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Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

blog.terrygodier.com

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Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#181

Post by bossyTeacher »

user43928 wrote: post #6

On the previous HN posts I got this impression: The developer's astrology app containing tarot reading features was rejected from Apple's App Store that prohibits astrology apps. He then replaced the app's content with a clone of, if not the identical open source astronomy app "Dark Hours", copying even the name. The original is here: https://darkhours.app The developer was then in contact with John Gruber, who wrote…

afaik apple store doesn't prohibit astrology apps. You just can't have cookie cutter astrology apps. I believe dating apps have the same rule.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#182

Post by lern_too_spel »

simonw wrote: post #17

The bigger issue here is that he mislead (I think lied to, personally) John Gruber to the point that Gruber had to issue his first retraction in 25 years: https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/retraction_app_store_reje...

Gruber himself has misled his readers without a retraction for many years, but this one he gets to blame on someone else, so it's no skin off his back.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#183

Post by mark_l_watson »

He did the right thing. The very idea of Claude copying an existing project to answer one of my prompts or a whole project in Claude Code is a nightmare scenario.

I have all but given up using the multiple trillion weight models in favor of smaller open weight models that have hopefully abstracted away copyrightable details. Right now deepseek-v4-flash-0731 seems usually perfect for my needs.

I saw Cees de Groot post about LLM vibe coded projects containing all sorts of licensed material, and I think he is correct.

Perhaps another good reason to just use the AGPL for new projects? I decided to use the AGPL for may latest fun project https://github.com/mark-watson/racket-coding-agent (personal AI coding harness written for my own use in Racket Scheme). Everything I do is open source or open content books, so I am happy to have everything I do to be used by humans and also for AI training, however: it is scary to by mistake be in the position of not acknowledging other work when appropriate.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#184

Post by alexashka »

avaer wrote: post #115
whstl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not buying it. Coincidentally: Just in the last few weeks, D'addario, one of largest guitar string manufacturers, posted on Instagram what is clearly an AI-song to advertise its new line of guitar strings. After being called out on it being AI, they posted a mobile-recording of the song recreated in a DAW, but it didn't even match the timing or the notes played. After being called on it AGAIN, they blamed it o…

Think about all of the cases that don't come out. Everyone hates AI, yet everyone is using AI. I refuse to believe nearly 100% of game developers aren't using AI, but how many put the tag of shame on the Steam store page? It's a very strange situation.

[flagged]

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#185

Post by dghlsakjg »

WhrRTheBaboons wrote: post #178
avaer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about all of the cases that don't come out. Everyone hates AI, yet everyone is using AI. I refuse to believe nearly 100% of game developers aren't using AI, but how many put the tag of shame on the Steam store page? It's a very strange situation.

>I refuse to believe nearly 100% of game developers aren't using AI Do you refuse to believe nearly 100% of written content isn't made by AI? Was your comment? I struggle to imagine thinking that no one does things themselves, for fun. What a nihilistic view.

I don’t believe they are saying that 100% of the entire game or content is ai, they are saying that they believe that a huge percentage of titles have used AI for at least one part of the game, however small.

I can absolutely believe it, and I think it’s fine. If you have AI code up the logic for something boring but necessary (the setting screen ui, for one example. Don’t argue against this one example, that isn’t the point) it will leave a developer to work on the parts of games that actually make a difference to the experience.

Frankly, it would be silly not to use ai for some things. The trouble is that if it’s a binary “used ai” flag, there is no way to distinguish a one shot Claude slop game from someone who uses AI for internationalization

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#186

Post by dewey »

qarl2 wrote: post #176
dewey wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only changed "redactions" into "updates / retractions" as that was a typo. Please take a look at https://www.nytimes.com/international/section/corrections for a small selection of what slips through fact checking on a well established and reputable newspaper.

I don't doubt that massive organizations make a lot of errors. I don't think it makes your point, tho. The question is error per volume. I seriously doubt Gruber does the same amount of fact checking as a serious publication. And that was my point above. But I could be wrong - if you actually know I'd love the answer.

If your question is if a single person running a private blog has the same fact checking resources as a big news corporation, the answer is no but I'm not sure why you'd need me to tell you that.

As mentioned in Gruber's retraction (https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/retraction_app_store_reje...) it's the first time he had to retract something in 24 years. It doesn't really make sense to compare the two in any case as the stakes and resources are very different.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#188

Post by Aurornis »

sellmesoap wrote: post #143
user43928 wrote: post #6

On the previous HN posts I got this impression: The developer's astrology app containing tarot reading features was rejected from Apple's App Store that prohibits astrology apps. He then replaced the app's content with a clone of, if not the identical open source astronomy app "Dark Hours", copying even the name. The original is here: https://darkhours.app The developer was then in contact with John Gruber, who wrote…

Maybe our attention is being farmed? I have a friend who does astrology readings for a living and was curious why the app store doesn't allow astrology apps, a quick search revealed astrology apps exist on the app store so that's a red herring.

In app categories that bring a lot of low-effort submissions and clones, Apple requires new submissions to bring something new to the table.

Before these requirements the app store was filling up with thousands of flashlight apps, todo lists, and other simple apps that people would build (or clone) to get something into the app store.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#189

Post by runtime_terror »

sellmesoap wrote: post #143
user43928 wrote: post #6

On the previous HN posts I got this impression: The developer's astrology app containing tarot reading features was rejected from Apple's App Store that prohibits astrology apps. He then replaced the app's content with a clone of, if not the identical open source astronomy app "Dark Hours", copying even the name. The original is here: https://darkhours.app The developer was then in contact with John Gruber, who wrote…

Maybe our attention is being farmed? I have a friend who does astrology readings for a living and was curious why the app store doesn't allow astrology apps, a quick search revealed astrology apps exist on the app store so that's a red herring.

If you read the related articles you'd see the App Store has decided there are enough of these types of apps and they don't accept any more unless they're noticeably different

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#190

Post by fitsumbelay »

Setting aside everything except the stated intention behind the author's post -- ie. to make right something that he could only conclude was wrong after a little education -- what if agentic dev was removed from the equation and he made a similar app anyway?

I understand that using agentic led to specific glitchy things like the recreation of an exact same bug arising from the exact same code which may -- very likely, actually, in cases where one of a narrow set of best practices (or dogma) are (blindly) followed -- or may not happen if you're building similar apps. A lot of people have a lot of the same ideas and the few from that set who actually pursue their goal will likely end up with similar products built with and operate using fairly similar patterns. What then?

What if it's an improvement on the original? Like a vast improvement?

Does a Pepsi or Burger King tell Coca Cola or McDonalds "You got it dawg ...", disrobe, hand over all their assets and find some place to die alone?

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