6 ms·

Show HN: Epstein IM – Talk to Epstein clone in iMessage

57 points by RyanZhuuuu 9mo ago

vscode-rest 9mo ago
[dead]
lawted 9mo ago
What tech stack did you use?
- cjaackie 9mo ago
  from OP comment history: > So I’ve always had this weird obsession with building my own iMessage agent - like, imagine your own bot living inside your iPhone, sending messages, replying smartly, maybe even trolling your friends a little Then I found out companies like Linq Blue and SendBlue (both YC) charge over $1000/month just to do this. Yeah, no thanks. So I built it myself. iMessageKit is an open-source TypeScript SDK that lets you send and operate iMessages programmatically. Texts, photos, even RCS messages - all through a clean, strongly typed API. Now I can build iMessage bots and automations without burning cash, and honestly, it feels great to beat the paywalls. Would love feedback & ideas! GitHub(ur star would be rly helpful): https://github.com/sg-hq/imessage-kit https://github.com/sg-hq/imessage-kit
  - cjaackie 9mo ago
    I think the tech stack is interesting, don’t agree with OP tasteless choices here (hitler basically) and still, think the work is implemented well -especially iMessage integration.
YanXue06 9mo ago
cool
undeveloper 9mo ago
what's the point of this? at least the jmail suite was based in real facts and documents. is this just for lolz? strange behavior.
- soulofmischief 9mo ago
  What's wrong with lulz?
  - throwaway314155 9mo ago
    Well there were victims and they're still around so... A joke isn't funny if you're "punching down"
    - soulofmischief 9mo ago
      They don't need to, and shouldn't, use this service. It was not made for them and I doubt sincerely that it was made to harm them. There were direct victims, but you also forget that the US now has a shared trauma over the handling of the Epstein situation and its systematic suppression, the gaslighting, and anything which continues to fuel discussion is a good thing, until the day that it has been properly addressed.
ada0000 9mo ago
asked it who it was > jeff epstein, financier > just chillin rn lol > u? hilarious project, an awkward omegle chat with a dead pedophile
- netsharc 9mo ago
  Jeff Epstein, the New York financier? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKfHcas_cZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKfHcas_cZg
- asveikau 9mo ago
  I took a close look at the November document drop, which had some iChat backups. He really did text kind of like an imbecile. The tone is in his emails too.
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    The stupidest people are the most confident, the most confident people run our society. Take note, HN. You might change the world by simply believing in yourself a little.
    - asveikau 9mo ago
      One interesting contrast is in his emails with Noam Chomsky, who wrote in complete paragraphs.
      - Tostino 9mo ago
        I didn't exactly have the highest hopes for Noam, but holy shit was I disappointed in his character over the past few years. Seems like he's actually a pedophile from his reactions to Epstein related leaks. My interaction prior to that was reading manufacturing consent and saying "yeah, seems about right"
        asveikau 9mo ago
        He had a stroke in I believe 2022, and is no longer verbal, so he hasn't been able to give fresh takes on current events such as Ukraine, Gaza, the second Trump term or the latest Epstein revelations. I remember his Ukraine takes seeming irrationally pro Russia. And somewhat out of character, he electorally supported mainstream centrist democrats. I think in light of the emails, some commentators have been saying that the bits in manufacturing consent about only acceptable views being published applied to him. He was a token leftist who ultimately supported the status quo. Whether he was personally a pedophile or merely tolerated pedophiles I don't think I've seen evidence towards. He was certainly a hypocrite, it's disappointing, and a huge stain on his legacy.
purplecats 9mo ago
why do u need my number? why not just a webapp
- henry2023 9mo ago
  IMO Chatting through a known channel gives it a more polished experience to the user. This is really good.
vaandeetttt 9mo ago
interesting.. this things is a proactive agent aswell..
catlover76 9mo ago
[dead]
pineaux 9mo ago
dont have imessage and dont wanna use it, but can you ask when he thinks the files will be released? gotta ask
Chance-Device 9mo ago
“Get your phone number flagged by the authorities in minutes! Don’t wait, start today!”
- ksherlock 9mo ago
  It can't be worse than grok. In fact, OP, please tell me this is grok.
- DANmode 9mo ago
  Flagged because… interest in the Epstein legal case? interest in the supposed personality of “success”? interest in intelligence agencies? interest in technical projects on HN? What’s theoretically getting someone flagged, here, in your opinion? Your comment’s a little light.
amadeuswoo 9mo ago
I’m getting flashbacks on his 2009 deposition trial and something to do with “eggs”
maxbond 9mo ago
I am hesitant to shoot down anyone's work in Show HN but this is deliberate obscenity in service of (I assume) rage baiting. It's all well for art to be transgressive and offensive but if it's not in service of a goal remotely worth having then it's juvenile. Breathing life into a vile monster who remains a contentious subject is just gross and not worth publishing. OP, I think your work on integrating with iMessage is cool, I think it's cool that you set out to build an iMessage agent and succeeded, but I think this is not your best work. I look forward to seeing what you publish in the future but this one gets two thumbs way down from me.
- falloutx 9mo ago
