{
  "name": "Yuren Hao",
  "handle": "blackhao",
  "tagline": "NLP · Learning Dynamics · Physical Learning Algorithms",
  "email": "yurenh2@illinois.edu",
  "onion": "http://blackhaor5cisrwh6jn54lm7yrut7smsnpuu65elgoj5epgaej6sp4id.onion",
  "links": [
    {
      "label": "GitHub",
      "url": "https://github.com/YurenHao0426"
    },
    {
      "label": "Google Scholar",
      "url": "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JXDkAboAAAAJ&hl=en"
    },
    {
      "label": "LinkedIn",
      "url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/yurenhao/"
    },
    {
      "label": "Personal Git",
      "url": "https://git.blackhao.com"
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Pencil/Pen Sketching",
    "General Painting",
    "Birding",
    "Gardening",
    "Cooking",
    "Plant Collecting",
    "Mineral Collecting",
    "Traveling",
    "Semantics",
    "Pragmatics",
    "Hippocampus",
    "Swimming",
    "AI/ML (excluding CV)",
    "Spice",
    "Italian Futurism",
    "Austrian (or maybe Mitteleuropa) History"
  ],
  "reading": [
    {
      "title": "The Pale Horse",
      "author": "Boris Savinkov"
    },
    {
      "title": "Manifesto of Futurism",
      "author": "Filippo Tommaso Marinetti"
    },
    {
      "title": "夜航船",
      "author": "[明]张岱"
    },
    {
      "title": "Empires of the Mind",
      "author": "Robert Gildea"
    }
  ],
  "publications": [
    {
      "title": "An Investigation of Robustness of LLMs in Mathematical Reasoning: Benchmarking with Mathematically-Equivalent Transformation of Advanced Mathematical Problems",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08833",
      "authors": "Yuren Hao, Xiang Wan, ChengXiang Zhai",
      "venue": "ICLR 2026 Workshop",
      "desc": "PutnamGAP: a 6k+ item benchmark of mathematically-equivalent competition-level problems; 18+ LLMs evaluated under symbolic and parametric perturbations."
    },
    {
      "title": "User Preference Modeling for Conversational LLM Agents: Weak Rewards from Retrieval-Augmented Interaction",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20939",
      "authors": "Yuren Hao, Shuhaib Mehri, ChengXiang Zhai, Dilek Hakkani-Tür",
      "venue": "arXiv preprint",
      "desc": "VARS: a framework that learns persistent user preferences through dual vectors in a shared space, updating from minimal user feedback to personalize conversational agents without individual model fine-tuning."
    },
    {
      "title": "What Accuracy and Gradient Cosine Miss: Evaluating Feedback Alignment via Scale Stability, Reference Validity, and Depth Utility",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21126",
      "authors": "Yuren Hao, Xiang Wan, ChengXiang Zhai",
      "venue": "arXiv preprint",
      "desc": "Neural networks can still learn even their weight-transports for backpropagation are replaced with random matrices. Such learning process are called Feedback Alignment and Direct Feedback Alignment and has great optical hardware compatibility. We show the conventional diagnosis methods for FA can be misleading for 2 independent reasons."
    }
  ],
  "products": [
    {
      "name": "LatteX",
      "url": "https://github.com/YurenHao0426/lattex/releases",
      "desc": "A LaTeX editor with real-time Overleaf sync, local PDF compilation, integrated Claude Code via MCP, and live collaborator visibility. Themed in Cosmic Latte.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "ContextFlow",
      "url": "https://contextflow.blackhao.com",
      "desc": "A node-graph canvas for branching and merging LLM conversations — fork a chat, run councils and debates between models, merge the threads back.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "Research Radar",
      "url": "https://research-trends.blackhao.com",
      "desc": "Tracks CS/AI research hotspots from arXiv, ranked by star-influx: the rate at which established researchers enter a topic for the first time. Flow leads price.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "LLM Council",
      "url": "https://llm-council.blackhao.com",
      "desc": "Ask one question to a council of frontier models; they anonymously review and rank each other before a chairman writes the final answer. Hosted instance of Karpathy's weekend hack.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "Files",
      "url": "https://files.blackhao.com",
      "desc": "Self-hosted file drop. Where things I need to hand someone actually live.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "Git",
      "url": "https://git.blackhao.com",
      "desc": "Mirrors of my repositories, served from this very machine.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "WSY Knowledge Base",
      "url": "https://wsy.blackhao.com",
      "desc": "A RAG-powered, bilingual knowledge base about my friend 王思远. Ask it anything about him.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "UIUC Course Graph",
