Mea Culpa – Dark Hours
blog.terrygodier.com520 points by satvikpendem 10 hours ago
520 points by satvikpendem 10 hours ago
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 an article claiming Apple's reviewers confuse a nice, scientific astronomy app with astrology. The developer reviewed the article before publication.
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: https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/retraction_app_store_reje...
Now the developer seems to claim that he merely accidentally cloned that open source app when working with Claude.
I am not buying it.
> 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 on LANDR and Apple Mastering "changing the notes", but those only do "AI knob tweaking", they're not generative-ai audio synthesis. LANDR itself replied.
After being called on it AGAIN, they finally caved and said one of their workers used Suno without their knowledge.
After someone contacted the worker, he said he was pretty clear in his communication with D'addario that he had used Suno.
EDIT: The worker claimed it was "his first time using AI" and "he didn't know", but after someone did some digging in his Instagram profile, there's a few Suno songs and a lot of AI posters and avatars.
This sort of ass-covering is getting crazy with AI...
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.
And kids. I recently happened to see a pic on a kid's phone of him holding 5 vapes and a tin of snus, when challenged on it he said it was an AI-generated fake.
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.
Crazy but my dog once ate half my homework.
Did you submit the other half? Which definitely would prove "dog ate my homework"
"If you put even half as much effort into homework, as you put into faking dog bite marks, ..."
The issue is fake news is real and has somehow been co-opted by the perpetrators to attack any claim/media group that is critical of them or their actions. If you fact check these people they just scream “fake news” until their followers chant it with them.
Huh I guess it is comparable to “it was AI” lol
So true. “AI slop” is the new “Fake news”
But there is copious amounts of AI slip on YouTube
freudian slop?
slip, slop, slap front and back[1]
EDIT: although I have to say the "front and back" actually came from another campaign[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip-Slop-Slap
[2] https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3-EJvs_glCc&list=PLAe0IYRi...
You're calling it ass covering but I kinda see it as buck-passing too. Seems like D'addario didn't want to hold the buck so they kept passing it down until it made its way back to the worker who did it.
Seems to me like that worker's ass wasn't covered at all and now everyone's all up in his shit on his socials, and the layers of management get to wash their hands, even though it's the management and executive that are pushing AI at all costs.
Going forward, I suspect one of the main employment opportunities left for humans in the AI era is "scapegoat". Corporations don't want to take any responsibility for anything. AI can't be responsible. So there's a market opportunity for a person who is willing to take a job where their main value-add is to receive the blame when something goes sideways.
What a sad dystopia we are creating.
The solution is clear: yes we use AI, and we're okay with it.
There's no way Claude/AI recreated another persons app exactly, with the same name and branding, without being told to do so in some way. I just don't believe it.
And him not using it and calling out AI is just him covering his ass
> The solution is clear: yes we use AI, and we're okay with it.
Except that some portion of D'addario's customers--presumably those that actually buy their guitar strings to create music via real guitars--aren't okay with it.
Yeah, I think that case is absolutely wild, because ostensibly the point of the recorded music was to showcase the strings.
Wouldn't this be basically fraudulent advertising?
AFAIK, a lot of commercials, particularly for cars, haven’t really shot the physical product in decades and instead used CGI. I think Ikea also makes heavy use of renderings. It’s all kind of insane. OTOH, a hundred years ago ads all used illustrations… I guess you’d have to show that the real strings don’t sound or behave as shown in the video, however it was created.
In this case there's a difference between CGI and generative AI. However they came up with arrangement of pixels on the screen, the product is still portrayed accurately.
Now, unless the company in question got their new strings into Sona training data, I wager that the generated output has little casual connection with the product being advertised. If I found out IKEA's newest product looks nothing like on the commercial, because the ad was using generative AI and hallucinated something approximating the product, I'd be looking at it as fraudulent too.
I don't understand why you're getting downvoted, but you're correct. That's the reason for the complaints and the company has already taken an anti-AI stance precisely for this reason.
It’s not worth getting upset at one or two people downvoting. This is a large forum. There will always be some of that. Plus we have no clue why they did it, it could be valid
> There's no way Claude/AI recreated another persons app exactly
Entropy doesn't need to be set to zero for legally significant duplication
The already embattled Fender CEO said the other day that he plans for Fender to be at the "forefront" of AI, and that covering others' songs was "analogue AI".
The simple truth of the matter is that contempt for your customers is now normal. I expect this from Fender, now; they are utterly without soul.
But D'Addario are really one of the most analogue companies ever and they are still family-owned; they should have understood the magnitude of this problem right at the beginning and just apologised.
At least one of my three guitars will likely continue to have their PB strings, probably, because they still sound the best on my cheap Weissenborn clone.
But it is very disappointing and it leaves a bad taste. Perhaps I will revisit Rotosounds (wound in a factory very near where I grew up) for my PBs. The UK also has Newtone strings so I really have no reason to continue to support D'Addario (though the low-tension Aloha set I really like for the Weissenborn copy that lets me have a 15 on the high D is always backordered).
> The already embattled Fender CEO said the other day that he plans for Fender to be at the "forefront" of AI, and that covering others' songs was "analogue AI". >The simple truth of the matter is that contempt for your customers is now normal. I expect this from Fender, now; they are utterly without soul.
