ButtFish – Transmit Morse Code of chess moves to your butt

https://github.com/RonSijm/ButtFish

by qdot76367 • 4 years ago

713 173 4 years ago

github.com

metadat• 4 years ago

Magnus Carlsen meets https://buttplug.io.

qbrass• 4 years ago

Unrelated anecdote.

A couple years ago, a discussion over the cyberdeck trend and how people intentionally make them anti-ergonomic, led me to I run 'sed s/deck/plug/g' on the text of the Sprawl Trilogy as a joke.

VyseofArcadia• 4 years ago

A work of sublime genius.

Not Gibson, I can't stand Gibson. But deck to butt might make Neuromancer worth reading.

Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/1288/

matheusmoreira4• 4 years ago

Can you link to those discussions? Why are they made unergonomically on purpose?

laveur• 4 years ago

Upvoting for the amazing InfoGraphic this GH repo has.

bombcar2• 4 years ago

But does it automatically add a ! to your opponent’s move if it detects clenching?

hprotagonist2• 4 years ago

ahh hi qdot! nice to see deldo is rusty now!

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

Sooooooooo someone is actually implementing a Buttplug client in pure elisp.

I have a feeling that's gonna get posted here once it's done.

hprotagonist2• 4 years ago

man i hope they use property based testing!

https://github.com/Wilfred/propcheck

senectus1• 4 years ago

missed opportunity not naming it "Butt-Mate"

outside1234• 4 years ago

amazing

samatman• 4 years ago

A bit more understated, but Hip Check has a lot of potential.

kibwen• 4 years ago

To complete the memetic conjunction, HN will surely be abuzz at the fact that the underlying buttplug library is, in fact, written in Rust. For when memory safety really matters: https://github.com/buttplugio/buttplug

kortex2• 4 years ago

Wow there's even an Awesome compendium of all things buttplug.

https://github.com/buttplugio/awesome-buttplug

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

Which I should really go add Buttfish too like, right now >.>

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

Aw shucks, thanks. :D

(I'm the Buttplug project lead, though anyone who's seen the threads on it before is probably aware since I tend the reply to every. single. comment.)

Rapzid• 4 years ago

A question about delivery channel;I don't like receiving chess moves in my butt. If I wanted to get my chess moves in my penis would buttplug's device support include a viable alternative?

Also, I might be interested in parallel chess cheating. If DP is on the table would multi-match support be viable through the API?! I might have to break my no-pegging rule.. But in the name of increased chess move bandwidth it might be on the table.

Under the table.

Keyframe• 4 years ago

This must be high up there among peak HN moments.

zuminator• 4 years ago

Just the thought of living through this historic event gives me a little tingle inside.

kanonieer• 4 years ago

It's up there indeed.

devmor• 4 years ago

I hope the library has a flanged base.

Tao33002• 4 years ago

To complete metamemetic conjunction, it's old news here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23094477

anotherevan4• 4 years ago

The underlying library being written in Rust is something of a relief (if you'll pardon the expression) as I am nervous about anything to do with my butt being written in something called C Sharp.

whyenot• 4 years ago

not to mention Go, Dart, or Squeak. Python... debatable.

keithnz• 4 years ago

Not entirely sure having rust in your butt is a better option....

jugg1es• 4 years ago

Hopefully the author of the C sharp port did actually do some manual testing.

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

tho a lot of people willingly put java in their butt on purpose

scrapcode• 4 years ago

That logo is on point.

layer8• 4 years ago

Though Analitik would seem more fitting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Аналитик

Tao33002• 4 years ago

What it really needs is to be ported to a new, bespoke dialect of brainfuck... but what to name it...

rafale• 4 years ago

I get the joke but it's worth pointing out C# is actually memory safe and more flexible than Rust in that regard (with the downside of less control on GC).

harryvederci• 4 years ago

For those who are into that kinda stuff there's F Sharp, of course.

galacticaactual• 4 years ago

… where is n-gate when you most need it …

77pt77• 4 years ago

For when a stack overflow really is not acceptable.

xedrac• 4 years ago

I'd hate to have to unwrap anything in this context.

bloopernova• 4 years ago

Ah, the ol' rusty buttplug.

wait, ew.

hoistbypetard• 4 years ago

This motherboard article might help if you're not up-to-date on the backstory:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3w9z/did-hans-neimann-chea...

idk1• 4 years ago

Backstory? Pun very much intended?

taylorbuley• 4 years ago

I love hackathon-esque projects with relevance to current events. Bra-vo.

kortex2• 4 years ago

Morse code for the classical chess notation is actually pretty inefficient (12ish bits of data). Often times the actual viable moves are vastly reduced. With your own custom entropy code and custom symbol table, you could massively reduce the transmission time.

