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> So purely from a hacker perspective, I'm amused at the whining. > Like, a corporation had a weakness you could exploit to get free/cheap thing. Fair game. F

> So purely from a hacker perspective, I'm amused at the whining. > Like, a corporation had a weakness you could exploit to get free/cheap thing. Fair game. From a pure hacker perspective, I'm surprised there are people calling a legitimate usage a "weakness you could exploit"? What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. Then Google unilaterally changed the TOS of a product people already purchased and started pulling the rug. And again, there are people who call themselves hackers who approve of that? Even worse, they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining.

novaleaf 8mo ago
Arn't they yoinking an OAuth token for replay in the Claw app? If so, I don't think anybody who knows how auth works could feign complete innocence.
- gck1 8mo ago
  People got banned for calling `gemini -p` (non-interactive mode) from wrappers like pi or opencode, too. I understand how grabbing an oauth token via reverse engineering could be a ToS violation. But there's no other purpose for the `-p` flag other than to use it with a wrapper. Unless people enjoy having interactive conversations via non-interactive mode for some reason. Even their documentation clearly states this flag exists for "building custom AI tools" [1]. How is OpenCode, OpenClaw etc not a "custom AI tool", where exactly is the line drawn? This is just a rug pull. [1] https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795cde3f7b1efdb69dd6d16890266fff/docs/cli/tutorials/automation.md#build-your-own-custom-ai-tools https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795...
  - saalweachter 8mo ago
    Two kinds of oauth tokens at play here. Tokens like those generated by the gemini CLI, accounted to the user and metered so you're charged every million or so tokens. Tokens like those internal to the Antigravity app, accounted to the product (which is why this was noticed -- the resources allotted to the app were being exhausted) and not metered per token (which is why everyone was trying to use them for everything). As the other commenter said, the first person to do this definitely knew what they were doing. All the script kiddies who piled on after, probably not, but that's also part of why "script kiddy" is a derogatory term. Not only do they usually not understand the scripts they run, they also typically do not understand the risks associated with them.
rolymath 8mo ago
Google changed the ToS to disallow this usage? I'm pretty sure it was disallowed from the beginning
saalweachter 8mo ago
I mean, the "exploit" is really "we have an access key with overly-broad permissions and poor monitoring", but that's ... also kind of like 70% of old hacker stories? "The gate code is 1234" "If you punch in this code it tricks the phone network into thinking you're an operator" "The credentials 'guest'/'guest' work on this network". You probably could have had five, ten people using the Antigravity API key for whatever and even if someone noticed it probably wouldn't have been worth the time to fix. But it's like you learn the gate code for the employee parking lot and instead of just quietly enjoying free parking you start punching in the code and waving more and more cars into the lot until it's jammed full, and then complain when the code's changed and they post a guard outside checking IDs.
- tapvt 8mo ago
  This is where my mind went. A curious person or two poking around is one thing. A few hundred, or thousands, of "AI enthusiasts," or however you'd like to imagine OpenClaw users, could likely approach the scale of "a problem."
ValentineC 8mo ago
> What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. It's technically possible, but Google didn't provide a feature allowing the creation of Antigravity or Gemini CLI API keys for use outside the respective apps.
bigyabai 8mo ago
> they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining. Google's monopoly is not in AI, it's advertisement. When you accuse them of ridiculous and unfounded crimes, you're diluting the chance of Google being held accountable. As someone that wants to see Google ripped apart by the FTC, we can't just lie and say everything Google does is criminal.
- 8note 8mo ago
  the monopoly here is on web indexing, isnt it?
  - otterley 8mo ago
    Nope. Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, and Kagi all have more-or-less complete indices. There's no moat around scraping the public Web.
    - xnx 8mo ago
      Ddg has a miniscule index, and that exists mainly just to say they have one.
    - neodymiumphish 8mo ago
      I’m a Kagi user, but I understood this recent post by the Kagi team to mean that they do not index the web themselves and that it’s nearly impossible for them to do so. https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search
      - otterley 8mo ago
        My mistake. Looks like they license it from others.
      - millzlane 8mo ago
        To me it seems like it's impossible because they can't reorder bing search results or mixed them with other results. Or by their own admission because Google doesn't have a search API anymore. Unless I'm misreading. It's basically "Bing or Google wont allow us to use their products how we want to." And "It will take us over 20 years and lots of money to gain market share." I'm paraphrasing here of course. But it doesn't seem impossible. I mean I don't think it's easy either. I also want to add that I don't want to live in a world with only one search engine.

