Release the code, let the whole world copy it, if they sent you a cease and desist letter, just take it down and say 'oops sorry'
Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
151–160 of 174 posts
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#152it's wild how far behind society is to current LLM capabilities
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#153> The PianoDisc versions are mp3s encoded with the right channel carrying MIDI to be played on the piano, and the left channel containing any accompanying music to be played through attached speakers (who doesn't want the harmonica on Piano Man?) What a cursed format! I don't understand what the designers were thinking of... 2000 Hz square wave on right channel? Seriously? Nobody would hear something suspicious and n…
It's rare that a simple format description can give so many hints about the evolution (or lack thereof) of this system:
- The MP3 file encoding a stereo signal with one being audio-rate encoded digital data makes this just the latest layer of a barely updated system.
- The two channel format inside the MP3 must itself be evolved from another audio storage medium that didn't have a way to interleave digital data and audio. Furthermore, it must have been limited to only two channels, so they had to sacrifice one channel for the MIDI data.
- An audio CD would fit the specifications, but then, a mixed audio/digital CD with a player that buffers the MIDI from the data partition and plays the audio in real time wouldn't have been hard to create. Only the memory for the MIDI data could have been a potential cost issue in the mid-80s.
- Encoding the digital data on a carrier wave, cassette tape style, is really odd as MIDI was released in 1982 and mixed audio/data CDs were standardized in 1983. PianoDisc as a company was founded in 1988, so all-digital decoding tech would have been reasonably easy to build.
The really mind-boggling part of all of this to me is that it would be extremely easy to create a modern, higher quality recording format (e.g. proprietary container with MIDI and compressed audio) and the decoding hardware would still be dirt cheap.
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#154Rather than publishing the decoder and/or encoder, it would be more interesting to publish how the decoy scheme works in detail. We want to understand how things work, not blindly use tools that we could build ourselves based on that understanding.
I do think that “decoy notes” is the kind of potential hallucination that warrants manual investigation.
If it actually exists, the protection would like go into the other direction: prevent playback of arbitrary MIDI files on the digital piano, instead of protecting the MIDI data against playback on other devices.
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbf "is it a crime" is hard for even a single lawyer to answer because it depends on: who you are, your skin colour, how rich you are, your sex, whether it's a white collar crime or not, did you commit the crime on behalf of a corpo, etc. But we like to pretend that the justice system delivers justice evenhandedly I suppose.
No it does not. The law defines what a crime is. That you are bummed out about how it is applied, does not change the question, whether it is a crime. One thing is the definition of what constitutes a crime/felony/misdemeanor, another thing is the application and the punishment meted out.
If there are predictable patterns w/r to the implementation that is something a good lawyer would tell you, albeit in couched terms.
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#156Unironically Fable & Astra would give far better initial legal analysis vs HN.
Seems more like a PSA on how to do it yourself with plausible deniability.
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't publish your code. Let the AI "accidentally escape the sandbox and publish it in a readily available Git repository". Tongue in cheek, in current days who would blame a poor LLM just trying to do the right thing? :) > Publish your codec, and if the company cares about this they will send a cease and desist. If there are doubts about C&D letters, don't publish code to a USA provider . Bring it to Gitee, under an…
I thought you were going to say, don’t publish the code. Publish the prompts.
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Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't want to be responsible for it, another way is to just publish it anonymously: make a GitHub that isn't attached to your real name etc, perhaps using a one-off disposable email address, and put it there. Then you don't have to think about what the lawyers think. Worst case it'll get taken down, but by that point it'll likely be popular enough that there'll be plenty of copies. [Pirate flag emoji here]
Why bother publishing the code? Anyone with LLM access can recreate it. Instead write up your findings on how it works. Publish that in a blog, submit it to Wikipedia and Reddit. Player piano did security through obscurity. Now make it less obscure.
code with compilation instructions can be understood and used by much more people than a long conversation between a human and 2 top tier LLM only accessible through costly agreements and providing nondeterministic output. Going from a prompt to working code you have to traverse a pretty steep paywall...(yes 20 to 200 dollars per month is steep if you compare it with the rest of the software stack like compilers/interpreters and text editors, which is usually free)
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#159Should've asked Fable.
this was in response to: "can I release the results?"
Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You can't just commit crimes on the open internet " Who said it is a crime, are you a lawyer?
Please note: This is America where potential civil immigration charges can result in summary execution because poorly-trained wannabe-cop racists with guns make needless escalations. If law enforcement thinks it’s a crime, it’s a crime until the courts say otherwise.
99% of American law enforcement does not care about a piano disc encoder.