E.g.

- 1-4 bits for the piece class to move.

- 3 bits for the column of the destination

- 1-3 bits left over for disambiguation. E.g. Column

That's perhaps a bit too much optimization for a troll project. But fun nonetheless.

nikcub• 4 years ago

This might be a case of where a less efficient format provides greater end-user satisfaction

mmmpop2• 4 years ago

Ah what the hell, give me the highest resolution you got!

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

Possibly! For instance, when I built the twitterdildonics project back in 2007 (changed tweet character values to vibration speeds, using an extremely early precursor to buttplug.io), a lot of people were saying I should transmit using morse code, but instead I took UTF-8 and poorly translated it back to 0-255 range, which accidentally ended up with super interesting results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuKP5viPYRM

andrewstuart2• 4 years ago

Though, perhaps improving the encoding density might improve the experience during transmission. As will all things UX, you won't likely get the real answer without usability testing.

anotherevan4• 4 years ago

I so want to make a joke about perverse incentives but I don't want to be judgemental.

hackerlight2• 4 years ago

So you're saying that we should introduce error correcting codes

alleyio• 4 years ago

https://github.com/josho/cheatbeads

wrote this to combat the inefficiency. transcodes chess notation into a new code which leverages N independently vibrating beads

MichaelCollins• 4 years ago

In many (not all) cases, the destination is all you need and you can infer the piece being moved from that.

RonSijm2• 4 years ago

That's perhaps a bit too much optimization for a troll project. But fun nonetheless.

I've used Morse code because the original theories of how this was done was that Hans used Morse, so I used it as well. - to stay as close as possible to the actual leading theory and not invent my own method.

I considered abstracting the decoder, so it's not a hard-coded `MorseEncoder()` but just an IMoveEncoder interface where you can inject any encoder that takes a move as input and returns a pattern output

I also thought - Morse is a "common standard" - it would possibly be easier to learn and remember than a custom made encoding scheme

egberts13• 4 years ago

One can send a chess move in 14-bit data using just two set of three-key squeeze system sent once per move.

Reductive Hammond coding scheme, or something.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 4 years ago

You could probably enhance it for 2 way communication if you had something that could sense anal sphincter pressure. Then you could encode your opponent’s move via contractions, and then have it transmit the best move to you.

You would basically have a chess computer that you communicated with entirely through your butt.

This would work, even if you played in a Faraday cage since the communication and computation is all internal.

mcdonje• 4 years ago

I was going to comment that this is only 1 way, whereas the sockfish project was 2 way, if I remember correctly. This would only work if the accomplice has a visual of the game.

Your solution would probably work, I guess. I sadly don't know anything about measuring sphincter pressure.

You could also have a pressure sensor in a shoe or something that interfaces with the buttplug via bluetooth, or even a small wire. Though, I could imagine competition security looking at feet but drawing the line before checking butts. So, the chances of getting caught could be higher with my approach.

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

Ok, so, sort of NSFW links ahead, but there's actually an open source project that does this.

The Nogasm is a pleasure denial project that uses pelvic floor contraction frequency, as sensed by pressure output in an air filled cavity, to prolong play.

https://github.com/nogasm/nogasm

There's even a upscale ESP32 based version of it called the Edge-O-Matic, complete with its own Flappy Bird implementation.

https://maustec.io/pages/edge-o-matic

Output from either of these devices could be used for that, though discerning between voluntary versus involuntary muscle contraction would be challenging.

pitaj• 4 years ago

Seems like it would be pretty easy. Send a "dot" for three contractions each one second apart. Send a "dash" for three contractions each three seconds apart. It would be pretty slow, but it doesn't need to be fast.

bigwavedave• 4 years ago

If the player was male, could the prostate gland be leveraged somehow? Personally, I think it'd be easier to make one's prostate twitch or "pulse" than to consciously control the pressure of their anal sphincter in a high-stress situation.

floatinglotus• 4 years ago

Timely, I’m sure totally unrelated to recent news.

dmix2• 4 years ago

Not read the article before commenting?

frob• 4 years ago

This is the confluence of like 5 different hacker news communities and I'm loving every second of it.

jesterswilde2• 4 years ago

The problem I see with this implementation is that it only gives. How will it also receive input? Do I need a watcher who transcribes it?

I would like to see an added device that I can write chess moves into in a similar fashion to how I'm reading. Then I'm a one man cheating machine.

