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Jailbreaking RabbitOS
- Retr0id 2y agoShamelessly resubmitting my own article with a slightly more attention-grabbing title ;)
- mtlynch 2y agoGreat write up! Thanks for putting so much work into this investigation and report.
- traceroute66 2y ago> Shamelessly resubmitting my own.. If everyone shamelessly resubmitted their own stuff.....a.k.a "please don't delete and repost" See also the "don't linkbait; don't editorialize" rule in relation to titles. ;-)
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> See also the "don't linkbait; don't editorialize" rule in relation to titles I was going to argue that the actual author of the post is allowed to put whatever title they want on their actual article, but the actual article is titled > Jailbreaking RabbitOS (The Hard Way) So... Yeah, actually this submission does seem to go against https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
- Retr0id 2y agoIf it's a problem then I'll just edit the original article. The current title (on HN) is objective and accurate, and I received feedback that the original title buries the lede(s)
- Semaphor 2y agoEven if it’s not an issue, the title you chose now is simply more information dense as well. It’s all around better. Thanks for the read :)
- digging 2y agoGiven the situation, I'd recommend updating the article title, as it's definitely more interesting to someone who hasn't heard of RabbitOS!
- Retr0id 2y agoI updated the article title in the end, but ironically the HN mods appear to have put it back to closer to the original (minus parenthetical).
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoThat seems sensible. Ignoring for a moment the HN guidelines, I agree that the new title is just a better description (I read it... either previously here or from lobsters, but yeah the actual content was good).
- bloqs 2y agoRules aside I can see why title iteration can be good, i saw the original and didnt click it, but im glad i did this time
- duiker101 2y agoHN has actually a page entirely dedicated to posts that went overlooked and are therefore invited to resubmit https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited
- ehPReth 2y agothere's also https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, though I'm not sure what the difference edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 explains it
- Retr0id 2y agoThe rules are "don't delete and repost", not "don't repost" (and this isn't just me rules-lawyering, I believe it's the intended interpretation)
- mtlynch 2y agoHN explicitly allows reposts: >Are reposts ok? >If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates. >Please don't delete and repost the same story. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- isodev 2y agoGood call. Thank you for sharing, it’s really quite fascinating.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoI really appreciate your writing style for the article. It could have been dry, but instead it kept me engaged.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jylam 2y agoIt was surprisingly (or not) hard to find what this "Rabbit R1" device was (despite the `I assume by now that most people have heard of the Rabbit R1.`), so here is a paste from Wired: "The promise was simple. Speak into the device and it'll complete tasks for you thanks to Rabbit's “large action models”—call an Uber, reserve dinner plans via OpenTable, play a song through Spotify, or order some food on DoorDash. Just speak and it will handle it, just like if you handed your smartphone to a personal assistant and asked them to do something for you." I don't understand why an app on the phone wouldn't do that, but maybe I'm not hype enough.
- mewse-hn 2y agoYou really have to watch the Steve Jobs-esque announcement video to understand what they were promising with this device, and understand how utterly it failed to deliver on those promises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22wlLy7hKP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22wlLy7hKP4
- nerdponx 2y agoAre you sure it wasn't always meant to just be a preorder + data harvesting scam?
- margalabargala 2y agoOne thing brought up by the article is that for all their other sketchiness, they do provide a constant stream of software updates for existing devices. That makes it unlikely it was a pre-order scam.
- mlsu 2y agoOh wow, that's wild. It's like a cuckoo that has evolved to mimic Steve Jobs, just enough to feed on VC and beta product dollars. I'm sure it'll take off out of the nest, fat and happy, once its brood parasitism is complete.
- codetrotter 2y agoOn iOS the “problem” for a third-party app is that there is no mechanic by which it could always listen to your mic, and trigger actions based on keywords. Only Siri would be able to do that on iOS. Therefore, no third party can “become the platform” on iOS for voice assistants. But who knows. Maybe EU will force Apple to open up for that at some point, like they forced Apple to open up for third party App Stores on iOS in EU.
