Apple's free pass on open source  - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9992358-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 <comment><USER2> Um, WebKit?

Granted they forked and renamed KHTML, and take maybe a little too much credit because of it, but they really propelled KHTML/WebKit to the top in the last couple of years. IMHO, WebKit is _the_ premiere browser engine at this point, and I doubt it would be without Apple's involvement.

<comment><USER3> Also: CUPS, Darwin, launchd, Bonjour, BLAST, Headerdoc, ...

Also they call it "open source", and say they love it. You can go to an "Open Source" webpage at apple.com and see how to download source from CVS, and how to install and run other open-source programs (like PostgreSQL and MySQL) on Mac OS X.

It's hard to imagine how a company selling proprietary software could be any more open-source friendly.

<comment><USER4> I know it appears this way, but Apple really is a huge pain in the ass here. For a long time you couldn't download tar files of those things on their Open Source site -- you could only browse file-by-file through the web interface. This excepted the things that they were trying to push as standards. Most of the stuff you still can't get from CVS.

It took forever when I was trying to track down the source for their libtool a couple years back; when I finally did I patched it to use half of the memory of their version (at the time it was using 1.5 GB just to link some stuff where I worked) and sent the patches in to mailing lists and filed them in a bug report. Never heard anything from Apple on either.

The biggest case where that's not true -- where Apple has been pretty integrated into the community development processes from the beginning isn't any of the projects you mention -- it's GCC. Usually they just do what they need to to meet the license requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this just a huge load of crap? I thought every time one of these got posted, 5 people from open source projects Apple basically funds chimed in and said, "just because Apple didn't rename it Apple KHTML doesn't mean they aren't key contributors".

You know what else isn't open source? PageRank. Shut up, CNet.

<comment><USER6> PageRank is an algorithm. (Although it does piss me off that it's patented)

<comment><USER5> Ok I'm guessing that there's more than a little bit of code that actually runs that algorithm.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, probably just a little bit. It's not that complex of an algorithm. The really complex stuff is MapReduce.

<comment><USER5> Can we just agree that there is quite a bit of Google code that is unlikely to ever be open-sourced? =)

<comment><USER7> Reddit's open source code excludes the crown jewels of anti-cheating/spam protection. It's their IP.

<comment><USER8> Seems more likely that it's just that they don't want spammers and cheaters to know what their defenses are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not THAT discussion again. If open source developers give away their code for free, it is free. They shouldn't come around a couple of months later and say "we do want something back after all".

<comment><USER10> I don't complain when companies chose not to contribute back to open source projects they use.

I _do_ tend to try and spend my money with companies that contribute back.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely, I feel the same way. It's just that I think if people claim that their software is free, they should stand by their word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.3/> might be worth taking a look through.

</comment><comment><USER12> """You can hardly say the name "Apple" without signing an NDA."""

This is so true. The iPhone is out. Everybody can (and could) become an iPhone developer and download the SDK.

Yet, developers are _still_ not allowed to talk to each other about programming on the iPhone. Not in public forums. But also not even in person with you colleague or friend who also downloaded the SDK.

In my opinion they are taking it too far. Way too far. I just don't see the point of this NDA.

<comment><USER13> You can't even view the iPhone development Getting Started tutorials without paying $99 to become part of the developer program.

<comment><USER14> Not true, at least not recently. With just an Apple ID (the same one I use for iTunes, etc.) I was able to download the iPhone SDK, look at tutorials, build apps and run them on the simulator. I haven't tried to put anything on an actual device, I don't have one yet, but the promised-in-the-future ad-hoc distribution should make that doable for me and my family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think what is in question here is the "spirit" of open source. Legally you can do anything with BSD code and some companies just use it without giving anything back. That isn't breaking the law, but it isn't really being a "good" member of the open source community.

It seems to me that the issue could be related to the fact that Apple uses a lot of open source code (granted they do give back), but quite a bit of their software comes with technology that restricts usage by consumers.

The GPL (v3 even more so than v2) tries to address these types of issues. The downside being that everything needs to be shared so it reduces private company incentive to pour money into features/technology that competitors can just snag.

In the end it is one of the downsides of working on BSD/MIT licensed open source code. In one sense it is an act of altruism, but it can sting to see someone snag the code and make lots of money with hardly an acknowledgment in your direction or to take and use it to restrict people.

<comment><USER16> It also brings to mind a certain lawsuit involving Psystar and a certain product clone...

I bear no grudge against Apple, Microsoft, or Google for not 'contributing enough' to Open Source.

I love it when companies make their products open source, but after all, they are companies and their primary objective as publicly traded corporations is to create value for shareholders.

My opinion on the matter is simply, give Microsoft and Google a break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The bigger question, however, is why Apple gets a pass, while I and others slam Microsoft..."