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

We actually just got sensor support in the latest major version of Buttplug, so reading input from pressure sensors, kegelcizers, etc is now a possibility!

jesterswilde2• 4 years ago

Fantastic. You may not be the Chosen One, but you're what we've got. And that's enough.

(This made my day.)

matheusmoreira4• 4 years ago

You just created a covert communications channel... Perhaps the most hidden of them all.

mhh__• 4 years ago

In the hands (ass?) of a top chess player presumably one could just send a binary signal as to whether a chess engine thinks there is a big move available ahead (i.e. take risks now).

stoplying1• 4 years ago

I really love this, only missing a few style points because you were honest that it didn't get a full-fledged test. I'm sure someone is in-progress right now though.

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

I found out about this because the author showed up to the buttplug.io discord server asking for testing help.

devindotcom• 4 years ago

The interesting thing I learned about this is that the big names in chess all agree that they don't need to be told what move to make. In a recent interview Magnus Carlsen said:

The people who get caught are those who cheat in a really obvious and stupid manner. The problem was that he [i.e., a player caught in 2016] was not good enough to see what would’ve made sense.
Had I started cheating in a clever manner, I am convinced no one would notice. I would’ve just needed to cheat one or two times during the match, and I would not even need to be given moves, just the answer on which move was way better. Or, here there is a possibility of winning, and here you need to be more careful. That is all I would need in order to be almost invincible, which does frighten me.

So all you need is a buzz or maybe two - "caution" and "opportunity," "defense" and "offense" or whatever.

The difficult part is getting the game state to the device. In streamed games this can be done with a medium amount of trouble but in non-streamed OTB games you'd need the player or a confederate to be silently inputting moves for the engine to respond to. Not impossible but... difficult. Nevertheless, when the prizes are in the hundreds of thousands, people may try to find a way.

thethimble• 4 years ago

It seems not too crazy to have a morse code format to input moves too, right? Knight C3 is just a few squeezes.

TheSpiceIsLife• 4 years ago

Overtime you can learn to isolate pelvic floor muscles and anal sphincter, so a cockring and buttplug, or vag-toy and buttplug, could enable rapid input, and greater bandwidth using cords.

nordsieck• 4 years ago

It seems not too crazy to have a morse code format to input moves too, right?

At 3 minutes per move for the standard format, it's totally reasonable. It might be a bit less feasible during speed chess (which is used as a tie breaker).

dqpb4• 4 years ago

To compress the message to a buzz or two, I think the AI would need to know which moves you're considering.

eru5• 4 years ago

Yes. But you need to tell the AI the current board state anyway (ie via transmitting what moves have been made). So adding some more input is not necessarily that much harder.

The benefit of getting the AI pick a move from the top two you are considering is that play looks more convincingly human.

faeriechangling2• 4 years ago

The Fritz chess engine program has a feature where when playing against the engine, and there’s a winning move in the position, an indicator light will come on.

These hints are helpful at all levels, because if you’re playing fritz and a move says there’s a strongly winning move, you’re going to look more at bold moves that involve things like sacrifices that lead to a scary attack, any move that takes a piece, any move that gives a check, and less at passive moves like moving your king around. You can ignore variations that obviously lead to no change in the status quo. Often it will be the case that only one move COULD be the winning move because only one move causes any meaningful effect on the position so the fact the tactics light is flashing means you can just play it without further calculation. Computer hints allow the human brain to basically filter for better candidate moves far more efficiently.

dcow2• 4 years ago

What if moving your king is the winning move. Plus, what’s stopping a good “AI” from incorporating this meta game into it’s calculations for showing the indicator?

SamBam2• 4 years ago

I would not even need to be given moves, just the answer on which move was way better

I feel like people keep looking past this line, and suggesting that the device transmit things like "caution" or whatever. In another thread, someone suggested it could warn you if the most tempting line was a bad one.

These all rely on the idea that Stockfish can think like a human and say "Carlsen will be thinking of X, I'll warn him that's a bad idea."

I've never seen any indication that Stockfish can know what a human is thinking, novice or grandmaster.

Instead Carlsen suggested something else: he asks about two moves, and Stockfish tells him which is rated higher.

That's totally doable by stockfish, but means all these suggestions require an input, such as a butt-squeeze detector.

dcow2• 4 years ago

Or simply an accomplice.

evrydayhustling• 4 years ago

Stockfish rates moves by chasing them down a game tree and evaluating positions. I can imagine several heuristics for a "non-obvious move here" buzzer based on that architecture:

- Hidden gem: The best move has similar value to others if exploring a few moves, but becomes clearly better at depth [n]. - Trap: There is a move that has similar value to others on shallow exploration, but offers opponent a checkmate at depth [n] - Material exchange: The best move involves a major material loss in the first few moves.