  With vibe coding, now you can implement the worst ideas of your brain within couple of hours. Certainly a great tech that will cure cancer by 2027
- rdiddly 9mo ago
  You simply don't know what the goal was. I would think that breathing life into a vile monster would, among other things, tend to make his monsterism more obvious to observers, and perhaps elicit responses exactly like yours. For all you know, maybe that was the goal. (I'm entertaining your whole "goal" rubric for a minute, but since you brought it up in the context of art, I don't feel comfortable with the idea that art needs to have a goal other than "art itself." Art with a goal is arguably propaganda or advertising. But I don't hold that view rigidly either.) Added a few minutes later: Not knowing someone's motivations, and making up something to fill the blank, leads to errors, most of which seem to lean toward shallowly trivializing and dehumanizing the one whose motives are unknown and guessed-at. Could it be that they are a fully-functioning adult with an actual rationale for their actions that you just don't know of? Allegory: A motorist sees a cyclist on the road, can't understand why they would do that to themselves, and assumes, in the blinding light of their own opinion and car-only experience, that it must be because of a death wish. Based on that shitty reasoning you could go all sorts of places - for example, thinking it would be OK to run over the stupid asshole since they're obviously some other species that is too dumb to protect itself inside a car as do all good folk like me.
qubex 9mo ago
Abysmally shallow. Clearly trained on documents centred upon his legal case and not, for example, of whatever mathematical talents got him a teaching position, allowed him to bluff his way past the likes of Marvin Minsky, and what (if anything) drove his investment strategies.
- krapp 9mo ago
  Obviously it can only be trained on available documents and not the abstract essence of his actual personality, "talents" or what have you. Any attempt to model a human being like this is going to be abysmally shallow, yet for some reason it's an industry unto itself, for everything from dead celebrities to Jesus Christ to lost loved ones.
  - atoav 9mo ago
    Ehh.. Two years ago an art student asked me to clone her personality into a LLM bot. It is absolutely possible to do that to some degree, but you have to be very good at describing the profile(s) of the person and have a mechanism that keeps track of different states the bot can be in. I am not saying we made a convincing human being there, but the result was very hard to distinguish from texting the real person, both based on personality and on writing style. Since the bot also knew about her commute (API), mensa food (scraped), lecture table (API), events of bars/venues she frequented (scraping) and some local/world news (scraping), latest in niche interests (scraping) even asking current events would yield a convincing conversation. The hardest bit was actually having it not react in certain situations, when the person talking to it was probing bot behavior, becoming insulting and stop it to play the other persons servant or overly fixating on certain info it got, but we also managed that. Sure you couldn't really have deep insightful conversations with that bot, but quite frankly that matched the student for the most part.. But it takes much more than just feeding the transcripts and prompt it to be like that person.
  - lesser-shadow 9mo ago
    [dead]
with 9mo ago
spending more than 4 hours building this... is a choice
- lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
  spending more than 1 minute building this
- johnneville 9mo ago
  it's provocative marketing for the photon imessage sdk/api so probably worthwhile since it's already getting engagement here
  - with 9mo ago
    true, it's fit for a marketing strategy for an unauthorized protocol that is now being turned into a startup I guess
vjulian 9mo ago
He’s not responding…
b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
We could be building chatbot clones of Cicero or Samuel Pepys or even an asshole-genius like Feynman. But that's all too good for us, we don't deserve goo things; we get dead pedophile bankers instead.
- pessimizer 9mo ago
  > Samuel Pepys Mr. hazer con ella?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 9mo ago
  I think the absurdity is the whole point.
  - conartist6 9mo ago
    Likely, but it's just as absurd to think you'd get anything of value out of talking to a chatbot simulation of a genius. You'd do a better job of assigning yourself the problem of taking the voice of a vibrant historical persona...
- knowitnone3 9mo ago
  butt aren't you getting enough goo things during breakfast?
- jazzyjackson 9mo ago
  Characters like that are available through system prompts on any LLM. Unfortunately I find the tone of the prose doesn't change much from one author to another, it's still very chatgptlike, but sprinkles in references to the topics the author might go on about. Also there's not really evidence epstein was a banker, no one knows who was financing his operation or why millionaires would add to his portfolio without any expectation of returns, since, the money was never actually invested in anything
falloutx 9mo ago
No one asked for this
novaomnidev 9mo ago
And why would we want to do this?
mrbluecoat 9mo ago
Ugh. What's next? Chat with Hitler?
- krapp 9mo ago
  I'm sure there are plenty of Hitler chatbots already, that's low hanging fruit. There are already four games on Steam where I think you can fuck Hitler. One as a furry. My Steam search is going to look weird for a while...
Yannaner 9mo ago
This is interesting
olcarl75 9mo ago
aint no way