"I love my Mac. Period." That sortof answers your question, doesn't it? For good or ill, some people just want to get in on the Apple love fest. But don't cut off your nose to spite your face: I think Sun's actually done, on the whole, a decent job at working with and for the open source community. For both Apple and (sometimes) Google, I merely say: Beware Greeks bearing gifts.</comment>


Show HN: I put hundreds of Apollo moon photos into Photosynth 2 - <AUTHOR> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/A-Photosynth-2-Overview-with-David-Gedye

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to all my Photosynth collections: [http://photosynth.net/preview/users/LarryLa](http://photosynth.net/preview/users/LarryLa)</comment>


Virtual fencing: A new way of corralling cattle is being tested in New Mexico - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11659637&CFID=11331123&CFTOKEN=34214436 <comment><AUTHOR> It's actually a little bit more about hackers than I'd originally thought. It's interesting to see new technologies applied to old professions, and the picture of the cow with the GPS attached to its head is pretty funny.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but without the lasers, is this really hacker news? :)</comment></comment>


Venice without water - <AUTHOR> http://strangesounds.org/2018/02/venice-water-levels-are-the-lowest-since-records-began-with-some-canals-almost-completely-dried-up-and-it-has-not-stopped-sinking.html <comment><USER2> To me it seems like reading this makes one believe that the blood and blue parts of the "super blue blood moon" had some minor relevancy in all of this and made the water levels slightly lower than usual.

To clarify, the eclipse part has nothing to do with tides. The "red" part couldn't even be seen from Italy from what I could find. The "blue" part is totally arbitrary as well (two full moons in one calendar month).

So, a super moon affected this, the blue and blood parts are more of a coincidence... I think. Took 15 min to search for all of this to confirm my initial suspicion, but my search results were filled with the event from a couple of days ago, so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER3> An eclipse means the moon lines up with the sun, which adds their tides together. It's basically the same as what happens every two weeks when they _nearly_ line up, so it's not particularly special, but it is relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had no idea the canals were this shallow! For some reason I thought they were at least 10 meters or so deep.

<comment><USER5> The bigger canals must be deeper. But I was also stunned how shallow they are. Good thing the gondolas ride high.

<comment><USER6> Some of them definitely are. I've seen motorboats in them. The propellers would hit the bottom in some of the canals in the pictures.

<comment><USER7> Most of the motorboats in the canals (but not all!) are inboard motors with very shallow draft (or are small outboards). You don't generally see inboard/outboard boats which generally have a deeper draft than the other two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To an uneducated eye (like mine), Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail. Buildings require constant repair due to erosion. Too much water brings flooding, too little exposes mud and filth, and hinders transportation... I'm very curious to know what counter-measures are put in place to protect the city from these (and many more) dangers.

<comment><USER9> I went to venice a few years back, there's an outer seawall that protects it from tides.

Venice also naturally floods all the time, when I was over there the large square next to the cathedral / church flooded.

When it floods, it usually floods several inches on average

There's a good article on it here

[https://www.visit-venice-italy.com/acqua-alta-venice- italy.h...](https://www.visit-venice-italy.com/acqua-alta-venice-italy.htm)

<comment><USER10> > I went to venice a few years back, there's an outer seawall that protects it > from tides.

As I said in another comments, no, the wall (MOSE, several walls, actually) has not been completed yet and is non-operational.

<comment><USER9> hm, didn't know it wasn't operational yet. I just remember seeing a diagram of it relative to the venice map

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this is a good thing....it's not going to last, and it gives them an opportunity in the meantime to more easily clean and repair places that are normally less accessible.

<comment><USER12> I have my doubts. There's probably no standby army of cleaners, builders and engineers waiting to jump at this glorious opportunity.

I would even guess that the work already in progress has come to a complete standstill. Surely, they are not equipped for wading through deep mud, and they have lost their main means of transport.

<comment><USER13> Here in CA we have to wait on the tides to do work on the sewer. It is only about once every two months that the tides are low enough for certain work

<comment><USER12> I got the impression from the article that the water is almost never too low to use the waterways for transport. If it happens regularly then it's of course a wholly different matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The view of the (very shallow) canals of Venice brings to mind the Erie Canal, which I've been reading up on.

The initial channel was 40 feet wide, but only 4 feet (1.2 meter) deep, with canal-boats having a draft of 3.5 feet -- leaving 6 inches of clearance between those and the canal bottom. Given the speed of travel -- about 3-5 mph (4.8 - 8 km/h) behind a horse or donkey tow -- bottoming out would like not have been disastrous, but would still have been at the very least, a nuisance.

Considering canals to alternatives, I also realised that one of these was that the surface was _uniform_ , effectively _flat_ , and immune to the hazards and treacheries of road-based travel, most especially mud, ruts, and wash-outs. A canal is the original self-healing substrate.

Even at 5 mph, the constant and smooth travel, as well as the size of the boat relative to the tow (1-3 horses, boats of up to 78 ft (24 meter) in length), travel time was cut in half and costs by an order of magnitude. From a note on the Wikpedia entry:

"Using Clark's Works of Man figures, a mule can draw 60,000 lbs but carry only 250 lbs, which need men to load and unload daily, have a need to carry grain as well (parasitic weight), and for same tonnages, required far more men as a labor force, drastically increasing running costs. A 95% reduction is probably conservative, 250#/30t is 0.4% the expenses, so reduction to 5% costs still indicates someone is taking a lot of profits."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal)

The Erie Canal was eventually enlarged. But in its day, the initial configuration was an absolute revolution in transport for the United States.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you watch the video at the end, the sites author is inferring there's some conspiracy or "unknown" space object or the moons 'eclipse' causing this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEoPhPoWws4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEoPhPoWws4)

Not sure how much credibility this guy has but it sounds a bit quackish.

