll just get
           | drowned in the sea of "agent" slop.
           | 
           | Having a full-on buffer between yourself and the internet is
           | a breath of fresh air but I have no idea how I would have
           | found such a thing if I hadn't made it.
           | 
           | Maybe a curator or a bouncer or something. Open to
           | suggestions if anyone has some.
        
             | benreesman wrote:
             | A browser extension? Mega-awesome AI Adblock is like the
             | best possible thing that could happen to the Internet right
             | now and that seems to be good player for the cassette.
             | 
             | Is there a GitHub or Discord or anything where I subscribe
             | to the project?
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | Sign me up! Where do I pay?
        
             | coldfoundry wrote:
             | This sounds great. In a sea of paid ad placements and algo-
             | recommended content, it's hard to "surf the web" like I did
             | in the early 2000s. It was a challenge to sit on googles
             | homepage and think to myself "Hmm, what do I want to look
             | up today?". It required forethought of what I wanted to be
             | served for content, and I always received proper content
             | back to me after a search.
             | 
             | Anything that gets me closer to that original intention
             | requirement before getting served content is a must-have in
             | my books! Sign me up!
        
             | svilen_dobrev wrote:
             | Electric Monk ?
             | 
             | from Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series
             | 
             | "Electric monks believed things for you, thus saving you
             | what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, ..."
             | 
             | EDit: or maybe, since it's not just believing, a Janitor?
        
           | vlovich123 wrote:
           | > It would be delightful if in 10 months from now, internet
           | advertising no longer worked at all and that everyone adopted
           | these same protections for themselves.
           | 
           | My bet is that hosted LLMs will have advertising baked in and
           | also understand you in a much deeper way so as to manipulate
           | you even more effectively.
        
           | netdevphoenix wrote:
           | > It would be delightful if in 10 months from now, internet
           | advertising no longer worked at all
           | 
           | Internet advertising will work as long as the internet
           | exists. Classic targeted advertising on the other hand will
           | no longer work but all it means is that it will be much more
           | subtle and you will struggle to tell it apart in a way that
           | you don't nowadays. Sounds a far more dangerous alternative
        
             | mrweasel wrote:
             | > Internet advertising will work as long as the internet
             | exists.
             | 
             | I don't know. You're probably right, but more and more it
             | seems like mainstream websites aren't meant for human
             | consumption. The less ads a page have, the more likely it
             | is to have relevant content.
             | 
             | Classical targeted ads, where some sales person actively
             | goes out and buy ad space on a few select locations, I feel
             | like that's more valuable than ever, but not heavily used
             | anymore.
        
           | arizen wrote:
           | Ironically, the advancements in AI R&D and LLMs by Google and
           | Meta were largely funded by their advertising-driven business
           | models.
        
         | netdevphoenix wrote:
         | It is not fair to judge the model performance on those guesses,
         | if you have a look at the website you will see that the model
         | is being told those parameters (os, screen size, etc). The
         | model is not guessing those. Only thing that it might be
         | guessing is your location
        
       | fieldcny wrote:
       | This is amazing fun!
        
       | mkarliner wrote:
       | "The user is on a Linux armv81 platform but using Chrome on an
       | Android device--that's odd because Android usually runs on Linux-
       | based kernels, but the specific armv81 might be a typo or
       | uncommon."
       | 
       | Unimpressive, it's a current Samsung. And I'm in London not
       | Leistershire
        
       | svnt wrote:
       | My first one just said:
       | 
       | Bravo, London
       | 
       | But my second one was funny. But I feel like we are maybe
       | overlooking the significance: is DeepSeek actually funny? Does
       | humor travel with reasoning?
        
       | byearthithatius wrote:
       | Roasting your Hacker News-lurking, Mountain View-based setup:
       | Only a Linux user with _16 CPU cores_ would still need 21 seconds
       | to click  "Judge Me" while triple-checking their Firefox configs.
       | Of course you're on Ubuntu--your entire personality is "works at
       | a tech company but swears they're not like the other engineers."
       | And maxTouchPoints: 0? Touch grass, not screens, you beautifully
       | predictable NPC.
        