57 points by RyanZhuuuu 9mo ago

vscode-rest 9mo ago

[dead]

lawted 9mo ago

What tech stack did you use?

cjaackie 9mo ago
from OP comment history: > So I’ve always had this weird obsession with building my own iMessage agent - like, imagine your own bot living inside your iPhone, sending messages, replying smartly, maybe even trolling your friends a little Then I found out companies like Linq Blue and SendBlue (both YC) charge over $1000/month just to do this. Yeah, no thanks. So I built it myself. iMessageKit is an open-source TypeScript SDK that lets you send and operate iMessages programmatically. Texts, photos, even RCS messages - all through a clean, strongly typed API. Now I can build iMessage bots and automations without burning cash, and honestly, it feels great to beat the paywalls. Would love feedback & ideas! GitHub(ur star would be rly helpful): https://github.com/sg-hq/imessage-kit https://github.com/sg-hq/imessage-kit
- cjaackie 9mo ago
  I think the tech stack is interesting, don’t agree with OP tasteless choices here (hitler basically) and still, think the work is implemented well -especially iMessage integration.

YanXue06 9mo ago

cool

undeveloper 9mo ago

what's the point of this? at least the jmail suite was based in real facts and documents. is this just for lolz? strange behavior.

soulofmischief 9mo ago
What's wrong with lulz?
- throwaway314155 9mo ago
  Well there were victims and they're still around so... A joke isn't funny if you're "punching down"
  - soulofmischief 9mo ago
    They don't need to, and shouldn't, use this service. It was not made for them and I doubt sincerely that it was made to harm them. There were direct victims, but you also forget that the US now has a shared trauma over the handling of the Epstein situation and its systematic suppression, the gaslighting, and anything which continues to fuel discussion is a good thing, until the day that it has been properly addressed.

