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Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

blog.terrygodier.com

61–70 of 310 posts

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#63
post #59
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worker claimed it was "his first time using AI" and "he didn't know" This is not the defense they think it is.. If your mechanic rotates your tires and improperly torques the lug bolts "it was my first time using a torque wrench" isn't excusable. It's good to experiment and learn new things. It's not good to throw your little self-study project out into the world with your employer's name behind it and present…

Do we know if it was the worker who presented it as such? Everyone has to learn and if they are learning on the job its up to their employer to ensure that the work product is reviewed or overseen by someone with adequate experience.

In this case, the author exchanged messages with someone, and he indeed claimed as such, according to the screenshots.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#64
This is awful. I went on a deep dive on Terrys site after that post. Full of sage advice, decent rss ideas, the astronomy page and the website, the options, colors all look fantastic. Not a good day for Terry.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#66

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…

I’m struggling to see how this wasn’t intentional by Godier, but I can’t understand what he was hoping to get out of it. Surely the truth would have come out eventually. Was one day of fame worth it?

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#67
post #56

The thing that stands out to me with all of this is how little accountability there is left within the field. Published a rip-off? "Sorry, Claude must have done this". Published a shitty/wrong/insensitive/ post somewhere? "Sorry, the AI wrote it" Regardless of how we view LLMs as a whole, if you produce content with AI and publish it, you personally own every line of what you published. "Claude did it" cannot ever be…

> "Claude did it" cannot ever be a valid excuse.

I think this an incredibly important point. As soon as we devolve reposnsiblity to computer progams, society cedes control to the algorithm vendors.

Jeff Geerling was called out today for his clickbaity video entitled "Intel just matched Apple Silicon. Seriously.". Jeff's personal response was "I had three YouTube titles, this one got about 2x the watch time as the other two, so I let YT pick it."

Another commenter replied: "You are trying to launder responsibility for a clickbait title to a computer program." I think this exactly nailed the problem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223079

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of politicians and public figures saying they got "hacked" after doing/posting something stupid and getting backlash for it. I guess "AI did it" is the new iteration on that.

Appears to have replaced "fake news" as the go-to response

"The dog ate my homework"

Just blame the next thing down the chain that can't defend itself, so you don't have to take responsibility.

Re: Mea Culpa – Dark Hours

#70

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…

> It then turned out that the developer forgot to mention that originally he did upload an astrology app for review. Gruber felt duped, and noted that it's unclear whether an updated build containing the new astronomy app was ever submitted to Apple for review

I think it’s shaping up like he didn’t “forget” to mention it. This looks like an intentional play for attention. It worked very well. Too well, in fact, which drew enough eyes on to the situation to start noticing the cracks in his story.

A key part of the Gruber retraction article is that Apple rejected a different app named Asterly. He then copied the Dark Hours app, including the name, from someone else and tried to imply that was the app at the center of the controversy.

If he had actually written his own astronomy app and swapped it into the story he may have gotten away with it. Doing the wholesale copying of someone else’s work, including the name of the project and stripping the license in the process, is what got him caught.

App Store rejection stories are always popular. I see at least one post a month on Hacker News from an app developer trying to get attention because their app was rejected and it usually receives moderate social media attention. I think this person saw an opportunity to ride that anger for some personal publicity and went for it. He flew too close to the sun and got too much attention, though, so his mistruths were revealed. Now he’s trying some CYA techniques because the original ruse backfired.

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