I would love to see these tested in practice, but it seems very plausible to me that some combination of them could make a very useful one-bit (erm, one-butt?) signal.

screye• 4 years ago

Won't delaying the stream by a few minutes solve this entire attack path ?

With stream sniping as popular as it is, this is a well understood and well implemented form of anti-cheat.

wnoise• 4 years ago

I've never seen any indication that Stockfish can know what a human is thinking, novice or grandmaster.

But it's incredibly easy to train ML models to predict what a human thinks is a good move. Then you just send a signal when "most probable move" is different than "chess engine strongest move".

Lewton• 4 years ago

Stockfish can generate chess puzzles. This is how it would help without requiring more input than the game state

“There is a winning move in this position” transmits a lot of information, especially for super gm’s

thomasahle• 4 years ago

Or, here there is a possibility of winning,

Exactly this. Many top games have one or two critical moments where a player makes a blunder or even just a small mistake. Often this is not picked up on, but if a top player is made aware this has happened, they can quickly find it and punish it.

MikeTheGreat• 4 years ago

First, thank you to the poster for posting this - I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

Second - thank you to the person who actually made this. This is incredibly hilarious (just based on the project I'm gonna go ahead an assume they have an account here :) )

Lastly - I know that this is a joke project, but one thing I'm not understanding: how does the system read the current state of the chess board? The, er, Bluetooth/WiFi 'output' of the system is clear enough, but I'm not clear on how the current chess board is input into the system so that Stockfish can actually compute the next move.

(This is a semi-serious question - if you know I'd be curious to find out, but I'm not gonna lose sleep over this and I don't expect anyone else to waste time on it either :) )

tibbar• 4 years ago

In the proposed cheating scheme, you have an accomplice who reads the moves of the game as they're broadcast over the internet and then transmits the next move to you.

mackrevinack• 4 years ago

and they also have a buttplug but one with a squeeze sensor in it so they can send morse code with their sphincter

bombcar2• 4 years ago

I believe the idea is an audience accomplice enters the board moves for you.

gpm3• 4 years ago

The actual implementation just takes them from the console.

If you were actually going to use this to cheat in professional tournaments, I imagine you'd just use the API of a chess website that is broadcasting the game live. Lichess has a free, documented, API for instance.

eru5• 4 years ago

Broadcasts have a 15 minute delay to avoid this kind of cheating.

viraptor• 4 years ago

Or like with thumpers used in practice - you'd have an accomplice in the audience handling any required interaction. This is often used for "blind" magic tricks with audience.

Yuvrajsagar_• 4 years ago

saghm• 4 years ago

Maybe if there's a model with sensor data, they can implement two way communication through clenches? Just need to make sure to avoid having gassy food for lunch or else you might end up miscommunicating a bit.

RonSijm2• 4 years ago

Second - thank you to the person who actually made this. This is incredibly hilarious

Hey there, thank you, I'm the creator of this.

I'm gonna go ahead an assume they have an account here

I have an account here, but I don't use ycombinator this much. Just got notified by someone that a thread about my project is getting some attention here

Lastly - I know that this is a joke project, but one thing I'm not understanding: how does the system read the current state of the chess board?

It gets the state of the board though a manually inputted FEN code. Unless the user of this would hook it up with a camera and scan the board in real time, it's assumed that whoever is using this has someone helping them. So the helper would operate the backend, input the board, and send it to the end-user

iNerdier• 4 years ago

So the helper operates the back end which sends it to, the back end?

matheusmoreira4• 4 years ago

You could allow the chess player to input moves into the system through an anal sphincter contraction sensor.

https://www.e-arm.org/journal/view.php?number=1548

carlivar• 4 years ago

Time to play chess in a Faraday Cage.

dmix2• 4 years ago

You might be on to something. Detectors would probably be more efficient although telling everyone to leave their cellphones outside is usually not kosher.

rurban• 4 years ago

Would not help if you get the input, output sensors and the engine together. Like in the chess shoe project.

DonHopkins• 4 years ago

Can this be applied to Go moves too? Because when you gotta go, you gotta go.

kypro• 4 years ago

I've just spent the last 10 minutes going down the rabbit hole of various butt plug projects,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyMZBOQtmic

Who knew there would be a thriving community of butt plug hackers lmao.

margarina72• 4 years ago

I am pretty sure it is a pain in the ass to debug...

