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Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

paulbutler.org

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Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#41

Post by coldpie »

JadeNB wrote: post #27
coldpie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whoever now owns that patent (Google? maybe some patent troll picked it up?) could, in theory, sue the author of this article for patent infringement, right? Even though they invented it independently and never once used or looked at your patent. Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent?

> Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent? Come on, what does this contribute to this conversation? The poster clearly is aware of the drawbacks of such patents, and didn't clearly play any role in filing the patent (they said "we … filed it," not "I filed it"). This kind of response just encourages people not to mention such things; it can't possibly change their past be…

> The poster clearly is aware of the drawbacks of such patents, and didn't clearly play any role in filing the patent (they said "we … filed it," not "I filed it").

A person with the same name as that commenter is listed as an inventor on the patent.

> it can't possibly change their past behavior

Obviously, but it can change future behavior. Maybe realizing that they made the world a worse place by filing that patent will prevent them, or a reader of this discussion, from doing it again in future.

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#42

Post by [deleted] »

RealityVoid wrote: post #36
coldpie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whoever now owns that patent (Google? maybe some patent troll picked it up?) could, in theory, sue the author of this article for patent infringement, right? Even though they invented it independently and never once used or looked at your patent. Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent?

_Can_ they sue them for patent infringement? They just described a technique (that you can see in the patent filing anyway) and not selling a product based on it. I think there's nothing to sue here. I'm curious is my understanding of this is correct.

[deleted]

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#44

Post by IncreasePosts »

coldpie wrote: post #21
HeikoBehrens wrote: post #14

FWIW, we considered this technique back at Pebble to make notifications more actionable and even filed a patent for that (sorry!) https://patents.justia.com/patent/9411785 Back then on iOS via ANCS, the watches wouldn't receive much more than the textual payload you'd see on the phone. We envisioned to be working with partners such as WhatsApp et al. to encode deep links/message ids into the message so one could resp…

So whoever now owns that patent (Google? maybe some patent troll picked it up?) could, in theory, sue the author of this article for patent infringement, right? Even though they invented it independently and never once used or looked at your patent. Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent?

No. The author could not be sued for this successfully. All they did was write a blog post about an interesting technique. They could literally read the patent application and write a blog post about that, assuming the methods are the same.

What percentage of your actions are based around making the world a better place, instead of personal fulfillment or gain?

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#45

Post by singleshot_ »

RealityVoid wrote: post #36
coldpie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whoever now owns that patent (Google? maybe some patent troll picked it up?) could, in theory, sue the author of this article for patent infringement, right? Even though they invented it independently and never once used or looked at your patent. Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent?

_Can_ they sue them for patent infringement? They just described a technique (that you can see in the patent filing anyway) and not selling a product based on it. I think there's nothing to sue here. I'm curious is my understanding of this is correct.

“Except as otherwise provided… whoever without authority… uses… any patented invention… infringes[.]” 35 usc 271

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#46

Post by ooterness »

coldpie wrote: post #21
HeikoBehrens wrote: post #14

FWIW, we considered this technique back at Pebble to make notifications more actionable and even filed a patent for that (sorry!) https://patents.justia.com/patent/9411785 Back then on iOS via ANCS, the watches wouldn't receive much more than the textual payload you'd see on the phone. We envisioned to be working with partners such as WhatsApp et al. to encode deep links/message ids into the message so one could resp…

So whoever now owns that patent (Google? maybe some patent troll picked it up?) could, in theory, sue the author of this article for patent infringement, right? Even though they invented it independently and never once used or looked at your patent. Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent?

As a wise man once said: "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#47

Post by palata »

HeikoBehrens wrote: post #14

FWIW, we considered this technique back at Pebble to make notifications more actionable and even filed a patent for that (sorry!) https://patents.justia.com/patent/9411785 Back then on iOS via ANCS, the watches wouldn't receive much more than the textual payload you'd see on the phone. We envisioned to be working with partners such as WhatsApp et al. to encode deep links/message ids into the message so one could resp…

Respectfully: how the hell would that be a valid patent? Feels like patenting the idea of writing text in white on white on a Word document such that you don't lose it but it doesn't get printed.

It's just insane to ever call that "an invention".

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#48

Post by coldpie »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #44
coldpie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whoever now owns that patent (Google? maybe some patent troll picked it up?) could, in theory, sue the author of this article for patent infringement, right? Even though they invented it independently and never once used or looked at your patent. Do you think you made the world a better place or a worse place by filing that patent?

No. The author could not be sued for this successfully. All they did was write a blog post about an interesting technique. They could literally read the patent application and write a blog post about that, assuming the methods are the same. What percentage of your actions are based around making the world a better place, instead of personal fulfillment or gain?

> All they did was write a blog post about an interesting technique. They could literally read the patent application and write a blog post about that, assuming the methods are the same.

Okay, change "sue" to "prevent from creating a marketable product without paying a royalty to the patent owner in return for having provided nothing of value." The point remains.

> What percentage of your actions are based around making the world a better place, instead of personal fulfillment or gain?

Many harms are unavoidable, but I make a point to at least not go out of my way to make it a worse place, for example by filing software patents. The company I work for provides financial bonuses for filing software patents, and I will never participate in that program. (I've even tried to convince the lawyers to license our patents similar to Red Hat's open patent promise, because they claim they are intended only to be used defensively... but no luck so far.)

Re: Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

#50

Post by klabb3 »

paulgb wrote: post #25
markisus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The r1 somehow knew at an early stage that the message was HELLO but it couldn’t figure out the reason. Even at the end, its last “thought” insists that there is an encoding mistake somewhere. However the final message is correct. I wonder how well it would do for a nonstandard message. Any sufficiently long English message would fall to statistical analysis and I wonder if the LLMs would think to write a little Pyth…

Wow, that's interesting! I wonder if this reproduces with a different message, or if it was a lucky guess. I looked at how the strings tokenize and they do appear to conserve enough information that it could be decoded in theory.

> or if it was a lucky guess

It’s like guessing 1/2 or 2/3 on a math test. The test authors pick nice numbers, and programmers like ”hello”. If the way to encode the secret message resembles other encodings, it’s probably that the pattern matching monster picked it up and is struggling to autocomplete (ie backwards rationalize) a reason why.

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