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Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

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Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#141

Post by andrewmg »

teepo wrote: post #130
andrewmg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto (except not being an AI detractor): I used Claude and Codex to reverse engineer the proprietary protocol for controlling Devialet amplifiers and then build an iOS controller app to replace the manufacturer's abandoned official app. The whole thing took about a day, spread out over a week or so. Without AI, I wouldn't have even started the project, because I couldn't spare the time it would have taken.

i looked those up, that's pricey gear. is that a similar app abandonment like with Sonos deprecating and moving to newer protocols?

Sort of. The company released a new model and deprecated its older ones. It’s still possible to control the amps with the (really neat) physical remote.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#142

Post by qurren »

saejox wrote: post #66

my Brother dcp-t230 also doesn't have macos drivers and it's a usb only printer. if i ever get some tokens to burn, i would try the same.

> if i ever get some tokens to burn

The real trick is to have the AI do something that makes its own money, then tokens are effectively free.

People who are complaining about token costs aren't trying.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#143

Post by bombcar »

perching_aix wrote: post #115
Tiberium wrote: post #73

Unfortunately this is a very misleading article and headline. I don't doubt the end result - it's useful that it works, but it's not "natively" and, unlike what some people assume, Claude didn't write a driver. It basically used HP's existing proprietary driver in a Linux VM on macOS, and just bridged that to macOS. It also requires a root launcher that runs code from the user ~/.hp1008 dir, so security is weakened.

It's strange, because I have zero doubt in my mind that Claude could 100% genuinely reimplement the driver and port it to actually natively run on macOS, were it prompted that way.

Generate the VM, send it crafted PDFs to print, see what it produces, and build a driver. Not that “hard” even for a human, an AI could probably one-shot it.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#144

Post by a2tech »

Tiberium wrote: post #73

Unfortunately this is a very misleading article and headline. I don't doubt the end result - it's useful that it works, but it's not "natively" and, unlike what some people assume, Claude didn't write a driver. It basically used HP's existing proprietary driver in a Linux VM on macOS, and just bridged that to macOS. It also requires a root launcher that runs code from the user ~/.hp1008 dir, so security is weakened.

He could have done this with 10-15 minutes of googling instead of spending 4 hours prompting a LLM.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#146

Post by supriyo-biswas »

Tiberium wrote: post #73

Unfortunately this is a very misleading article and headline. I don't doubt the end result - it's useful that it works, but it's not "natively" and, unlike what some people assume, Claude didn't write a driver. It basically used HP's existing proprietary driver in a Linux VM on macOS, and just bridged that to macOS. It also requires a root launcher that runs code from the user ~/.hp1008 dir, so security is weakened.

This comment should be pinned, and the fact that a misleading post continues to be on the first page blows my mind.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#148

Post by Gracana »

danielheath wrote: post #101
ryandrake wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the technology enough to see why, but LLMs seem unusually skilled at reverse engineering proprietary software.

IMO it's because they don't get burnt out by a lack of results. After 5-6 consecutive approaches fail, I need a reason to think the next one might work out to stay motivated. Claude will keep burning credits trying new approaches until something sticks. That's a huge advantage in a field where most of the things you try don't go anywhere.

I had a discussion about this with a friend recently. I was using an LLM with a serial console that it wrote to allow us to share a connection to a Z80 computer running CP/M. I was having trouble with the assembler, it wouldn’t assemble in user 1 of a particular disk, so I asked the LLM for help. It debugged ASM.COM and the BDOS, walked through the source compared to memory dumps, basically banging its head on the wall for an hour or more, until it finally figured out and verified that my disk had a bad block. I never would have put in that much effort to find the root cause of the problem.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#149

Post by jrflo »

seiferteric wrote: post #33

I just fix a long standing bug on my Linux desktop I have had for years and kept meaning to look into to see if I could fix. The issue was I have a sound blaster katana sound bar and it works okay but the volume on the device is not in sync with the volume in Linux. In Windows it stays in sync. I can work around it by each time I boot, I press the button to go to max volume, then lower the volume in Linux to the desi…

Stuff like this is so nice, I wonder where it will go in the future. Recently on my PC I had a failed windows update that killed the bluetooth driver, I tried to fix it for over an hour and got no where (even consulting chat gpt). I just let codex loose with full authority on the problem and the driver was working again in 5 minutes with no reboot needed.
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