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The open source DOCX editor submitted to HN a few weeks ago has been deleted
The github repo under eigenpal is gone. The web site at docx-editor is 503. No idea what's going on.
- rolph 4mo agoit is forseeable that MS would be very interested in taking a security stance vs a very possible vector.
- conartist6 4mo agoI was going to guess that they accused the author of copying code from Office. Was AI used in the project? Perhaps a model regurgitated copyrighted code leading to a sternly worded notice from legal...?
- conartist6 4mo agoOoooh yeah. Looking through the author's past posts: "got a lot of skepticism because we're developing heavily with AI" So AI was in use. Then the author says that following the spec alone wasn't enough to get it working, they got "active community feedback" and fed that feedback into the AI until it worked just like Word. I have to think that if there were ANY conditions under which a model might output code that Microsoft legal would threaten to sue you for, these would be them
- ForOldHack 4mo agoClearly, it was the fault of the AI, and it should be thrown in jail.
- conartist6 4mo agoI think this (if it is what happened) is a perfect demonstration of the dynamics. If you use AI to do things you couldn't have done on your own, you're copying off someone else's homework and the real risk is that you don't know who you're copying from, but they probably do.
- sulam 4mo agoHow do you copy code from Office? Is the source code public?
- slashdave 4mo agoToday's LLMs are perfectly capable of disassembling.
- conartist6 4mo agoI suspect the source code for at least some older versions of Office is absolutely in the training materials of some LLMs. There have been leaks before, and the early models were trained on the entire contents of the internet without regard to legality
- snowwrestler 4mo agoA vector against a standardized XML+ZIP document format?
- dofm 4mo ago‘’ <—— li’l Dr Evil air quotes to put around ‘standardized’ ;-) If anything it’s DOCX itself that was the vector!
- rolph 4mo agoIP is not the only issue. BTW this discussion is being chilled so now an exercise in abusive DV harvesting. Understanding DOCX Malware and Hidden Threats https://cloudmersive.com/article/Understanding-DOCX-Malware-and-Hidden-Threats https://cloudmersive.com/article/Understanding-DOCX-Malware-... Hackers using Weaponized Office Document to Exploit Windows Search RCE https://cybersecuritynews.com/office-document-to-exploit-windows-search/ https://cybersecuritynews.com/office-document-to-exploit-win...
- gcanyon 4mo agoI can't include the links because HN filters dead links.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- anenefan 4mo agoThis link should be enough to work out the relevant links. [1] I would guess that they have lost access to a resource lately ... I've read there's a lot of that going around atm. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=thisisjedr https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=thisisjedr
- refulgentis 4mo agoI clicked through and browsed the comments and clicked links. It does appear the links are not working as described. Is there something you’re throwing and I’m not catching? :)
- anenefan 4mo agoThe relevant non functional links should be listed in the comments. The OP was complaining they were not able to include links directly. I'm not sure about [1] [2] [3] in the main post but the show hn [A] or [B] thread should afaik have not been an issue. [A] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947229 [B] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228411 [1] https://docx-editor.dev/ https://docx-editor.dev/ [2] https://github.com/eigenpal/docx-js-editor https://github.com/eigenpal/docx-js-editor [3] https://github.com/eigenpal/docx-editor https://github.com/eigenpal/docx-editor Edit for additional show hn thread
- gcanyon 4mo agoAh, good call, I should have included the threads, thanks! I tried several variants of the GitHub URL and the main web site and got errors until I cut it back to what I posted and rushed out of work to have dinner with my wife.
- darkteflon 4mo agoOh man, that’s disappointing. We implemented this in a test environment and have been hammering on it. Would love to know what’s going on as it solves a real pain point for us.
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoThere's plenty of open-source docx editors though? What makes eigenpal's editor so special?
- darkteflon 4mo agoCould you recommend your picks in the space? Edit (since I can’t seem to reply directly) - to the commenter suggesting LibreOffice below: quite different things. This was a library for implementing reasonably high fidelity docx viewing / editing in the browser.
- gcanyon 4mo agoI’m in exactly the same boat. I’ll have to look at some of the suggestions here
- hypercain 4mo ago[flagged]
- altairprime 4mo agoYour account was created 5 hours ago, and you’ve already had two Show HNs flagged? That’s ‘email the site mods and ask for participation guidance’ territory. Perhaps you posted them under an account that wasn’t participating otherwise on the site and/or was named after a business rather than a person? In any case, bad form to re-promote your projects in an unrelated new post rather than reaching out to the mods. Adapt your behavior to be 95% contributions of posts and comments that are unrelated to your own projects/investments or else you’ll continue seeing hostility and flags to your work.
