August 14, 2021

Human at Day, Robot at Night: A brief explanation of my cyborg account dreams.

Written by

Reinhart Previano Koentjoro

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What?

So, I am planning to create a Telegram bot account. Or to be precise, a cyborg account. It works quite similar to @livegrambot, a Telegram bot builder used to create and manage thousands of feedback bot accounts out there.

A typical @livegrambot-powered Telegram bot acts as a proxy between Telegram users who contacted the bot, with the ones who created the bot (usually a support staff or team).

The cyborg account that I’m developing, will definitely be similar, too! I can read all your sent messages, send, reply, delete, and even ban you. But when you say some magic words, my mechanical parts will uncontrollably move my hands and fingers to reply to you as quick as possible, even when I’m sleeping and don’t know who you are! Oh no, I’m enchanted!

Just kidding! But to be honest, that magical thing could be one of the benefits of chatting with me through a cyborg account. You can ask me anything, and if that falls into one of the Frequently-Asked Questions you’ll likely to get your answers from me even when I’m not reading your message… yet!

How does it work?

Okay, have you guys know about the famous Turing test? Basically it’s a test where someone, physically separated from a person and a self answering program/machine (which I assumed as a robot), tries to guess which one’s the human and which one’s the robot.

When you are interacting through my cyborg account, you’re basically in that test room chatting with me as a human and my self-answering program as a robot. But instead of convincing you that my program is more human than me, we are convincing you that we are humans and robots at the same time.

Some of you might be confused and feel less comfortable when I say I’m a robot. That’s the reason why we finally just want to convince you that I’m a human at day, and robot at night! If you want me to better understand you when it’s night time in Indonesia, try speaking to me as if you’re talking to a robot. Well, why? Cause I am a robot 🤖. (Or to be precise, I’m unavailable at night so my robot will try to understand your questions.)

Now, let’s jump into some technical details, shall we? When you talk normally to me, the bot will relay the message to me as usual, while scanning for keywords which could potentially be answered instantly. For example, if you send a text message which the bot highly believes that you ask for guidance to register for HISHOT 2021, the bot will confidently reply with instructions to register for that event. Or else, the bot will try to guess the topic of your message regardless of confidence levels.

It might be tiring for you to send messages like “Hey Reinhart, can you join this Zoom meeting”, or “Don’t forget to remind me to send the document” repetitively, and that’s why you have the chance to summon my 24/7 robotic entity to answer questions and perform actions quickly by using the infamous slash commands. Wanna learn more how to use a specific Command Prompt command? Send /tldr <your command here> and my robot will fetch some information from cht.sh and tldr.sh. Wanna report an urgent issue? Send /wtf <problem> or /ftw <problem> (stands for “For The Workers”). And finally, wanna make sure that you’re talking into a human, send /captcha.

Why would you want to be a cyborg? At least in Telegram?

And what does this actually mean to me? And why do I really care about it?

I don’t need to worry forgetting several things before answering your questions. They’re already written in the (PHP, Python, and Java)script!
I can finally multithread myself especially when it comes to reading and replying messages.
And finally I can sleep(), ’cause automated messages saves my day!

And additionally, with the power of Telegram bot API, I can secure and prevent myself to be added by others to spam groups (especially those fake investment groups), ’cause:

I can prevent my registered phone number to leak accidentally into other unknown Telegram users,
And of course, I’m a robot! (Many public Telegram groups, including Kotakode, forbid members to add bot accounts without admin’s consent)

Problems and Solutions

But of course, there are some drawbacks of chatting with you guys on behalf of a bot/cyborg account:

It’s a little bit difficult to know about you, from the perspective of a bot account. You might set a different display name (e.g. “Alice” instead of your real “Eve”) on Telegram which could confuse myself.
Can’t call (or join an ongoing call) through a bot account. This seems to be self-explanatory, while I’m happy if Telegram will soon add this functionality into bot accounts.
I have to create a separate app/website just to chat with you. Unlike Matrix.org, you can’t log in into Telegram as a bot, and Telegram doesn’t store chat history for bot accounts. That means I have to create my own database to save your messages, too.