- mrbluecoat 2y ago> logs include: Your precise GPS locations (which are also sent to their servers). Your WiFi network name. The IDs of nearby cell towers (even with no SIM card inserted, also sent to their servers). Your internet-facing IP address. The user token used by the device to authenticate with Rabbit's back-end API. Base64-encoded MP3s of everything the Rabbit has ever spoken to you (and the text transcript thereof). Nasty :0
- nicce 2y agoNobody would collect all this by accident, especially when considering the purpose of the product…
- freedomben 2y agoCertainly not by accident. It takes intentional effort to collect any data, let alone data like this where you have to really scrape. This is in my opinion exactly what the tech industry is all about these days. I generally favor a light touch with regulation, but the US desperately needs some privacy laws because this industry is absolutely out of control
- ghayes 2y agoI'd generally say that disclosure should be enough (and is currently insufficient in the US outside of California), but I am weary that much of your life now involves "Pay us with Venmo" or "Customer service via Twitter," such that one cannot really opt-out without paying a significant cost.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y agoIt’s not all bad: Venmo gives you payment/fraud protection; Twitter is a public forum so at least if anything goes wrong you’ll be a viral star of some kind. I draw the line at companies/orgs using Discord for anything.
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- iamexcited 2y agolol! I worked at Rabbit and left after reading through the codebase and being gaslit by the execs
- rideontime 2y agoWell? Aren't you going to spill some juicy details about the supposed "large action model"?
- Retr0id 2y agoI believe the juicy details are "It's a marketing term for getting off-the-shelf LLMs to call out to pre-written browser automation scripts", but I'd love to hear it from the horse's mouth.
- TestingWithEdd 2y agoThis is what coffeezilla said on his channel after speaking to devs at Rabbit
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- klabb3 2y agoWhen I saw the browser/app automation “RAG” thingy in the first presentation I was instantly suspicious. I’m sure the AI is hard enough (that I don’t know) but I do know that everyone is fighting against automation and scraping, so it’s an arms race that’s very difficult to win. Simulating human behavior isn’t enough (sometimes being human isn’t even enough either). For instance, I know that a fintech company (big name) had deployed a physical android phone fleet to sign in to banks on behalf of users, around 8 years ago. That’s because the bank had used extensive fingerprinting tech to lock out any automation. It’s sad, but the world is much less interoperable than it used to be. That’s not Rabbits fault, but obviously lying about it is.
- krukah 2y ago
- pmdr 2y ago[flagged]
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoReverse engineering is often interesting independently of whether the actual device was interesting.
- Retr0id 2y agoI find the ways in which things work less interesting than the ways in which they do not.
- ssl-3 2y agoWhy do people care what others care about?
- dole 2y agoPossibly useful hardware components or package for cheap.
- knowitnone 2y agoas opposed to the other millions of smartphone and tablets for just as much if not cheaper with most of it being thrown in the trash due to it being >5 years old?
- 0xTJ 2y agoBecause there are sometimes interesting things that get thrown in the garbage. The author clearly doesn't care about the product as a product (otherwise they'd have bought one new, and this article would be completely different), they care about it as a technical puzzle, with secrets to uncover.
- sqeaky 2y agoThis is a large scam and we are curious to see what will happen. If they aren't sued, fined, imprisoned, court-ordered, or otherwise dealt justice it means something very toxic for tech as an industry. And if they are the drama will be fun. You may as well ask "why do people like sports?", people are emotionally invested and that is enough.
- barnabee 2y agoCool write up! The software looks garbage and the company doesn’t seem great either at this point. But if it’s easy enough to run custom apps on (even/especially) in kiosk mode, I could imagine some pretty interesting use cases for this form factor. Bonus points if you could just slap something together as a PWA too, as then it gets much quicker than programming an ESP32 + battery + screen, and in what looks like s pretty nice self contained unit. Would be nice, ideally to be able to get it running more secure / without any Google services, something like GrapheneOS. Having not looked at what’s out there (yet) does anyone know if people are using them in this way for custom single focus apps or have any pointers?