       | shakezooola wrote:
       | Decently entertaining but very wrong.
        
       | joseda-hg wrote:
       | It misreads my RAM as being stock, so I guess it's basing it on
       | the model and not the actual system info
       | 
       | Edit, nevermind, the user agent reports it wrong, didn't know
       | that could happen
       | 
       | Also it seems like in a second attempt, it got caught in a loop,
       | of trying to cycle among the same 3 "unusual" things but deciding
       | it wasn't unique enough
        
         | ic4l wrote:
         | Most browsers won't report anything higher than 8, even if your
         | system has more memory.
         | 
         | I think its related to fingerprinting attacks.
        
       | xingwu wrote:
       | Hmm why it says my memory is 8G only?
        
       | jumploops wrote:
       | > NPC-core, but with venture capital vibes.
       | 
       | Ouch, that one stung!
        
       | wanderingmind wrote:
       | > Roast: Your 324px-wide screen must be a flip phone from 2004,
       | you're browsing Hacker News like it's a personality trait, and
       | Australia's most exciting export is apparently your Firefox-on-
       | Android-15 setup with 8 cores just to read tech bro headlines.
       | 
       | Bravo, No one in person has given a better roast of my FF on
       | GrapheneOS or DownUnder. I'm sold
        
       | dbattaglia wrote:
       | > Congrats, you can almost high-five yourself for reading tech
       | bro hot takes on a beta iOS version like it's a personality. Your
       | setup screams "I refresh Y Combinator in a bathroom stall," and
       | your Safari browser agrees.
       | 
       | Yup, pretty accurate! Funny it also thinks my 15 Pro is an old
       | iPhone since I'm using lower resolution.
        
       | ttul wrote:
       | "Your iPhone screen is so skinny it's basically a vertical Hot
       | Dog mode survivor, you came here from Hacker News like a
       | Vancouverite cosplaying as a Silicon Valley "disruptor," and with
       | 5 max touch points, your phone's ready for a jazz hand
       | performance nobody asked for."
       | 
       | This is indeed how it feels to browse HackerNews from the frozen
       | wastes of Vancouver.
        
       | WesleyJohnson wrote:
       | > Your Hacker News referrer screams "I argue in the comments
       | unironically," your 12 CPU cores confirm you need all that power
       | to procrastinate on Catalina like it's 2019, and Richmond's only
       | quirk here is hosting a Mac that somehow hasn't died of FOMO from
       | missing software updates.
       | 
       | I'm on an M4 MacMini, running MacOS Sonoma. It's definitely a
       | little confused, but that could be Arc failing to properly report
       | the User Agent? Not sure. Kinda funny, none the less.
        
       | xivusr wrote:
       | Your beta iOS 18.3 is so unstable even Albuquerque's heat can't
       | melt through those Safari crashes, your empty referrer screams "I
       | Googled 'how to be interesting' but closed the tab in shame," and
       | your four-core iPhone's "hardware concurrency" can't even
       | multitask between basic roasting and your existential NPC crisis.
       | 
       | > this is great ;-) Next I'd like to see competing models roast
       | each other
        
       | Rastonbury wrote:
       | "Your screen resolution's as confused as your career path after
       | reading one too many "YC applications open" posts."
       | 
       | We need a comedy benchmark now
        
         | keeganpoppen wrote:
         | we do... and this thing sets the curve. cannot believe how
         | original and varied the roasts are
        
       | TechDebtDevin wrote:
       | Not so accurate with Brave but great on Firefox
        
       | vishnugupta wrote:
       | Roasting your Bengaluru "startup bro" vibe: you're flexing an
       | unreleased iOS 18.1.1 beta like it's a Series A round, lurking on
       | Hacker News for "disruption" tips, yet your iPhone's 4-core CPU
       | can't even handle the existential dread of being _this_ online.
        