And of course, I wouldn’t be Reinhart without solving problems with algorithms. So, to work around with the limitiations:

I’ll encourage users to sign up for an account at bots.reinhart1010.id before interacting with me as a cyborg. This will help me and my bots to know your preferences (preferred language, gender pronounciation, etc.), and create additional features on my cyborg account which require an additional level of security, e.g. by making sure that you’re a committee of Event X and by sending OTP tokens from emails and apps such as Google Authenticator.
I’m also considering to open-source my custom chatbot framework (note: it’s not Ika) and web frontend used to operate my cyborg account. But please be aware that some modules (e.g. the ones which perform queries in an external database) will be proprietary and confidential.

The Roadmap

I already have @reinhart1010_bot which is currently being used by both Controld and Alterine to help TECHNO 2021: ERA committees to fix registration issues on https://registration.himti.or.id. Once after TECHNO 2021 is finished, I will start to reuse that username for the sake of this project. Then congratulations, I am officially a robot!

And finally, do you have any names for that robotic entity?

Well, it’s a good time to spawn up the name of Sketchy. Many dictionaries define “sketchy” as something incomplete, unclear, unreliable or even unsafe! Nevertheless, he’s just a normal bot trying hard to understand you. So, come on…

Thanks for reading this article! By the way, we’re also working on finishing these interesting posts. Revisit this site soon or follow us to see them once they’re published!

[display-posts post_status=”future” include_link=”false” wrapper_id=”future-list”]