      "url": "https://yurenhao0426.github.io/uiuc-course-graph/",
      "desc": "An interactive graph of UIUC course prerequisites and relationships. Python data pipeline, web frontend.",
      "status": "live"
    },
    {
      "name": "WebOS (legacy)",
      "url": "/webos/",
      "desc": "The previous incarnation of this site: a full Windows-style desktop in your browser, draggable windows and all. Kept as a museum piece.",
      "status": "retired"
    }
  ],
  "projects": [
    {
      "name": "Dynamics of Latent Reasoning",
      "desc": "Early-stage research on how reasoning unfolds in a model's latent space. More specifically, we study a few recursive reasoning models and analyze the chaos and stability in the reasoning trajectories.",
      "stack": [],
      "research": true,
      "collab": true,
      "collabNote": "Collaborators welcome — write me. You may read {https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04871, https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21734, https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.17306}"
    },
    {
      "name": "On the Biological Plausibility of Equilibrium Propagation",
      "desc": "Early-stage research examining equilibrium propagation as a biologically plausible learning rule.",
      "stack": [],
      "research": true,
      "collab": true,
      "collabNote": "Collaborators welcome — write me. You may read {https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05179, https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03670, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10190-7}"
    },
    {
      "name": "Research Radar v2",
      "desc": "Validating star-influx as a leading indicator of research trends. Nightly arXiv harvest into DuckDB, atomic-swap serving. Always more signals to test.",
      "stack": [
        "Python",
        "DuckDB",
        "arXiv"
      ],
      "collab": true,
      "collabNote": "Ideas and PRs on new leading indicators welcome."
    },
    {
      "name": "ContextFlow",
      "desc": "The branching-LLM-conversation canvas above. Backend is solid; the canvas UX has a long wishlist.",
      "stack": [
        "FastAPI",
        "React",
        "LLM APIs"
      ],
      "collab": true,
      "collabNote": "Frontend/UX collaborators especially welcome."
    },
    {
      "name": "Blazing Eights RL",
      "desc": "Self-play PPO agent for Blazing Eights (an UNO variant with custom special cards). It beats me now, which is either progress or a problem.",
      "stack": [
        "PyTorch",
        "PPO",
        "self-play"
      ],
      "collab": false
    },
    {
      "name": "Soma-Dendrite Innovated Learning",
      "desc": "Mid-stage ongoing projects that aims on designing a novel local learning method inspired by lately discovered Soma-Dendrite residual in neurons. Currently it beats all other local learning methods (FA, DFA, EP, FF, PEPITA, etc.) we tested on performance, robustness, and speed.",
      "stack": [],
      "research": true,
      "collab": true,
      "collabNote": "Collaborators welcome — write me."
    },
    {
      "name": "Learning What Transformers Can't Learn",
      "desc": "Late-stage research project.",
      "stack": [],
      "research": true,
      "collab": false
    }
  ],
  "posts": [
    {
      "slug": "gradient-flossing",
      "title": {
        "en": "What I Found Trying to Make Gradient Flossing Work on Chaotic RNN Surrogates"
      },
      "date": "2026-04-08",
      "langs": [
        "en"
      ],
      "math": true,
      "summary": "A lab-notebook write-up of a negative result, and the structural findings that came out along the way."
    },
    {
      "slug": "snecko-eye",
      "title": {
        "en": "[Slay the Spire 2] When Is Taking Snecko Eye Not Grief",
        "zh": "[杀戮尖塔2] 什么时候拿蛇眼不是战犯"
      },
      "date": "2026-03-30",
      "langs": [
        "en",
        "zh"
      ],
      "math": true,
      "summary": "A probability-theoretic answer to how many extra cards Snecko Eye actually buys you, and which decks should take it."
    },
    {
      "slug": "fa-credit-bridge",
      "title": {
        "en": "Why Better Local Credit Didn't Become Stable Gains: an FA→BP Postmortem",
        "zh": "从「让 FA 逼近 BP」到「为什么更好的局部 credit 没有变成稳定收益」"
      },
      "date": "2026-03-28",
      "langs": [
        "en",
        "zh"
      ],
      "math": false,
      "summary": "A complete technical retrospective on a failed attempt to push Feedback Alignment toward Backpropagation."
    },
    {
      "slug": "castle-on-sand",
      "title": {
        "en": "Building a Castle on Sand"
      },
      "date": "2025-01-30",
      "langs": [
        "en"
      ],
      "math": false,
      "summary": "Working with language models while distrusting the picture they offer of mind."
    }
  ]
}