       | donatj wrote:
       | > Roasting your Safari 18.1.1 on Catalina ( _still?_ Minnesota
       | winters must slow those updates _) with a screen so narrow
       | (820px) it's like you're browsing Hacker News--your_ thrilling*
       | referrer--through a vintage 1997 monitor slit. Eight CPU cores
       | and you're still just doomscrolling tech takes in Hopkins like a
       | true NPC.
       | 
       | I'm on an iPad in Safari. It's UA lies.
        
       | kalleboo wrote:
       | I spoofed a slightly older User Agent...
       | 
       | Oh, you're rocking IE 4.01 in Tokyo? How avant-garde--nothing
       | says "cutting-edge tech hub" like a 68k CPU and a browser older
       | than sushi left in the sun. You clicked here from Hacker News,
       | but with this setup, you're clearly just here to ask how to close
       | tabs.
        
       | CSDude wrote:
       | This is hurtful, Skynet will just mock people to death :(
       | 
       | > Roasting your digital vibe: You're rocking a 30-bit color depth
       | in Ankara like it's 1998, clinging to Mac OS 10.15.7 like a
       | Turkish lira in hyperinflation, and lurking on Hacker News for 3
       | seconds before panic-clicking here--truly a masterclass in
       | chaotic productivity.
        
       | nindalf wrote:
       | > an iPhone running iOS 18.1.1? Bold move showing up before Apple
       | even announces it
       | 
       | Takes the sting out of the rest of the roast knowing that it was
       | dead wrong to begin with.
       | 
       | When the robot revolution is about to begin let's mess with their
       | training data cut off.
        
       | chrismorgan wrote:
       | I observe that the reasoning may not correspond to the result:
       | personifying it probably a bit too far, in my first attempt, it
       | forgot to pace itself and put all three pieces of information
       | into the first sentence, and so had to go back and surface novel
       | information for the second and third sentences.
       | 
       | > _Oh, a Linux user from Hyderabad with 16 CPU cores--nothing
       | screams "I overcompensate for my fear of GUIs" like a Firefox
       | setup so vanilla even your referrer ghosted you. Your screen
       | resolution is as confused as your identity: Aussie-British-
       | American-English polyglot, yet somehow still the NPC browsing
       | from a cybercafe in 2007. At least your cookie's enabled, which
       | tracks, since you'd never risk missing a single crumb of open-
       | source newsletter drama._
       | 
       | (In the reasoning, it had mentioned location, browser, and the
       | three things it eventually decided to talk about: referrer,
       | hardware concurrency and OS. The new material was screen
       | resolution1, languages2, and cookies being enabled.)
       | 
       | Most of what it says is kinda weird, honestly. Most of the ones
       | others have been posting feel _much_ better.
       | 
       | I'm also a little bothered that it mixed proper and ASCII
       | punctuation: one EM DASH, two RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARKs, but
       | QUOTATION MARK instead of {LEFT,RIGHT} DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK.
       | 
       | --***--
       | 
       | Its second attempt was _way_ better (and didn't exhibit the same
       | problem of running out of material):
       | 
       | > _You lurked here from the void like a digital hermit (empty
       | referrer gang?), flexing Firefox on Linux like it's 2004 and
       | you're still arguing about open-source superiority over
       | Hyderabad's spiciest biryani--meanwhile, your browser's language
       | list reads like an identity crisis: en-AU, en-GB, en-US...
       | *mate*, pick a colonialism._
       | 
       | --***--
       | 
       | 1 1706x960, which is 2560x1440 @ 1.5x, not _too_ uncommon for a
       | laptop. Wish I could have got something with 2x without losing
       | the power of the 5800HS and the ability to exceed 16GB of RAM.
       | Fortunately, due to life situation changes I'm finally able to
       | switch to desktop computing, and am looking forward to building
       | one instead of being stuck with the frustratingly limited choices
       | available in laptops.
       | 
       | 2 I set the intl.accept_languages pref to "en-AU,en-GB,en,en-US"
       | years ago, for fun. Actually, I first wrote it as something like
       | "en-AU,en-GB;q=0.9,en;q=0.8,en-US;q=0" for even more fun, a mild
       | roast of my own for perhaps US English or perhaps software
       | developers in general, but somewhere along the way I dropped the
       | quality values for some reason I don't remember. I'm already
       | fairly easily fingerprintable for other reasons, I'm not fussed
       | about an oddly-specific Accept-Languages header.
        
