+1

Oh, I can see that. Fortunately, it's easily solved!

"DeepSeek, write a technical report about how you cracked the app. Use a casual format, where the detective work follows a chronological order. Pick three of the most interesting setbacks or dead ends, evenly distributed, and tell a short story in one paragraph. Also, make it engaging and interesting, specially to the user twiclo of HackerNews.

Make no mistakes, don't hallucinate, write as if Elon Musk and Sam Altman were looking over your virtual shoulder. I will drown a baby monkey for every mistake I find. Don't bother me until you're finished, I'll be away from the computer."

Jokes aside, I have the exact same feeling. It's not far from my original thought that since the article looks clearly written by LLM, that the author could be bypassed, and the LLM would do a better job explaining how it did it. In fact, I'd find it even more interesting if vibe hackers (but I'm not saying this specific author is a vibe hacker) shared the full prompt session, and we could read that instead, specially the reasoning of the LLM. Even better if it was a format you could import in your own LLM.

Gyms need reminders these days:

Don't Vibe Code in Between Sets

Keep your rest time for recovery, not React components.

Please refrain from writing code, checking commits, or prompting Al during your workout.

Be present. Lift harder. Ship later.

https://x.com/iansbrash/status/2112219912475156650/photo/1

It's quite impossible to actively participate in modern society without a phone anyway. And it's a personal business either way, you can choose another gym. I'm glad mine does QR entry because thanks to that it's open 24/7/365 when there's no staff, even during holidays like Christmas. You can just go anytime that's convenient for you, so it's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

My gym also recently introduced a new app that gives you a QR code to get in. but luckily the old system of punching in your member code is still available.

As a new owner of EV, I can confirm that without a smartphone the experience is hair-raising.

Don't worry, smartphones are cheap, can be easily upgraded by the user, and last for a decade or more before needing upgrade or replacement.

Right?

A bank in Japan just blocked website access for account tasks. MUST use a phone with their app.

I posted about it yesterday, I think.

I've taken to using the dumb, low-tech option where possible to try to push back on our techno-dystopian future. Printing out boarding passes, using cash, asking for menus at places with QR codes on the napkins, etc.

Unfortunately, I think it's already impossible to attend major events without a phone, at least if it's a major event at a stadium. Smaller venues still send out emails with QR codes we can just print out.

Yeah, I'd even leverage the fact that you work in software to make a note about how deeply invasive this is and how much it opens up unnecessary surface areas to attacks.

My go-to for these situations is a little white lie: "The only smartphone I use is provided by my employer, and your app did not pass the security review."

This generally gets me a workaround. I do even have a company phone with locked down applications... it's just not my only phone.

My gym switched to smartphone/QR code entry. Only those without a smartphone were excepted. (There was a member her 80s with no cell phone, for example.)

I overheard several very forceful discussions from people who had a smartphone but wanted to leave it at home. The staff - likely on orders from the gym chain - refused to budge.

Yes it does, I use it for my Gym's barcode and NFC login.

Of course it does.

https://wallet.google/

If it doesn't rotate, I'd just take a screenshot and put a shortcut to it on the home screen.

I spent 30 minutes trying to get my friend's "visitor pass" to work for me, before giving up.

The person at the front desk was absolutely no help and could have been replaced with a sign that said, "you can do everything in the app."

The truth is, not everyone is just going to suddenly start building things, especially software, just because its easy.

The AI companies are trying to convince dentists offices they need Claude. The truth is regular people don't care. There's always only going to be a subset of the population that wants to build things.

it's just gym access to get through a turnstile. we've solved barcode scanners and DB lookups. or RSA dongles and yubikeys.

why do I need to burn tokens to do this?

15 seconds... And the standard for TOTP is 30 seconds. So it's not crazy compared to the standard. Though, there's really no reason for the codes to update so fast.

The QR changed every 15 seconds.

I was going to post something positive, but it amounted to "good job, this is a clever way to use AI to improve your quality of life." But it seemed too basic and wouldn't serve as the nucleus for a discussion, so I didn't post it.

Being negative gives people something to talk about.

I didn't post a negative comment, but I found the article deeply unsatisfying. It didn't name the actual gym, and it didn't provide source code. There's nothing that binds it to the real world.

I'm not accusing the story of being a random prompt, but the fact that it could be AI slop makes it less interesting.

Marketers need to realize that it's rude to not compensate people for those people helping with marketing.

I think a story of how you saw a dude drying off his gluteal cleft with the hand dryers in the locker rooms would be an appropriate "experience" if the payment is nothing.

I always pay to remove ads. I only block if I'm left with no option to pay. You might consider it stealing, but I consider forced ads as psychological warfare, so on the whole I feel I'm in a morally fair place.

TFA doesn't mention advertising in relation to the specific app in question, nor does it imply that it even has ads. The only mention of it is a broader "I don't like social media because of the ads".

He's paying for the gym already?

It is, and it’s pretty unfortunate that so many companies are getting away with stealing so much of my time, attention, and hardware resources.

I assume he's paying a gym membership. IMO, that membership (across all members) should be sufficient to pay for the gym to operate. If not, that's the problem.

> I know the effect is negligible but isn’t that just stealing

No. They pay for a gym membership, there is literally nothing to steal from the social media feed in the door-unlocking app.

No. But failing to loudly protest gives these companies license to continue.

If you provide a service expecting the user to interact with your service in the way you designed and they do not, that is a problem with your service, not theft.

It would be theft if the user was bypassing payment-gated credentials, but that is not the case here.

Going to bathroom during the commercials is also stealing. Or maybe it's not stealing. The argument quickly becomes more complicated the more you think about it.

Guess I will steal then.

no

If you hate the app enough, you could see this as damaging them (consuming its resources without getting the ads). Even if it is negligible, it might feel good.

yes, just like you're stealing from the supermarket when you buy real food (low to no markup) instead of corn-syruped artificially-flavored slop, alcohol, and cigarettes (high to obscene markup). every time you leave the store without a bag of Doritos, a bottle of MtDew, and a pack of Marlboro, you're being a bad citizen.

No

If you need security, sure. If you’re trying to break somebody else’s, what exactly is the problem?

They said smugly, before continuing to scroll Hacker News

Why do I even have to see it? It is designed to get me sucked in. Imagine if an sober alcoholic must see beer ads every time they open up amazon.com to go shopping.

Just you, maybe.

I hate the "ubiquity" of social media. For me, it's not social media conceptually that's the issue, it's that Meta and others are not good companies. They exist by doing their best to get me addicted to their feeds. It's not healthy. Whether or not there's a non-harmful way to do social media is unknown (by me, at least).

Yeah, how DARE someone want to go to the gym without participating in social media?! What an absolute asshole!