novaleaf 8mo ago

Arn't they yoinking an OAuth token for replay in the Claw app? If so, I don't think anybody who knows how auth works could feign complete innocence.

gck1 8mo ago
People got banned for calling `gemini -p` (non-interactive mode) from wrappers like pi or opencode, too. I understand how grabbing an oauth token via reverse engineering could be a ToS violation. But there's no other purpose for the `-p` flag other than to use it with a wrapper. Unless people enjoy having interactive conversations via non-interactive mode for some reason. Even their documentation clearly states this flag exists for "building custom AI tools" [1]. How is OpenCode, OpenClaw etc not a "custom AI tool", where exactly is the line drawn? This is just a rug pull. [1] https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795cde3f7b1efdb69dd6d16890266fff/docs/cli/tutorials/automation.md#build-your-own-custom-ai-tools https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/c7237f0c795...
- saalweachter 8mo ago
  Two kinds of oauth tokens at play here. Tokens like those generated by the gemini CLI, accounted to the user and metered so you're charged every million or so tokens. Tokens like those internal to the Antigravity app, accounted to the product (which is why this was noticed -- the resources allotted to the app were being exhausted) and not metered per token (which is why everyone was trying to use them for everything). As the other commenter said, the first person to do this definitely knew what they were doing. All the script kiddies who piled on after, probably not, but that's also part of why "script kiddy" is a derogatory term. Not only do they usually not understand the scripts they run, they also typically do not understand the risks associated with them.

rolymath 8mo ago

Google changed the ToS to disallow this usage? I'm pretty sure it was disallowed from the beginning

saalweachter 8mo ago

I mean, the "exploit" is really "we have an access key with overly-broad permissions and poor monitoring", but that's ... also kind of like 70% of old hacker stories? "The gate code is 1234" "If you punch in this code it tricks the phone network into thinking you're an operator" "The credentials 'guest'/'guest' work on this network". You probably could have had five, ten people using the Antigravity API key for whatever and even if someone noticed it probably wouldn't have been worth the time to fix. But it's like you learn the gate code for the employee parking lot and instead of just quietly enjoying free parking you start punching in the code and waving more and more cars into the lot until it's jammed full, and then complain when the code's changed and they post a guard outside checking IDs.

tapvt 8mo ago
This is where my mind went. A curious person or two poking around is one thing. A few hundred, or thousands, of "AI enthusiasts," or however you'd like to imagine OpenClaw users, could likely approach the scale of "a problem."

ValentineC 8mo ago

> What weakness? What exploit? People have been using it in a way that was technically possible. And they paid for it, many purchased the product specifically because of it. It's technically possible, but Google didn't provide a feature allowing the creation of Antigravity or Gemini CLI API keys for use outside the respective apps.

bigyabai 8mo ago

> they call people calling out Google for their monopolistic behavior whining. Google's monopoly is not in AI, it's advertisement. When you accuse them of ridiculous and unfounded crimes, you're diluting the chance of Google being held accountable. As someone that wants to see Google ripped apart by the FTC, we can't just lie and say everything Google does is criminal.

8note 8mo ago
the monopoly here is on web indexing, isnt it?
- otterley 8mo ago
  Nope. Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, and Kagi all have more-or-less complete indices. There's no moat around scraping the public Web.
  - xnx 8mo ago
    Ddg has a miniscule index, and that exists mainly just to say they have one.
  - neodymiumphish 8mo ago
    I’m a Kagi user, but I understood this recent post by the Kagi team to mean that they do not index the web themselves and that it’s nearly impossible for them to do so. https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search
    - otterley 8mo ago
      My mistake. Looks like they license it from others.
    - millzlane 8mo ago
      To me it seems like it's impossible because they can't reorder bing search results or mixed them with other results. Or by their own admission because Google doesn't have a search API anymore. Unless I'm misreading. It's basically "Bing or Google wont allow us to use their products how we want to." And "It will take us over 20 years and lots of money to gain market share." I'm paraphrasing here of course. But it doesn't seem impossible. I mean I don't think it's easy either. I also want to add that I don't want to live in a world with only one search engine.