- Retr0id 2y agoAs is, the hardware is still pretty overpriced. If the price drops to <$50 (maybe after they turn off their servers, heh) then I'd agree, it's an alright hardware platform.
- Arnavion 2y agoI don't have any interest in this product or sympathy for its manufacturer, but: >On July 12th, I asked Rabbit Inc. if they had any comments to make on the content of this article [...] As of the end of July 15th, they have not responded. That *was* between zero and two working days, depending on how early on Friday the author asked them for comments and how late on Monday they waited for a response. It might've been better to wait a few more days. I doubt they would've responded even then, but it would've made the case of their incompetence stronger, and given them less ammo for a rebuttal should they choose to make one.
- lagniappe 2y agoNobody's defending Rabbit here, but that's chickenshit journalism, and it happens too often.
- mynameisvlad 2y agoSince when is an individual's personal blog "journalism", and therefore expected to live up to that standard?
- Retr0id 2y agoI take it as a compliment!
- gruez 2y agoIt might not be "journalism", but I think it's pretty reasonable to wait a week for responses before dropping serious accusations It's not exactly a onerous requirement to meet.
- mynameisvlad 2y agoReasonable? Sure. Expected and therefore commented that it's chickenshit when it doesn't happen? Yeah, no. If this were a reputable news outlet, that expectation would be reasonable.
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- OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago> I could also build an entire custom kernel from source, but Rabbit Inc. has chosen to violate the GPL2 license and not make the sources available. Of particular note are their drivers for hall-effect scroll wheel sensing, and camera rotation stepper motor control, which are closed-source and yet statically linked into the GPL'd kernel image. Violations like this are hugely destructive to the free software ecosystem, from which companies like Rabbit Inc. benefit. GPL requires you to disclose the license and source code on request, but Truth Social got away with not disclosing the license until someone realized they were using AGPL code, and only then released the source. I wonder if Rabbit will slip by doing the same.
- chuckadams 2y agoRabbit will be long out of business before any blowback about the GPL actually reaches them. As for kernel modules, I was under the impression that Linux has a specific exemption to the GPL for those regardless of how they're linked, as long as they don't require any modifications to the kernel itself.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoYou still cannot distribute those modules AND the kernel on the same "package", though.
- anthk 2y agoThat's why I hate DKMS. A true libre kernel would never need to use that.
- mardifoufs 2y agoAnd a true, completely libre kernel wouldn't have been used by anyone. DKMS exists for a reason, it's a good, non dogmatic compromise. Linux makes a lot of those compromises that make it easier to use in/with proprietary environments.
- taylorbuley 2y agoThis company is definitely wading through the trough of disillusionment. Excited what root on the device could open up. I have been disappointed in its hackability; however, the joy I receive when watching my 10 year old dive into a topic of his choice with this neon orange LLM is worth far more to me than the $200 for my R1. During these summer months I let him stay up late with this as his only glowing screen and he basically uses it like I used Encyclopedia Brittanica, except much more deeply and with more interesting subjects. I think it's a great little piece of purpose-driven hardware. I dropped my own ChatGPT subscription and use this if I need to do some heavy lifting. I know it won't last forever, but it will last until the company goes bottom-up -- and longer if we get more boottime control through tools like this.
- callalex 2y agoI hope it’s presenting him with facts instead of made up history badly regurgitated from troll Reddit posts…
- taylorbuley 2y agoI would expect just as many hallucinations as "normal" from an OpenAI API endpoint. I agree that knowing the difference between facts and formatted content is good media literacy at any age.
- bmoxb 2y agoDo you really expect a 10 year old to consistently be able to tell when an LLM is feeding them convincing-sounding but ultimately false information?
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoUltimately it doesn't matter and that battle is already lost, even adults overly trust the output and never question it. I've had colleagues insist to my face that something wasn't possible in a piece of software I'm an expert in because ChatGPT told them it wasn't possible.