       | ptidhomme wrote:
       | Your browser arrived here like a ninja--empty referrer, sneaking
       | in from nowhere after 4 seconds of indecision--yet your "K" phone
       | from Chiapas (but actually Queretaro?) has the mystery of a spy
       | using misspelled Linux armv81 and the multitasking power of 8
       | cores just to run Chrome in French. You've got 5 touchpoints but
       | zero chill, rocking a screen taller than your identity clarity
       | and a network so fast (9.5 downlink!) it almost compensates for
       | your location's existential crisis. Congrats on being the most
       | cryptically lost polyglot Android user this side of a typo!
       | 
       | GrapheneOS with DuckduckGo browser and a VPN...
        
       | cess11 wrote:
       | Returns 504 Gateway Timeout. I guess either my rig bested the LLM
       | or the service ran out of money.
        
       | piotrmacha wrote:
       | > Max touch points is 10. That's unusual for a Windows device
       | since touchscreens aren't common there. So, mock them for
       | pretending their laptop is an iPad.
       | 
       | Good one. I actually have a touchscreen on my laptop but I almost
       | never use it.
        
       | 1317 wrote:
       | seems down for me, the POST request (seen in devtools) just gives
       | a 504                   An error occurred with your deployment
       | FUNCTION_INVOCATION_TIMEOUT
       | lhr1::zcqst-1737978921661-18c020d7118c
        
         | jasonthorsness wrote:
         | DeepSeek is having major issues their
         | https://platform.deepseek.com page now just 404s and
         | https://status.deepseek.com is a red bar
        
           | jasonthorsness wrote:
           | They are prioritizing chat so if you do want to see your own
           | roast, clicking "Judge Me" now dumps the prompt right away so
           | you can copy/past to https://chat.deepseek.com.
        
       | droptablemain wrote:
       | "Roasting your Hacker News refugee setup: flexing 20 CPU cores to
       | doomscroll like a Linux-dad cyborg in Sherman Oaks, rocking
       | Chrome 131.0.0.0 like you're personally beta-testing Google's
       | most basic Blink update, yet still stuck at 1080p like a peasant
       | who thinks "4K" is a cryptocurrency."
       | 
       | Glorious.
        
       | username223 wrote:
       | To be fair, I shouldn't expect anything great from insult comedy
       | based on a user-agent string, but I have to say I'm not impressed
       | by this word salad of "reasoning":
       | 
       | > Okay, let's tackle this roast based on the user's browser info.
       | First, I need to pick the three most unusual bits. The Safari
       | version 18.1 stands out because that's a future version not
       | released yet. The screen resolution of 1223x772 is an odd, non-
       | standard size. The location is $LOCATION, which isn't too common,
       | and the referrer is empty, meaning they came directly here. Wait,
       | the referrer is empty. That's unusual. So maybe include that they
       | came from nowhere. Also, the Safari version is ahead of current
       | releases. The screen resolution isn't a typical size, so that's
       | another point. $LOCATION could be linked to the screen size, like
       | a quirky local landmark. Need to make sure to relate location to
       | another attribute if used. Also, roast should be three sentences,
       | concise. Let me structure it: start with the Safari version,
       | mention the screen resolution, tie in $LOCATION with the screen
       | size, and the empty referrer. Make it funny and snarky.
       | 
       | And the result is... well, what you'd expect given that
       | reasoning:
       | 
       | > Safari 18.1? Nice try, time traveler--Apple hasn't even _heard_
       | of that version yet, but enjoy your 1223x772 screen resolution,
       | the exact dimensions of $LOCATION 's least impressive corn maze.
       | You arrived here _directly_ like a cryptid emerging from the
       | woods, which tracks, because only a mythical creature would still
       | run Mac OS 10.15.7.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-01-27 23:01 UTC)