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Eran Toch

@eranto.bsky.social
490 followers 96 following 216 posts

I invent new technologies and user experiences for privacy & human-AI interaction. Prof of Engineering at TAU.

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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
We can’t tell whether the lists identified talented people or actually helped them succeed. Research on awards suggests that recognition itself can boost performance. There are plenty of other limitations, too. This is, after all, a fairly superficial analysis that Claude did in a few hours.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Interestingly, those selected also had about three times as many documented scandals, forced resignations, and major failures. The two lists are similarly predictive, although Globes seems to select somewhat riskier profiles.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The results surprised me. The lists did pretty well: 82% of those selected are still visible in the public sphere, and about a third reached a verifiable milestone—an exit, senior appointment, professorship, or board seat. Among matched peers, the difference was substantial: 31% vs. 13%.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Claude collected all the lists between 2006 and 2021: about 1,167 people. We traced their careers using open sources, mainly news archives, Wikipedia, and organizational websites. We also randomly selected 300 people and looked for comparable peers at a similar career stage. We found matches for 95.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
TheMarker just published its latest “40 Under 40” list. It got me thinking: are they actually that promising? I set Claude Code loose on a preliminary (and limited) analysis of whether the people featured in two lists over the years actually lived up to the promise. claude.ai/artifact/FZo...
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I joined Guy Rolnik on TheMarker's podcast to talk about AI, the end of the world, privacy, and regulation. We discussed the problems in doomer discourse and what happens to privacy and our rights over our own work in an AI world. Have a listen! open.spotify.com/episode/38bp...
open.spotify.com
״כל הידע והעבודה שלנו נלקחים על-ידי צ׳אט ג׳יפיטי וקלוד״ | פרק 391
המרקרים · Episode
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Really happy to see my PhD student Vanessa Budde’s work recognized with a Short Paper Honorable Mention at MuC 2026 🎉. Our paper looks at how people experience harmful chatbot interactions: from manipulation and behavioral steering to boundary violations. toch.tau.ac.il/3924-2/
the prize the prize
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Congratulations to Michael Khavkin (my Ph.D. student) on receiving the Ein-Dor Student Research Award! The award, by ILAIS, was received for our paper “Beyond the Privacy-Utility Trade-Off: How User Disclosure Decisions Shape Information Systems Under Differential Privacy."
Receiving the Ein Dor Prize
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
איזה מגניב!
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Dan Kotliar @danmk.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
אם טרם נרשמתןם לאחד הכנסים, אז ממש כדאי לכםן! למה כדאי? בין השאר כי 👇
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I've been using Understudy myself for three weeks now, and I'm not looking back. Want to try it? Just tell Claude Code: install github.com/eranto/under... (Needs Python 3 + the Claude CLI; setup is interactive.) Open source — feedback and contributions welcome. 7/7
github.com
GitHub - eranto/understudy: An autonomous project queue for an LLM agent: drop a folder with an instructions.md (or send an email/Slack message), a headless agent does the work, and you review results...
An autonomous project queue for an LLM agent: drop a folder with an instructions.md (or send an email/Slack message), a headless agent does the work, and you review results on a local dashboard. - ...
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Understudy can take real actions — sending messages, writing files — so safety is built in: a kill switch that freezes everything, optional per-project policies that limit what it may do, and every external action logged. Read SECURITY.md before connecting a real account. 6/7
security.md
Homepage
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Because Understudy keeps context across every project, it can surface what's in progress, flag projects that have stalled, and help you prioritize what actually deserves your attention. 5/7
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
State lives in readable Markdown and HTML on disk — no database, no lock-in. Read, diff, and back it up with tools you already have; it stays yours even if Understudy disappears, and you can spin any project off to its own Claude Code session. 4/7
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
The key: it runs unattended. Add work via the dashboard, Slack, or email, and the queue drains on a schedule while you're away — you come back to results waiting in the dashboard. Drop in a PDF noting "prepare an action plan for me," and next run, it's there. 3/7
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
It pairs a web dashboard with an autonomous queue. Each project is just a folder with an instruction. Understudy processes it in its own headless Claude Code session, then keeps the memory — status, history, decisions — in plain files between runs, so each run starts grounded. 2/7
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Claude Code is powerful, but as your projects pile up, it's hard to track everything across terminal sessions. Understudy is an open-source layer on top of Claude Code that makes it act less like a tool you drive and more like an assistant that keeps work moving on its own. 🧵 1/7
understudy dashboard
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
This could have been an email.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
The lecture described interviews with cryptocurrency power users and sought to explain why privacy coins that offer strong cryptographic protections for user identities, such as Zcash and Monero, are disconnected from transactions with more traditional currencies.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Super proud of my PhD student Danielle Movsowitz Davidow, for giving her research, “The Blockchain Privacy Paradox: Perceptions of Privacy Coins,” at the 13th Privacy Conference at Tel Aviv University. >>
Lecture
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Replicating the expeience of using Claude Code
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
The GitHub repository includes the code, an Excel sheet detailing the assumptions, and an interactive map. Feel free to explore, download, improve, comment, and share: github.com/eranto/shelt...
github.com
GitHub - eranto/shelter_placement: A repository for an optimal placement of roadside shelters in Israel to protect citizens against ballistic missile attack