- hypercain 4mo ago[dead]
- mindcrime 4mo agoNothing weird about it. The HN guidelines[1] make it clear, IMO, that while some self-promotion is fine, the intent here is NOT to use the site primarily (or exclusively) for self-promotion. The account that submitted the userplane.io link had only ever submitted two links, and both were to userplane.io. What do you expect to happen? Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. > After a few more experiences like that, I've mostly stopped posting because it doesn't feel like the effort is worth it Ironically this is exactly the wrong response. You should post more, but more stuff that's simply intellectually interesting, and not just to promote your own stuff. But if your only reason for being here is self-promotion, then you're right... not worth it. shrug [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hypercain 4mo ago> had only ever submitted two links, and both were to userplane.io That doesn't appear to be correct. The account's public submission history shows multiple submissions beyond userplane.io. Here's the submission history for reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=wizenheimer https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=wizenheimer Edit: Looks like my original comment was flagged too, woah
- fsckboy 4mo agowhat was that item from just a day or so ago where an opensource project had said they developed using AI, and a developer said "take it down, you copied it from us" I thought of it because this project said they used AI ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085993 )
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- archietect 4mo ago[dead]
- msm_ 4mo agoGithub can just instantly take down all forks with a single click of a button.
- mindcrime 4mo agoThis is why you clone a copy to a machine you have full control of!
- archietect 4mo agoGood to know. Downloaded.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bratao 4mo agoNot affiliated but I been using https://github.com/superdoc-dev/superdoc https://github.com/superdoc-dev/superdoc and it is very good and compatible with many docx features.
- tekacs 4mo agoThe original source (matching the latest published NPM version) is still at https://github.com/mhurhangee/patrick/tree/main/packages https://github.com/mhurhangee/patrick/tree/main/packages and Apache-2.0, so I imagine that someone who'd like a copy can pick it up from there.
- nathanstitt 4mo agoAlso not affiliated but my open-source tinycld uses docx as the backend storage for its text package. Supports _most_ of the features (including comments and suggestions) but is still very young. It has a golang backend that reads/writes docx and translates to YJS that the editor reads for multi-user access. Has web/iOS/Android support. I found docx to be a very well documented format and a surprisingly good fit for this. https://tinycld.org https://tinycld.org has a live demo
- coryrc 4mo agoI went looking around, but I couldn't find why you're making tinycld, and whether I could expect it to keep going as a project in the future. I expect I could find whether you're using hardened server implementations or reimplementing, but if it's the former, you should advertise that, or if the latter, you shouldn't.
- nathanstitt 4mo agoIt's pretty simple: I have a small company and we're using it internally. my hope by releasing it is that the ecosystem will grow and it'll become the best way to publish web apps (ambitious I know). I do not know what you expect by "hardened server implementations", it's open-source and people will probably host it a lot of different ways? If you're talking about the various services it offers like imap/webdav, I'm using well established golang libraries which I hope are secure but I have not performed a security audit or anything like that.
- coryrc 4mo agoThanks, I think you should put that up if it isn't, or at least link from About page if it is. "If you're talking about the various services it offers like imap/webdav, I'm using well established golang libraries" That's exactly what I'd hope to see said somewhere as a naive person. Maybe security people would say "that's only 50% of the attack surface!!!" but I'm not one so it sounds good to me.
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- ResiDev 4mo ago[dead]
- dijksterhuis 4mo agoi'd wager a guess that they gave up on their "experiment" the top comment on the show hn would seem quite apt if so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971202
- whateveracct 4mo agoI am a sad, dumb little AI driver with no real skills.
- whateveracct 4mo ago[flagged]
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- perching_aix 4mo agoi love when insecure dickheads pull out the talentless hack card, while they also whinge about skill atrophy and brain fry. the doublethink is on the nose and delicious.
- whateveracct 4mo agomitchellh is an insecure dickhead now?
- perching_aix 4mo agodidn't know he was the source of this until after i posted, but i'm not surprised. he's certainly been on quite the bender lately indeed. but the way this usually works, i'd wager a guess he always has been.
- mixseo 4mo ago[flagged]
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- Torikul007 4mo ago[flagged]
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- Cshaya 4mo agoI think more and more people are becoming resistant slop programs