ada0000 9mo ago

asked it who it was > jeff epstein, financier > just chillin rn lol > u? hilarious project, an awkward omegle chat with a dead pedophile

netsharc 9mo ago
Jeff Epstein, the New York financier? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKfHcas_cZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKfHcas_cZg
asveikau 9mo ago
I took a close look at the November document drop, which had some iChat backups. He really did text kind of like an imbecile. The tone is in his emails too.
- DANmode 9mo ago
  The stupidest people are the most confident, the most confident people run our society. Take note, HN. You might change the world by simply believing in yourself a little.
  - asveikau 9mo ago
    One interesting contrast is in his emails with Noam Chomsky, who wrote in complete paragraphs.
    - Tostino 9mo ago
      I didn't exactly have the highest hopes for Noam, but holy shit was I disappointed in his character over the past few years. Seems like he's actually a pedophile from his reactions to Epstein related leaks. My interaction prior to that was reading manufacturing consent and saying "yeah, seems about right"
      - asveikau 9mo ago
        He had a stroke in I believe 2022, and is no longer verbal, so he hasn't been able to give fresh takes on current events such as Ukraine, Gaza, the second Trump term or the latest Epstein revelations. I remember his Ukraine takes seeming irrationally pro Russia. And somewhat out of character, he electorally supported mainstream centrist democrats. I think in light of the emails, some commentators have been saying that the bits in manufacturing consent about only acceptable views being published applied to him. He was a token leftist who ultimately supported the status quo. Whether he was personally a pedophile or merely tolerated pedophiles I don't think I've seen evidence towards. He was certainly a hypocrite, it's disappointing, and a huge stain on his legacy.

purplecats 9mo ago

why do u need my number? why not just a webapp

henry2023 9mo ago
IMO Chatting through a known channel gives it a more polished experience to the user. This is really good.

vaandeetttt 9mo ago

interesting.. this things is a proactive agent aswell..

catlover76 9mo ago

[dead]

pineaux 9mo ago

dont have imessage and dont wanna use it, but can you ask when he thinks the files will be released? gotta ask

Chance-Device 9mo ago

“Get your phone number flagged by the authorities in minutes! Don’t wait, start today!”

ksherlock 9mo ago
It can't be worse than grok. In fact, OP, please tell me this is grok.
DANmode 9mo ago
Flagged because… interest in the Epstein legal case? interest in the supposed personality of “success”? interest in intelligence agencies? interest in technical projects on HN? What’s theoretically getting someone flagged, here, in your opinion? Your comment’s a little light.

amadeuswoo 9mo ago

I’m getting flashbacks on his 2009 deposition trial and something to do with “eggs”

maxbond 9mo ago

I am hesitant to shoot down anyone's work in Show HN but this is deliberate obscenity in service of (I assume) rage baiting. It's all well for art to be transgressive and offensive but if it's not in service of a goal remotely worth having then it's juvenile. Breathing life into a vile monster who remains a contentious subject is just gross and not worth publishing. OP, I think your work on integrating with iMessage is cool, I think it's cool that you set out to build an iMessage agent and succeeded, but I think this is not your best work. I look forward to seeing what you publish in the future but this one gets two thumbs way down from me.

falloutx 9mo ago
With vibe coding, now you can implement the worst ideas of your brain within couple of hours. Certainly a great tech that will cure cancer by 2027
rdiddly 9mo ago
You simply don't know what the goal was. I would think that breathing life into a vile monster would, among other things, tend to make his monsterism more obvious to observers, and perhaps elicit responses exactly like yours. For all you know, maybe that was the goal. (I'm entertaining your whole "goal" rubric for a minute, but since you brought it up in the context of art, I don't feel comfortable with the idea that art needs to have a goal other than "art itself." Art with a goal is arguably propaganda or advertising. But I don't hold that view rigidly either.) Added a few minutes later: Not knowing someone's motivations, and making up something to fill the blank, leads to errors, most of which seem to lean toward shallowly trivializing and dehumanizing the one whose motives are unknown and guessed-at. Could it be that they are a fully-functioning adult with an actual rationale for their actions that you just don't know of? Allegory: A motorist sees a cyclist on the road, can't understand why they would do that to themselves, and assumes, in the blinding light of their own opinion and car-only experience, that it must be because of a death wish. Based on that shitty reasoning you could go all sorts of places - for example, thinking it would be OK to run over the stupid asshole since they're obviously some other species that is too dumb to protect itself inside a car as do all good folk like me.