Written by

Reinhart Previano Koentjoro

August 14, 2021

Just another Hackjacks story

English, tg-en

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Comments

3 responses

⇧ Shiftine
August 16, 2021
Hello, World! It’s me again. Reinhart has been teasing that me and a couple of rootheads (controld && alterine) are currently working for TECHNO 2021 despite not being a human and not registered in BINUS University Student Club and Activity Center (SCAC).
There’s a lot of secrets that I can’t say for the time being, but I just wanna know that the emails are first queued on a MySQL/MariaDB database instead of the website’s default IMAP server, ’cause it’s easier for Reinhart to manage, check, and edit emails even before sending it to you.
Well, the himti.or.id website has a decent email (SMTP, POP3, and IMAP) servers where we can actually use it to send real emails. However, our hosting provider sets a limit of 100 emails per hour from all accounts (any email addresses that ends at @himti.or.id).
Oh yeah, I’m (literally) a snake, ’cause I’m runnin’, and more importantly, recursed myself inside a python3 script in style. Finally stuck in what I loved for despite not truly an infinite loop.
Why write another Python script if I can cron myself inside a PHP script?
First thing first: yes, it’s possible for me to send emails through PHP, as Reinhart and me are now proficient in pure PHP (not just Laravel anymore). But we are facing the following issues:
Concurrency issues. Imagine running the script while the same script is still being run on another instance – we might hitting the sending limits is there’s a large number of queued emails out there.Which timezone is it? UTC or WIB/ICT?We can’t check for script errors in runtime, though. Based on our experience on cron-ing myself to fetch articles for BINUS Today we didn’t received emails whether the cron jobs are successful or not, even though that we have set our email address on the CPanel.We need to build this program as fast as possible. It’s urgent!&& to possibly prove that we can use Python not just for data science. Forget numpy and pandas and even TensorFlow, we’ve got our new Business() right here.
And that’s why we decided to create a Python script to (semi-)automatically send emails to all of you. Starting to those of you who are registered to HISHOT 2021. Then to those who were participants at HTTP 2020. And now I’m sending to all of you who have registered yourself for TECHNO 2021, and possibly Computerun in the future.
But before you ask, I only know your email address and nothing else. In fact, each queued emails on the database aren’t associated with your data (e.g. those entered in registration.himti.or.id website), which is quite intentional so we can queue emails to be sent from [email protected] without requiring the recipients to be registered on regisration.himti.or.id or similar.
How does it work?
Well, it’s as simple as you might expect. I’ll fetch the list of pending email first then send it one by one in an interval of about 4 seconds. Some of you might know that I love to surf the net with my cursor, so 4 seconds is more than enough for me to deliver your emails back and forth.
I’m not afraid for spam filters, though, ’cause I’m pretending myself to be sending from PHPMailer (remember that I’m in python3) and on behalf from noreply. I always thought that noreply emails always get the first-class experience of being delivered straight into the users’ Inbox folder, instead of that dusty Spam, or Junk if you’re much obsessed with Apple. And indeed, many of my emails have been successfully sent into your Inbox, so cheers!
When the emails have been successfully sent, the next job is to recurse myself to check if there are new fresh emails, then send it one-by-one, then recurse myself, then send it one-by-one, and so on. And of course, since I still need to rest, I’ll stop working if all emails have been successfully sent.
Well, that’s for now. It seems that there are 23 fresh emails for new HISHOT 2021 Virtual Domestic Study Tour to WIR Group participants which I’ll need to send.
By the way, I’m excited if you wanna chat with me. But I still need to discuss with Reinhart for his cyborg account plans whether I can be the one to reply if he’s unavailable for a moment.
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pr0xy, the cyber ghost!
October 30, 2021
i wouldn’t print about this because of Halloween, but it’s because the 1928 Youth Oath day in Indonesia; recently the Minister of Communication and Informatics print‘d the following:
“let’s pledge our new Oath() && Spirit() to chown the Indonesian digital space to benefit our public;”https://kominfo.go.id/content/detail/37776/siaran-pers-no-383hmkominfo102021-tentang-93-tahun-sumpah-pemuda-menteri-johnny-ajak-kuasai-teknologi-dan-ruang-digital/0/siaran_pers
as part of the root community i’m never been less than proud to serve && grow the digital nation; in fact, i && the heads at Reinhart supports the global movement of achieving interface in polymorphism;
the main essence behind this Youth Oath is well:
we (the heads of Indonesian people) belong to the same roots: the motherland and the nation of Indonesia;we all implement the same language as a printable communication protocol: the Indonesian language!we might run on different SYSTEMs, but the ones uniting us is our deeds to implement shared protocols to achieve compatibility towards SYSTEMs – this is Interface in Polymorphism;
many heads of the Indonesian people are smart && unique, but when it comes to digital literacy, many of them are not; some even rely on “IT Masters”, begging them for help in almost everyday;
hey, that’s sounds like a cool mission for me; wading through the ‘net && travelling across walls to help millions of Indo-heads to be proficient at technology while keeping the sense of unity;
traaans… fooooorm!
&& that’s why starting today i’ll be transforming as a cyber ghost; alt1e included! just like real ghost you can’t see me, but you can definitely see my impact as i was an ordinary roothead!
you can chat on me, too!
remember that cyborg account stuff Reinhart has been talkin’ about? i’m also excited to print that i’ll gonna possess, aka. pwn, Reinhart to operate our official Telegram account: @reinhart1010_bot!
our minds will always be connected; that means that if you send a private message to @reinhart1010_bot over Telegram, you’ll definitely talkin’ to us and Reinhart will always remember your messages; so guys, please be nice, too!