(ok sorry I am out...)

mmmpop2• 4 years ago

Kind of serious question, is there an "OpenPlug" standard floating around? To your point, interest in this sort of thing is really... exploding.

qdot7636713• 4 years ago

So buttplug.io as a library is made for supporting communication with toys from a host, but itself is not made to be a peripheral protocol. It's verbose af because of some of the early decisions I made that we are now very very stuck with.

That said, on the firmware side, I'm pushing for tcode, which is a sort of gcode variant for sex toy firmware. There's documentation for it in STPIHKAL (sex toy protocols i have known and loved), our protocol aggregation repo:

https://stpihkal.docs.buttplug.io/protocols/tcode.html

Timpy• 4 years ago

I don't think this needs to be a programming problem. If you have a team of coconspirators watching the game live from another location you can manually turn the vibrator on and off remotely. It's not like Sockfish where the player had to relay game state before getting the next move. You don't even need to use Stockfish, you could use any game engine.

omg_ponies• 4 years ago

"Effortlessly"

a-dub• 4 years ago

ahh yes, the exciting field of anus computer interfaces!

liamN• 4 years ago

this is beautiful. Thank you for your contribution to humanity

frasermarlow• 4 years ago

I can't seem to find your GoFundMe page. Is the project already fully funded? Did I miss out on the free early access sample?

TheAceOfHearts• 4 years ago

In order to prevent future buttplug related incidents all players will be required to wear a FIDE certified buttplug during over the board matches.

tjpnz• 4 years ago

Either that or FIDE starts hiring proctologists.

gorgoiler2• 4 years ago

Many university exams are adjudicated by proctors. What is, erm, the origin of that word?

kasey_junk• 4 years ago

Legend

ljm• 4 years ago

I do love how chess continues to make Mornington Crescent less satirical. And why all of it sounds like a jazz band has already composed the soundtrack.

You’re playing with the ButtFish? I see you and raise the bongcloud. The double bongcloud? Aw man, I told the Manchurian candidate I’d need a favour but not for this.

dqpb4• 4 years ago

I bet if you wear this overnight while you sleep, and setup stockfish to play itself, you will subconsciously learn a muscle memory of the AI strategy.

Somebody try this please.

dqpb4• 4 years ago

What is the smallest possible message one could give to an experienced player to hint them toward a move?

dqpb4• 4 years ago

Are there buttplugs that can sense kegels? That would allow for two way communication.

NotPractical• 4 years ago

Reminds me of this other "covert information receiving technique for individuals being closely watched", but in this case used for cheating on a proctored exam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30675666

andrewstuart• 4 years ago

Disappointing there was no video of people using this live.

egberts13• 4 years ago

What I had actually suggested 9 days ago.

But with better bandwidth.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32910676

stazz1• 4 years ago

so insanely funny

hospadar• 4 years ago

I really feel that it should be named "Deep Brown"

f1shy• 4 years ago

I second this motion!

sidcool• 4 years ago

World: World leaders are threatening nuclear attacks.

HN: Idiots. I hear they use Python for launch systems. Should be Rust for robustness.

(I love this community)

gorgoiler2• 4 years ago

I want to build an automated cat feeder. Personally speaking, in terms of systems design where a bug could result in an extreme breakdown of diplomatic relations, it is of equivalent gravitas to building a reliable nuke silo.

Is this the project where I finally pick up Rust, or should I continue with the usual Python mitigations (reach-this-target-state instead of do-this-thing, tiny stable wrapper around heavy Python logic, no fonts.com online dependency, restart foodd every minute, etc.)

FirstLvR• 4 years ago

Humanity’s peak.

Sporktacular• 4 years ago

Just awesome

bhedgeoser• 4 years ago

"My spidey sense is tingling"

harvie• 4 years ago

Queer's Gambit.

Can't wait for Tour De France competitors to put lithium batteries and hydraulic agregates in their bodies to drive the pedals along with their muscles.

RHSman2• 4 years ago

If its bi directional then we have a game changer (not sure what the game is though ;))

talideon• 4 years ago

Nerve endings, man. Lots of nerve endings...

pelagicAustral• 4 years ago

Talk about open-source projects with a soul.

ajrpugs• 4 years ago

So funny. Kudos to you.

WesolyKubeczek• 4 years ago

It can also be used as a really perverse way of consuming books, or read twitter, just saying.

ButtFish – Transmit Morse Code of chess moves to your butt

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