valdiorn

I've been having a silent panic attack for the last 3 days, and I don't really have anyone to talk to that would understand my concern.

I run a small pro audio company, we make guitar pedals and audio effects mostly. My current key objective is building up a processor similar to the Eventide H90, that would compete on having top-notch algorithms for reverb, delay, chorus etc. we already have single-effect pedals on the market that are very successful.

In the past 72 hours I have ONE-SHOT decompiled 3 of my main competitors products, including the Strymon Big Sky. I just... have their award winning algorithms now. Like, I could in theory just stick them in a box and resell them. It took one prompt and 3 hours for opus 5.5 to work that out.

The lexicon 224 then got added. While Claude was prepping It found someone else had already done the same thing 1 weeks earlier and dumped the result on GitHub, so it just stole that code and saved some time. It took all of 20 minutes to do the entire Ursa Major product range.

And yes, I've tested them all - and they all sound phenomenal. I specifically asked Claude to first build an emulator and execute the original firmware/ROM so I could be certain it wasn't just making "something similar" but actually executing the same code. Then I asked it to convert it into a self contained c++ library and compare the result to the emulator.

The problem is, everyone can now do this to my products as well. Basically, anyone with a Claude subscription can now rip of any best-in-class algorithm from any competitor. While I'm not going to do that, I know there are 30 Chinese companies that happily would.

The moat of hardware effects processors has just vanished.

Oh no, I would be annoyed about the price hikes if I could actually buy a board anywhere...

Who named this project? SPICE - the circuit emulator - is one of the oldest and most well known open source projects id all time.

> How bad was it? I didn't notice anything of the sort, and I'm curious if maybe your algorithm feeds you a fire hydrant of crap most people never see.

No, this has been top 5 headline news in the UK for the last week. Basically every major media outlet has been covering it, including BBC, guardian, Telegraph, daily mail etc.

This is exactly the argument that the lawyer for LSL guitars is making - who happens to be the same lawyer that beat Fender back in 2009 on behalf of the USPTO and cost them the copyright in the US :)

(Absolutely baller move for LSL to hire that guy)

Setting up a business in the UK is a breeze. It takes 30 minutes, costs 20 quid and it's all done online. I'd go so far as to say the UK is the friendliest place in the world for small businesses (as long as you don't have a physical location, because business rates are incredibly regressive and backwards)

A friend of mine in Iceland literally just set up a UK ltd company today - I'm a shareholder, took 5 minutes to verify my identity - by linking it to my existing companies house account.

Sorry but as someone who has a Shopify store and also sells via Amazon - you are dead wrong.

I have much more freedom with Shopify, it's not even comparable. It's not even apples to oranges, it's apples to calculators.

Amazon places a lot more restrictions on everything, from products, product descriptions, images, it's quite difficult to list original products on Amazon (took me 2 weeks of work to register our product backlog when I started selling via Amazon, despite having GTINs and everything already in place). Cashflow etc is not comparable in ANY way.

Just wanted to call out a blatantly wrong comment.

Reaper has been growing MASSIVELY in popularity in recent years. It's actively on course to topple Pro Tools as the de factory standard for recording studios. It was considered "the little guy" and a niche product just a few years ago but industry professionals have been discovering it and it's popularity is going exponential.

Try this as a reply; "hello everyone. This seems to have all gotten out of hand. We want to continue selling teensy units, We've made a lot of sales working together and I want to salvage this working relationship and ensure we continue to do business together and sell as many Teensy units as possible. Why don't I, sparkfun and Paul Stoffregen get together for a zoom meeting next Monday and discuss this. At the end of the day I'm sure Paul S would prefer his product to be as widely available as possible and we want to help with that. Best regards - ptorrone".

That would be the mature and professional response which ensures continued sales for you, sparkfun and PJRC.

And for Christ's sake stop arguing business issues on social media and messaging boards. What are you doing, man?! :)

> if someone has deliberately hidden their identity online, knowingly disclosing that is malicious

That argument breaks down if the person hiding their identity is doing malicious things. If you hide behind anonymity and you're harassing people and sending threatening or hateful messages, disclosing their real identity is a public service.

Or could I set up an anonymous account, doxx people all day long for the lulz, and then cry wolf when you doxx me for being a prick? :)

I have to say; they all sound like whining babies with the emotional integrity of a 13 year old hormonal teenager.

And these people run major businesses?

And the complaining about doxxing because he posted the person's email address? Grow up, mate.

I missed a parcel delivery because a computer server in Virginia, USA went down, and now the doorbell on my house in England doesn't work. What. The. Fork.

How the hell did Ring/Amazon not include a radio-frequency transmitter for the doorbell and chime? This is absurd.

To top it off, I'm trying to do my quarterly VAT return, and Xero is still completely borked, nearly 20 hours after the initial outage.

Which jet will they prefer if they need to defend Greenland? A dated and affordable gripen, or an F35 that the Americans will just beam a kill -9 command to via a backdoor?