- Aurornis 2y agoGood writeup on the process, but the amount of negative spin in the article left a bad taste in my mouth. He says he didn't bother reporting the issue at first (!) but then later criticizes Rabbit for not responding to his July 12th e-mail in less than 2 business days. However, Rabbit had already fixed the issue and released a security advisory on July 11th, a day before he finally decided to contact them. You can see their security advisory on their website, dated July 11th ( https://www.rabbit.tech/security-advisory-071124 https://www.rabbit.tech/security-advisory-071124 ) To be fair, the post does bury this at the very end of the article, but it spends most of the opening sections talking about how much it "sucks" and leans heavily on the logging issue and their lack of response before eventually admitting that it was already fixed. > As of 11 July, we’ve made the following changes: > Pairing data can no longer be used to read from rabbithole. It can only trigger actions. > Pairing data is no longer logged to the device. > We have reduced the amount of log data that gets stored on the device. > The Factory Reset option is now available via the settings menu. Customers should use this option to erase ALL data from their r1 prior to transferring ownership.
- wmf 2y agoThere's an acrimonious relationship between Rabbit and hackers and both sides seem to keep escalating.
- Retr0id 2y agoJust grouping together your other similar comments in this thread, so people can read the existing replies rather than duplicating conversations: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40988915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40988915 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40988541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40988541
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- usr1106 2y ago> On July 12th, I asked Rabbit Inc. if they had any comments to make on the content of this article, > As of the end of July 15th, they have not responded. Their lawyers are considering the options how to sue you.
- Retr0id 2y agoThat'd be hilarious.
- Suppafly 2y agoHonestly, it's pretty shitty to ask someone for a comment on a friday afternoon and publish on a monday morning pretending that they didn't reply when you likely gave them zero business hours to reply.
- madeofpalk 2y agoWhy? They're under no obligation to ask them in the first place.
- zamadatix 2y agoNot asking is fine, asking is nice, asking when you know it's a period they won't realistically be able to respond just to be able to list you didn't get a response is shitty. Not as shitty as some of the stuff the article finds of course, but still a completely unnecessary callout that detracts from the message on said stuff a bit.
- Retr0id 2y agoI report the non-response directly after reporting how long I gave them to respond, it's not in any way misleading or underhanded. You are free to think that I didn't give them enough time to respond, since "enough time" is subjective. But the amount of time I did give them was objectively reported. It's now been the best part of 4 business days, and they still haven't responded, nor indicated an intent to respond. There's no way I was going to let them delay me indefinitely.
- schmookeeg 2y agoI'm enjoying reading this, and I never paid much attention to the R1 product. "Carroot" was enough of a chuckle to merit the rest. :D
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- bigstrat2003 2y agoI have, in fact, not heard of the Rabbit R1. And the link in TFA leads to some weird promo video instead of something informative. Does anyone have a succinct explanation of what the article is talking about? Edit: nm, I commented before reading other comments. Anyone else confused should read jylam's comment explaining.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- openplatypus 2y ago[flagged]
- 1745858 2y ago[dead]
- jmakov 2y agoIs the data harvest restricted to that particular device or is it an Android feature?
- heyrikin 2y agoVery interesting writeup!
- fabiensanglard 2y ago> In the spirit of terrible rabbit-themed puns, I'm naming the jailbreak "carroot". This is good.
- freetanga 2y agoWhat’s the actual value of pinpointing behavior for the crowd that bought this? Maybe identifying who would buy the next Juicero, Multivitamins and “be your own boss” Multi-level-Marketing scheme?
- spullara 2y ago[flagged]
- nineteen999 2y agoHonestly ... what did people expect.
- localfirst 2y ago[flagged]
- Eduard 2y agoelaborate or quit the BS.
- SrslyJosh 2y ago[flagged]
- 1ucky 2y agoWait until you find out that the company behind it was doing a crypto scam before they worked on the new AI hype
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- RobotToaster 2y agoWhat did people expect to lapin?
