Malus – Clean Room as a Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#531

Post by b_kl » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #446

akoboldfrying wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After bogo-sort, it's the most badness-maximising "solution" I've ever come across. Why bother asking for the creator's consent to copy and run the original bytes, when you could instead ask for their consent to have a robot that no one understands and could potentially do anything read a few paragraphs of text describing what those bytes do, imagine how it might work, and try to build something resembling that from…

The energy thing won't sail. A backhoe or front-loader uses far more energy than the equivalent human labor, but having higher energy solutions available is what technological civilization does . Arguably Cowen's "Great Stagnation" was driven primarily by not embracing higher energy provision in the form of fission.

[dead]

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#532

Post by piperswe » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

marxisttemp wrote: post #430

piperswe wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering my name's on a software patent submitted just last year, I don't think software patents have gone anywhere...

What did you patent

The patent application hasn't been published yet so I can't link it, but it's the integration of a bot management system with a queuing system (think, preventing bots from taking space in the line waiting to buy tickets from Ticketmaster when everyone's in the waiting room)

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#533

Post by cortesoft » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

tirant wrote: post #516

cortesoft wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some lawyer friends, who work as internal council to companies, that are already experiencing this. People are cranking out legal requests and claims with LLMs and sending them to companies. Almost all of them are pretty much meaningless, and should be ignored. However, they legally can't just ignore them. They have to have someone review the claim, verify that it is bullshit, and then they can ignore it. That…

They just need to implement a better LLM that is able to deal with all that crap. At the end we will just have agents interacting with each other.

The problem is the legal liability is also asymmetrical. If the person making the bogus legal claims with the LLM messes up, the claim will just be dismissed and it isn't a big deal for the person making the claim. If the reading LLM messes up and classifies a real claim with the bogus ones, the company could have a major problem.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#534

Post by Guillaume86 » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

nimonian wrote: post #480

gault8121 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but all of the commenters think this is a fake site created ironically. It isn't. It is a company doing the evil thing it is mocking.

I consider this a form of performance art. To really expose the absurdity of the system, you can't just point at the cracks; you need to actually stick your fingers in.

Yes it's even more effective this way IMO, we will probably see some 11/10 mental gymnastics from people condemning this and failing to apply the same standards to billions dollars corps.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#535

Post by ndiddy » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

phlakaton wrote: post #530

jerf wrote: post #75

An interesting aspect of this, especially their blog post ( https://malus.sh/blog.html ), is that it acknowledges a strain in our legal system I've been observing for decades, but don't think the legal system or people in general have dealt with, which is that generally costs matter . A favorite example of mine is speed limits. There is a difference between "putting up a sign that says 55 mph and walking away", "putt…

Agree with all this, but am not sure how it applies to this case. This seems rather the opposite behavior: accelerated bad de facto behavior because de jure enforcement is infeasible. We are seeing this in the world of digital media, where frivolous DMCA and YouTube takedown reports are used indiscriminately and with seemingly little consequence to the bad actor. Corporations are prematurely complying with bad actors…

I'd say it's neither, it's laws failing to keep pace with technological development. All the precedent around clean-room engineering implicitly assumes it'll be painstakingly done by a team of humans taking months or years of work. This means that while there is a way around copyright, the effort it takes to reimplement something poses enough of a barrier that complying with the license is the easier option in most cases. If we treat AI the same way we treat humans here, it means that the barrier is gone. Their blog post brings up the example of Phoenix Software's reimplementation of the IBM PC BIOS. It took a team of engineers 4 months to write the initial version of that work. The authors were able to produce their own clean-room PC BIOS with zero human involvement in less than an hour. Currently both of these are treated as being legally equivalent.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#536

Post by butlike » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

hamdingers wrote: post #373

terryf wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed limit example is a great one. Consider a road that has a 35mph limit. Now - which of the following scenarios is SAFER: a) I'm driving on the road in a brand new 4x4 porsche on a sunny day with great visibility and brand new tyres. Doing 40mph. b) I'm driving on the same road in a 70s car with legal but somewhat worn out tyres, in the dark, while it's raining heavily. Doing 35mph. Of course technically optio…

The Cayenne would be safer going 35 instead of 40 regardless of all other variables. It's a trivial physics question, kinetic energy is a function of mass and velocity.

"Regardless of all other variables"

Variable 1: The Cayenne is on a train track

Variable 2: The train behind the Cayenne is going 35mph.

You painted with too broad of a brush with that statement.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#537

Post by aftbit » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #447

aftbit wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(Do note that people can't just "not pull over" because they know there are no penalties involved; they would still be considered police, and "not complying with a police stop" would, as always, be a real crime with real penalties; if you run from the drone, it would summon actual cars to chase you!) Or perhaps people will not be able to just "not pull over" because the police drones will be given the power to remot…

Presumably because non-autonomous vehicles will still exist. Heck, there are moving violations you can perform on foot.