I think to some degree this is going to be inevitable for a while. No matter what people think about the ethics of AI or AI use, the fact of the matter is it exists, and it is shaking up and going to shake up a lot of the world. I personally think "AI" isn't really a product anymore than "The Internet" is a product. It's infrastructure in the same way the internet is, or to quote "Halt and Catch Fire", it's "the thing that gets us to The Thing".
The problem is no one really knows what The Thing looks like, so everyone is throwing anything they can think of at the wall and hoping to see what sticks. And they're dong this because they remember Sears and they remember Blockbuster. No one wants to be the next company that was positioned perfectly to integrate the new technology into their business model and missed the boat completely for short sightedness or lack of speed. "$foo but with AI" is the current generation's "$foo but on the internet", and everyone is scrambling hard to not be the next company that someone writes a "whatever happened to them" youtube video about.
Incidentally, this "AI as infrastructure" view I have is also why I really think governments should be getting into the space of building and distributing training data sets and models. Not only because it could reduce the overall amount of bot scraping and traffic if everyone who wants to build could go to a known good and clean source of training data, but also because nominal usage fees could help manage the copyright concerns. I've pitched it before in more detail, but I imagine something akin to radio broadcast royalty licenses, where people whose copyrighted works are part of the government training sets are paid out "royalties" from the pool of money brought in from licensing the training sets.
> I think to some degree this is going to be inevitable for a while. No matter what people think about the ethics of AI or AI use, the fact of the matter is it exists, and it is shaking up and going to shake up a lot of the world. I personally think "AI" isn't really a product anymore than "The Internet" is a product. It's infrastructure in the same way the internet is, or to quote "Halt and Catch Fire", it's "the thing that gets us to The Thing".
True. But the way it is approached is an exceptionally valuable yardstick for judging people's intent.
There is no way that "being at the forefront of AI" is a strategy that gets Fender anywhere except towards unthinking inward investment. Even in the narrow context of NAM captures and the like, it is clumsily antithetical to their audience to say this.
But writing off the one thing that actually sells guitars in the 21st century (covers bands!) as "analogue AI" is the most extraordinarily tone-deaf, rude, dismissive thing that someone who runs a musical instrument company could ever say.
> writing off the one thing that actually sells guitars in the 21st century (covers bands!) ...
I'm not so sure about that. Guitar bands playing original music is huge where I am right now, shoegaze / nugaze / grunge / dreampop is where the zeitgeist is here. As a middle-aged guy who was a teen during grunge, it's heartening to see the 20 year olds now buying Jaguar guitars (and a bunch of pedals) and new bands emerging each week. Everyone is nerding out over their obscure Bandcamp purchases, and it's definitely a thing that you need to write your own original material. The occasional cover is okay, but there's a definite "ick" to being a cover band.
"Analogue AI" as a description of playing a cover is harsh, but I can also see some of that label sticking. You didn't write the music or the lyrics, you're taking the credit and money for someone else's work. That seems to be some of the anti-AI attitude around here.
But you're right that "the forefront of AI" is not going to appeal to that audience, at all.
(Personally I'm pro-AI - not Suno stuff, but I think it will eventually find a place in the same way that synthesizers & sampling & DAWs did, all of which were regarded as cheating at the time they came out. I remember the grunge albums with "AAD" Analog / Analog / Digital printed on the CD sleeve just as Pro Tools was emerging.)
> I'm not so sure about that.
Pretty sure that, as a first approximation, essentially all bands are covers bands. At a first approximation, all electric guitarists only play along to other people's songs in their bedrooms! The proportion who ever play for anyone else is tiny.
It's just mindblowing to be that rude about the core market, especially for the luxury guitars they want to be known for.
> I remember the grunge albums with "AAD" Analog / Analog / Digital printed on the CD sleeve just as Pro Tools was emerging.)
I'm not sure digital recording is a fair comparison. Though at any rate, the first digitally recorded album (Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop from 1979) sounds so sonically dead that its artist has essentially disowned it.
It is, coincidentally, essentially a covers album. Ruined by its production; The Very Thing That Makes You Rich (Makes Me Poor) could have sounded immense and it does not.
I dunno.
Fender USA and Squier Jaguars and lots of pedals are for ppl in original bands.
But the money is in Custom Shop Gibson, Fender and PRS, which are for ppl in the older generations playing mostly in 70s cover bands, or just hanging it in the wall to occasionally play Smoke on the Water. TheGearPage has become a very influential force in the industry almost like HN has.
Okay, that's a point - there's less money in the Squier Jaguars even if they sell more of them. I know I personally can't decide on a Squier Jaguar or Vintera, when I know what I really wanted is a Fender Cobain Jaguar. There's more money in the doctors & lawyers accumulating expensive gear that they rarely ever get to play.
That said - the few people I know in the "rich kid buying gear" segment are deep into AI, and wouldn't blink twice at using it to generate music for their events. Much of their audience wouldn't necessarily care. The equipment they have is more to show off "here is this expensive thing you can't afford, I have it, I don't even use it".
So maybe there's lots of diverse markets and I really don't know how it will play out :)
I would probably get a Harley Benton JA or MS and do any necessary work.
But then I'm a weirdo; the only guitars that really float my boat the moment are the Duesenberg lap steels and that Eastwood fretless cello guitar...