A repository for an optimal placement of roadside shelters in Israel to protect citizens against ballistic missile attack - eranto/shelter_placement
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
336 units should suffice, at an estimated cost of 33m NIS. This estimate is based on a classic heuristic (Gonzalez k-center), under several assumptions: shelters have unlimited capacity (an assumption worth revisiting), differences in alert times are ignored, and no traffic congestion >>
map of israel with shelter placement
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
While driving out of Tel Aviv with my kids during a missile alarm, I found myself searching for a roadside shelter and coming up empty. That led me to ask: what would it take to ensure that drivers on intercity roads can reach a shelter within 5 minutes? >> eranto.github.io/shelter_plac...
eranto.github.io
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
אוף
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
אוי. מה עם המעלית? אם היא קיימת?
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
What a terrible conclusion to this great article.
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Serge Egelman @v0max.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
Hashing isn’t a magic incantation that anonymizes your data.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
תודה!
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
We developed a relatively simple learning algorithm that identifies trademark images and links them to textual information. Thanks to the newspaper’s fixed format, we were able to identify a systematic time-dependent bias, which can shape what we can see digitized sources.
Graph
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
In the paper, "Temporal bias in historical newspaper digitisation — evidence from reconstructing the British Mandate trademark registry", we describe how we reconstructed a database of trademarks (i.e., logos) from the Palestine Gazette, the official newspaper of the British Mandate government >>
Logos
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
While we were in the shelter, I received an email announcing that my paper, co-authored with Bar Ifrah (whom I supervised on a master’s project) and @birnhack.bsky.social, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Documentation >>
Scanned newspaper
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The game Eternal Afternoon by Alex Klexber is perfect for these end times. A kid living in some generic housing block has 20 minutes before the world is destroyed in a giant wave. How do you pass the time in the last 20 minutes of your life? Again and again? store.steampowered.com/app/3924170/...
store.steampowered.com
Eternal Afternoon on Steam
Spend one last afternoon exploring your childhood neighborhood before the world ends at 6:38 PM.
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Dan Kotliar @danmk.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
התחלנו לשחק בHaifa - משחק מקסים על חיפה בזמן המלחמה. גיבור המשחק הוא נרי שיוצא לחפש את חברו איברה שנעלם. האווירה קודרת (מלחמה), אבל יש במשחק הרבה יופי חיפאי - על הנופים, האנשים, הרב-תרבותיות, ועוד. חובה לחיפאים/ות ומומלץ מאוד לכל השאר. זכור לי שאחת המפתחות היתה בבלוסקיי. מישהו זוכר?
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Paula Villa Braslavsky @paulita.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
This has just been published in “Theory & Society” (formerly) considered THE top #sociology /theory journal, after Springer Nature redid the board, installing Steven Pinker among them. Shame shame shame
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Is there even some definition of “parasitic ideas” that’s not taken from something Karl Schmitt had written?
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
The question, as you well know, is why was Gail’s vandalized and not Burger King. And the article explains pretty well the true reason.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Bain also owns Burger King.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Did you ever stopped to think about what your column means for British Jews? That they can be used as the target for the ire of people because protest against Israel is unsuccessful? That their windows can be smashed? And the sensible people write columns that try to normalize this?
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
יש משהו לא הוגן בלקיים סקרים בזמן מלחמה. זה לא זמן נורמלי.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
But what’s their strategy?
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Open-access publishing models allow well-funded academic institutions (such as my university) to use their financial resources and purchasing power to give their faculty an unfair advantage in the number of publications and citations. Isn't pay-to-publish more harmful than pay-to-read?
open access funding
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
OpenAI is in the big Latex business now x.com/OpenAI/statu...
x.com
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
מאוד מזכיר את ורסאי. המעבר לפרוורים כדרך לבדל את עצמך מההמונים.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
This matters because cities often design and promote these systems for certain residents and not others. User-facing digital services tend to cluster in certain neighborhoods, while city-led infrastructure, such as bike-sharing, shows a more equitable distribution.
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
In a new paper, we show that where you live matters as much as who you are. Using survey data from four very different neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, we find that neighborhood context explains technology adoption far better than demographics alone. >>
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Urban technologies, such as digital resident platforms like Tel Aviv’s DigiTel or parking apps, are now common in cities, yet adoption remains uneven despite major public investment. >>
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
We’re happy to announce that our paper, “Place Matters: Neighborhood Effects on Smart City Service Adoption,” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Urban Technology. >>
Urban technology journal
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Mor Naaman @informor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
“Let’s make this clear right now: unless you’ve made at least two masterpieces and changed the face of cinema forever — don’t walk on bike lanes.” Well played, Facebook account of the City of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Quentin Tarantino on a bike lane in Tel Aviv -- and the city's response
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Eran Toch @eranto.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
So proud of the work we’ve done in CHI’s Privacy and Security subcommittee. It was really a privilege co-chairing this subcommittee with Florian and Emilee. Sadly, our lab’s papers weren’t so lucky.
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