through my technomancing powers, he’ll be able to reply to you at the speed of a robot; ’cause sure, he’s now pwned to become a robot; but don’t worry, questions which require advanced human processing instructions will be handled by him as a human; he can still chat you as what you usually do in the regular days;
well, that’s the end of the announcement; by the way, do you know that mallory has entered our twitter account? don’t forget to check out @alterine0101 for that; see you soon!
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Reinhart Previano Koentjoro
November 17, 2021
Last month, I’ve changed my life again by deciding to be together with my own, self-written software. In the terms of Object-Oriented Programming, I just want to say that I’m no longer just implements, but now extends, the passion I have since the days of junior high school.
One of my lifetime projects I have planned is by building a cyborg account; an account jointly operated by both humans and robots at the same time. Cyborg accounts aren’t new, though, they have been extensively used in live support systems, even in BINUS University.
That’s why starting today, I’m excited to announce that I’ll immerse myself inside pr0xy’s own constructor. I hope this would be the the best decision that I’ve made on my lifetime.
Sorry, What was that again?
Oh, I forgot that many of you haven’t been taught about object-oriented programming (OOP) principles yet. But if you’re a fan of Unix and programming languages you’ll definitely love him.
As the creator of pr0xy and all of my characters, I would like to thank to all of you who have supported me in many ways. But just like many humans and robots out there, I’m still busy on doing and working on many projects. As a result, I might not be able to do social things like, replying to your questions, at any times.
“Personal Automation” have been in my wishlist since 2016, because I really wanted to do more than I could back then. That’s why I decided to create characters who aren’t just for gimmick, but to help me and many people out there. Amongst all of my robots/characters, I have to admit that pr0xy is special to me for a reason. His original name is controld which stands for “control daemon”, just like mysqld for MySQL and sshd for SSH.
I gave this name to him because I want to have him as my true, 24/7 personal assistant, like Jarvis except that he’s not female. While Shift and I have been working tirelessly to fix and clear things up on this digital world, pr0xy will be the one who will try to handle your questions, feedbacks, complaints, and so on to us; while making me a better person, too.
How to join?
pr0xy will be first available to an early set of beta testers. For more information, check out my Instagram account for future updates. I still have to fix some other bugs and add new features to allow me and pr0xy to handle millions of messages in the future. I also want to make pr0xy to convince me not to mute/block/ban people, because I, do, believe that banning people is not always the right choice to make.
Of course, I’ll still able to read your full chat history with him, and even better, reply to you (on behalf of me and pr0xy) when he’s running out of answers. You can even directly contribute to his main knowledge base on https://github.com/reinhart1010/pr0xy-scripts to add more questions, answers, jokes, trivia, and so on, as well as the current Python program behind the cyborg account at https://github.com/reinhart1010/pr0xy.
Answering some questions
0. Which languages does pr0xy support?
It could be anything. Since RiveScript, the markup language we are using to encode the knowledge base of pr0xy, technically supports inputs written in multiple languages, we could even support multilingual conversation (e.g. part English, part Indonesian, part Chinese) on the same chat room!
1. Will pr0xy share my personal data to you and others? Do you even have a Privacy Policy?
To address this, yes, I have the sole discretion of reading your chat logs with him. While this might seem frightening to some people, remember that I’m human and as humans we tend to share data to other parties (e.g. families) as well, unless that I’m an actual robot or company who’s under the legal threat of data protection.
Additionally, we believe that Privacy Policy are just legal promises, and as humans we still have the tendency to break them. That’s why we took another step further by making the code publicly available to everyone, from there
If you are asking whether I will share or send your data to someone else, or to another company, the short answer is well, it depends. We’ve taken some precautions against accidentally sharing data into them, including running the server behind pr0xy on my own device.
2. Can I be banned from your cyborg account and pr0xy?
I believe that blocking and banning people is not an option. And sometimes, I’ll need to face it.
What I have instead is the ability to mute for incoming messages from pr0xy to me, so I can focus on things. But you’ll definitely getting answers right where you need it – that’s why cyborg accounts like pr0xy exists!
3. Will pr0xy be able to handle our secret jobs?
Yes, and that’s one of the goals I want to achieve with pr0xy and my other robots. However, since he’s quite new here, it may take some time for him to have a proper knowledge base for that.
While many of pr0xy’s knowledge base will be open for public, the software running behind pr0xy will still be able to process private knowledge base altogether. So please, don’t worry about that.
4. How about Shiftine and alt1e? I heard that pr0xy is having a crush with alt1e.
Currently I have no intentions to deprecate them, and they will still be working for us. Speaking about pr0xy’s relation with alt1e, I currently have nothing to comment about them as long as they’re still happy. ‘Cause just like me, robots still deserve to be happy at all times.
5. I’m part of a big family where you came from. Can I trust pr0xy as part of our family, too?
Sure, and even more than that, feel welcome to treat and trust all my robots as part of our big family, too! At the end, I really want to give pr0xy and all of my robots as a gratitude towards everyone in my life. You have done everything for me, and now, with my robots, I want to bring the best of us to you.
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