- niutech 2y agoI expected a privacy-preserving open source AI assistant like Mycroft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycroft_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycroft_(software)) combined with Leon (https://getleon.ai https://getleon.ai).
- dboreham 2y agoSo..umm..not an internet connected sex toy then?
- jrflowers 2y agoNot with that attitude it isn’t
- smm11 2y agoOh, no! GPS, WiFi, cell tower location, token to attach to their network, all that information flowing! Hope none of you are using an Android phone or iPhone. Get a grip, people.
- make_it_sure 2y agoI hate this type of articles, not because of content but because of what authors trying to do. They always try to be morally superior and create controversy by nitpicking issues. These types of logs are extremely useful for debugging, just by doing that doesn't mean it's doing it for the purpose of selling your data to evil corp.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- irjustin 2y ago> I hate this type of articles, not because of content but because of what authors trying to do. They always try to be morally superior and create controversy by nitpicking issues. > These types of logs are extremely useful for debugging, just by doing that doesn't mean it's doing it for the purpose of selling your data to evil corp. Downvoted because you didn't read the article and just commented something based on the word logs.
- steakscience 2y agoIt's kinda funny all/most of the initial goodwill towards the Rabbit was purely because of the Teenage Engineering design. I hope TE chooses their clients better in the future. The guy behind Rabbit is a known grifter.
- tb1989 2y agothis 'grifter' is on TE's board, so things are out of control
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago>The guy behind Rabbit is a known grifter. Genuine request for sources. Whilst i know i could just search the name, i won't. Purely because search is nowadays terrible. However a link to something that further expands on your criticism would be useful.
- asenna 2y agoCoffeeZilla made a thorough video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPOHf20slZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPOHf20slZg
- LangChinBob 2y agoI need to ask, will this break the warranty trying to recreate these steps?
- mlekoszek 2y agoAh, I wish this product could have panned out. I hope it doesn't become a bugbear for future experiments with hardware user interfaces + AI. I'm still of the Bret Victor school of thought that we can do better than just tapping and swiping at glass rectangles.
- TillE 2y agoSure but your glass rectangle already has all the power and hardware features necessary to provide those other interfaces. Or more conveniently, a smart watch can relay queries to your phone. I sort of respect Humane for trying something genuinely different, though it doesn't seem to solve any real problems. The Rabbit R1 is just cheap junk.
- stalfosknight 2y agoSo this is the Juicero of AI assistants.
- 542354234235 2y agoJuicero was beautifully (over)engineered and worked as advertised. They just thought people would be willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for a machine that can only juice proprietary bags of pre chopped fruit blends from the company. Everything worked exactly like it was supposed to. It was just the actual business model that was ridiculous.
- 93po 2y agoi'm not sure it really worked as advertised, the machine didn't appreciably create more juice than just squeezing the bag yourself by hand, and the bags weren't really "fresh squeezed juice" because it was largely already in a liquid state and only required sqeezing to get the last bit out of the bag.
- alephxyz 2y agoNo this is more like your juicero press having no functional parts except a pipe going to the Juicero HQ where they mix together juices from different juice providers and then pump it to your Juicero with a 5 minute delay
- broomzy 2y ago> However, due to the aforementioned "kamakiri" bootrom exploit, the first link of the chain is irrevocably broken. > [...] > But, we don't even need to use an exploit here. Both the brom and Preloader boot stages feature a USB bootloader mode, which in the r1's case will accept unsigned DA ("Download Agent") images over USB, and allow you to execute them from memory (from SRAM in the case of brom, and DRAM in the case of Preloader). The RabbitOS developers can patch all of this by setting an efuse that instructs the bootrom to block bootloader access over USB. Moto did this a couple years ago with their MediaTek devices that were susceptible to bootrom attacks via this surface. If I remember correctly this efuse was set at the LK stage and was applied in a regular OTA firmware update.
- Elizabeth0147 2y ago[dead]