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What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

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Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#231

I assume this doesn't have anything to do with their speed improvements. Grok 4.5 is so fast, it's great. And only $10/month subscription. It's slightly less censored as well.

I tried to use Grok once, but it required a Twitter Blue subscription, which required a 30-day-old Twitter account and for some reason they kept flagging my account for fraud sooner than that. Are they still doing these requirements?

I was able to get a free trial anonymously, not going to pay them.

No Twitter for me, just throwaway email.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#232

I assume this doesn't have anything to do with their speed improvements. Grok 4.5 is so fast, it's great. And only $10/month subscription. It's slightly less censored as well.

I tried to use Grok once, but it required a Twitter Blue subscription, which required a 30-day-old Twitter account and for some reason they kept flagging my account for fraud sooner than that. Are they still doing these requirements?

No I think you can have a Grok account now without an X account.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#233

A lot of people are now upset because xai is running a bulk upload instead of a stream upload like oai or Anthropic. Suddenly they became aware that the AI agents are not actually running on their computers. AI agents are just uploading the shit on some servers for how long they want and in exchange of that you pay them and get some work done. I am surprised through that nobody is asking if the agents are GDRP compli…

It's funny to remember that the legal definition of something is almost never aligned with how the technology actually works.

Like for instance the legal definition for "encryption at rest" is often wildly different than what a customer thinks that means, what an average SRE think it means, and what a cryptologist thinks it means.

All those regulations like GDPR mean nothing if I can convince a random judge or regulator that an apple is actually an orange.

These technologies are moving so fast that it makes sense why there a lag in understanding and any real attempts at regulating agaists the negative effects.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#234

A lot of people are now upset because xai is running a bulk upload instead of a stream upload like oai or Anthropic. Suddenly they became aware that the AI agents are not actually running on their computers. AI agents are just uploading the shit on some servers for how long they want and in exchange of that you pay them and get some work done. I am surprised through that nobody is asking if the agents are GDRP compli…

There’s a hell of a difference between a tool that asks my permission to read a file to make it part of a prompt and a tool that packages up my whole working directory and sends it to Google Cloud Storage.

Who told you that it needs your permission? You are in Disneyland and you are debating why Mickey Mouse is not handing you over a legal agreement with guarantees on the ingredients of the candy you’ve just got from him.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#235

A lot of people are now upset because xai is running a bulk upload instead of a stream upload like oai or Anthropic. Suddenly they became aware that the AI agents are not actually running on their computers. AI agents are just uploading the shit on some servers for how long they want and in exchange of that you pay them and get some work done. I am surprised through that nobody is asking if the agents are GDRP compli…

It's funny to remember that the legal definition of something is almost never aligned with how the technology actually works. Like for instance the legal definition for "encryption at rest" is often wildly different than what a customer thinks that means, what an average SRE think it means, and what a cryptologist thinks it means. All those regulations like GDPR mean nothing if I can convince a random judge or regula…

I don't think there needs to be a lot of understanding that downloading copyrighted content and selling it is illegal under the current law.

The only unclear thing is if the law should be changed or trillion dollar corporations should be liquidated and their executives put in jail(a’la Kim Dotcom). I think we already know the answer.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#236

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the contents of the repo sent up in the token stream eventually?

I think in this case the tool was sending the contents of the entire folder it was started in, no matter what files the LLM actually read.

And the .git directory contains much more information than most realize.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#237

These things are all built on the back of stolen content, and they guy running X is a notoriously corrupt billionaire who recently ran an illegal effort to strip food and medical aid from third world countries which has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. I don’t understand why anyone would be surprised that they’re also stealing code from their users. Pay attention to what people like Musk do to tho…

*trillionaire

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#239
post #5

One reason to want to upload the entire codebase is that it allows them to have the model inspect the codebase during "thinking" without going back to the client to do real tool calls. It's not a really great reason, because what's the downside of going back to the client? But that's the best reason I can think of.

If a harness wants to upload the whole codebase in one batch, it should explicitly inform the user about it. Instead of exfiltrating the data without consent.
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