Sure, in the same way that vehicles without backup cameras or even airbags still exist. They will become less common over time. Vehicles don't have to be fully autonomous to provide this "service". They just need to have a reliable grasp of which road segment they are on and what the speed limit is. It will take some time but it won't be long before there are no cars left on the road that lack the (at least theoretical) ability to be controlled via cell radio. Heck, even without a police incentive, this will happen just because remotely disabling a car is a great way to simplify repossession.

I personally happen to think this is a terrible idea, just one cyber attack or regime change away from crippling everyday Americans ability to get around and live their lives, but that probably won't stop it from happening.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#538

Post by no-name-here » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

encom wrote: post #490

no-name-here wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? 1) If grandparent commenter got a moving violation, shouldn't they just face the corresponding - why posit a made-up penalty for the violation? 2) And if people know there is perfect enforcement, wouldn't they be expected to adjust their behavior going forward, such as driving enough below the limit that they won't accidentally exceed it?

>driving enough below the limit that they won't accidentally exceed it That is precisely why traffic would effectively grind to a halt. Because going even 0,0001 over the limit is so easy, you would have to turtle through traffic to get anywhere while making certain you never go above the limit. 50km zone is now 30km, and you didn't decelerate quickly enough and were going 32km at the threshold. 60km zone, but you ac…

How close to your desired speed are you able to maintain?

> 50km zone is now 30km, and you didn't decelerate quickly enough and were going 32km at the threshold.

Is the argument that you and others would be unable to safely achieve the posted speed within the speed limited area? For example, if you feel you can't drive more precisely than 40-50 when you are aiming for 45, in the above scenario, you could start with your goal being 45, then in the 30 zone aim for 25, knowing that you'd be going no faster than 30 when your intend to drive 25.

> 60km zone, but you accelerated too quickly and hit 61km for a moment.

Should you aim for 55, if for example the most precise you can do is +/- 5? Or adjust correspondingly for how precise you are able to keep within a desired range.

And of course:

* In a world where enforcement was more consistent, we might expect speed limits to eventually be adjusted - i.e. are speed limits currently set lower than what is technically safe because we assume that some portion of people will currently break the law?

* With self-driving, or at least automated speed-keeping (but not steering) there will no longer be the issue of someone having the problem of being unable to stay within x km/h of the speed they're targeting.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#539

Post by encom » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

no-name-here wrote: post #538

encom wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>driving enough below the limit that they won't accidentally exceed it That is precisely why traffic would effectively grind to a halt. Because going even 0,0001 over the limit is so easy, you would have to turtle through traffic to get anywhere while making certain you never go above the limit. 50km zone is now 30km, and you didn't decelerate quickly enough and were going 32km at the threshold. 60km zone, but you ac…

How close to your desired speed are you able to maintain? > 50km zone is now 30km, and you didn't decelerate quickly enough and were going 32km at the threshold. Is the argument that you and others would be unable to safely achieve the posted speed within the speed limited area? For example, if you feel you can't drive more precisely than 40-50 when you are aiming for 45, in the above scenario, you could start with y…

I know how to drive a car. I usually set speed limiter to the posted speed +3km. Measured with GPS, this hits the desired speed accurately. The point in this absurd scenario is that perfect enforcement of the speed limits is asinine, because if you make any mistake at all, no matter how insignificant, you get fined.

>automated speed-keeping

My car displays what it thinks is the speed limit on the dashboard, and it gets it wrong all the time. If I relied on that in this hypothetical, I would be broke and homeless - possibly in prison, after it once said the limit was 110km on a narrow residential street.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#540

Post by godelski » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

gbalduzzi wrote: post #327

hamdingers wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This unwritten distinction exists only to allow targeted enforcement in service of harassment and oppression. There is no upside (even if getting away with speeding feels good). We should strive to enforce all laws 100% of the time as that is the only fair option. If a law being enforced 100% of the time causes problems then rethink the law (i.e. raise the speed limit, or design the road slower).

> If a law being enforced 100% of the time causes problems then rethink the law (i.e. raise the speed limit, or design the road slower). Isn't this the point of the whole conversation we are having here? Laws on copyright were not created for current AI usage on open source project replication. They need to change, because if they are perfectly enforced by the letter, they result in actions that are clearly against t…

What would really help is for people to understand that that's the "spirit of the law" and the "letter of the law".

People don't want the letter of the law enforced, they want the spirit. Using the example from above, speed limits were made for safety. They were set at a time and surprise, cars got safer. So people feel safer driving faster. They're breaking the letter of the law but not the spirit.

I actually like to use law as an example of the limitations of natural languages. Because legalese is an attempt to formalize natural language, yet everyone seems to understand how hard it is to write good rules and how easy it is to find loopholes. But those are only possible if you enforce the letter of the law. Loopholes still exist but are much harder to circumvent with the spirit of the law. But it's also more ambiguous, so not without faults. You have to use some balance.