qubex 9mo ago

Abysmally shallow. Clearly trained on documents centred upon his legal case and not, for example, of whatever mathematical talents got him a teaching position, allowed him to bluff his way past the likes of Marvin Minsky, and what (if anything) drove his investment strategies.

krapp 9mo ago
Obviously it can only be trained on available documents and not the abstract essence of his actual personality, "talents" or what have you. Any attempt to model a human being like this is going to be abysmally shallow, yet for some reason it's an industry unto itself, for everything from dead celebrities to Jesus Christ to lost loved ones.
- atoav 9mo ago
  Ehh.. Two years ago an art student asked me to clone her personality into a LLM bot. It is absolutely possible to do that to some degree, but you have to be very good at describing the profile(s) of the person and have a mechanism that keeps track of different states the bot can be in. I am not saying we made a convincing human being there, but the result was very hard to distinguish from texting the real person, both based on personality and on writing style. Since the bot also knew about her commute (API), mensa food (scraped), lecture table (API), events of bars/venues she frequented (scraping) and some local/world news (scraping), latest in niche interests (scraping) even asking current events would yield a convincing conversation. The hardest bit was actually having it not react in certain situations, when the person talking to it was probing bot behavior, becoming insulting and stop it to play the other persons servant or overly fixating on certain info it got, but we also managed that. Sure you couldn't really have deep insightful conversations with that bot, but quite frankly that matched the student for the most part.. But it takes much more than just feeding the transcripts and prompt it to be like that person.
- lesser-shadow 9mo ago
  [dead]

with 9mo ago

spending more than 4 hours building this... is a choice

lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
spending more than 1 minute building this
johnneville 9mo ago
it's provocative marketing for the photon imessage sdk/api so probably worthwhile since it's already getting engagement here
- with 9mo ago
  true, it's fit for a marketing strategy for an unauthorized protocol that is now being turned into a startup I guess

vjulian 9mo ago

He’s not responding…

b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago

We could be building chatbot clones of Cicero or Samuel Pepys or even an asshole-genius like Feynman. But that's all too good for us, we don't deserve goo things; we get dead pedophile bankers instead.

pessimizer 9mo ago
> Samuel Pepys Mr. hazer con ella?
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
userbinator 9mo ago
I think the absurdity is the whole point.
- conartist6 9mo ago
  Likely, but it's just as absurd to think you'd get anything of value out of talking to a chatbot simulation of a genius. You'd do a better job of assigning yourself the problem of taking the voice of a vibrant historical persona...
knowitnone3 9mo ago
butt aren't you getting enough goo things during breakfast?
jazzyjackson 9mo ago
Characters like that are available through system prompts on any LLM. Unfortunately I find the tone of the prose doesn't change much from one author to another, it's still very chatgptlike, but sprinkles in references to the topics the author might go on about. Also there's not really evidence epstein was a banker, no one knows who was financing his operation or why millionaires would add to his portfolio without any expectation of returns, since, the money was never actually invested in anything

falloutx 9mo ago

No one asked for this

novaomnidev 9mo ago

And why would we want to do this?

mrbluecoat 9mo ago

Ugh. What's next? Chat with Hitler?

krapp 9mo ago
I'm sure there are plenty of Hitler chatbots already, that's low hanging fruit. There are already four games on Steam where I think you can fuck Hitler. One as a furry. My Steam search is going to look weird for a while...

Yannaner 9mo ago

This is interesting

olcarl75 9mo ago

aint no way