</comment><comment><USER16> Junk article on junk site. Low tides are a normal part of life in Venice. I was Kayaking there a few months ago and Tide tables determine what parts of the city are navigable by boat. Some canals are indeed very shallow. Been that way forever. They are dredged periodically to keep them navigable at normal tides. The larger and deeper canals are always navigable.

</comment><comment><USER17> The comment about declining population looks really off. I think most of protected old town areas lost population compared to 100 years ago. People no longer cram in tiny rooms, undesirable ground level flats are converted to shops. Why would this ever be a problem? They have Mestre just over a bridge.

<comment><USER10> What I know for sure is that Venice proper (that is, what is in the middle of the lagoon) has been hemorrhaging residents for a long time now. Residents strated moving to Mestre and Marghera for various reasons (for example because they worked there) but also because Venice is becoming a touristic attraction, not a place people want to live in. Prices for houses are completely insane, and the fact that people are going away feeds back to a lot of shops (I mean shops for residents, not for tourists) closing down.

At the moment the isles are home to more or less 55.000 people, while the majority of the population lives in Mestre and Marghera.

> Why would this ever be a problem?

Because, as I said, there are very few residents in there. Would you still call it a city or is it more Mestre's tourist attraction?

My parents moved from Venice to Mestre in the 80s, so I was born in Venice but always lived in Mestre. I'm not sure I resent them for this, in hindsight.

<comment><USER18> Venice isn't a practical place to live for many in the modern world though. Transportation is horrendously inefficient, land is expensive and no more is available, and people expect nicer/roomier accommodations than in centuries past.

It sounds like the people living in Mestre are making the best rational choice for themselves. There are plenty of other old cities that did not survive with their way of life intact into the modern age; it is what it is. It made more sense as a city unto itself in centuries past, but things change with technological and cultural progress. There is nothing inherently good with things continuing the way they always have; indeed things remaining stagnant is often bad, and the people who have been enabled to move out onto the mainland thanks to modern transportation methods are likely living better lives now than those who could not do so centuries ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The smell must be fantastic.

<comment><USER19> At least it's winter. The experience in summer would probably be quite awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Point of fact, according to the story's opening it said that it robbed gondoliers or their money and residents of their transportation.

Residents don't ride in gondolas— that's for the tourists. Far too expensive.

<comment><USER21> But they do take the water busses (vaporetti)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is so much talk these days of "rising sea levels" so its kind of ironic to see the opposite. But I guess changes in weather causes both extremes.

<comment><USER23> No, this is not expected. Sea level rise occurs because there is physically more water in the sea (both by weight and thermal expansion). Storms and wind can alter local sea level as well, as eg el Nino does in the Pacific, but not in Mediterranean dimensions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was surprised to learn Venice only has 155,000 or so inhabitants. For some reason I thought it was a big city. It's half the size of my small city.

<comment><USER25> Just about 50k people live in the islands... The density is quite low, and much more people lived there in the past, now for locals it's more profitable to just rent their flat to tourists, while living in the mainland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does this coincide with the flood mitigation gates?

<comment><USER10> No it doesn't. Mainly because it is not finished and so it is non-operational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Americans would never deal with that shit. We'd have drained it and paved it long ago.

<comment><USER28> Funny enough, we actually did drain and pave most of the canals in Venice, California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This would be the perfect time to clean up the city :)

<comment><USER30> is it filthy? do the canals have trash floating? What are you alluding to?

<comment><USER31> I was struck by the fact that the bottoms of the canals is just mud--no trash (at least in the photos in the article). The article mentioned the "filth buried at the bottom of the canals", but they seem remarkably clean.

<comment><USER32> it looks clean, but the smell of that mud, o boy...

<comment><USER10> Like greglindahl pointed out in another comment, there are no sewers in Venice, so that's not just mud. That's another reason for the smell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The water is protesting for too many tourists.

</comment><comment><USER34> Citizens of Tuvalu are disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is interesting. For years, scientists warn about Venice will eventually go underwater as sea level continues to rise.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the difference between weather (tide) and climate (rising water levels).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> No comments about global warming and water levels?</comment>


Eighth grader designs standardized test that slams standardized tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/17/eighth-grader-designs-standardized-test-that-slams-standardized-tests/?tid=socialss <comment><USER2> Previously submitted by ColinWright with the canonical URL:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570457>

The source from which this was submitted (sorry, Colin) is a crap source, a propaganistic op-ed column in the Washington Post that has previously been caught by participants here on HN omitting important facts from guest columns on education policy issues.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315028></comment>


Children with high IQ more likely to do drugs as adults  - <AUTHOR> http://www.m.webmd.com/children/news/20111114/high-iq-in-childhood-may-predict-later-drug-use

<comment><USER2> Date of publication November 2011. Previous submissions of same underlying story from other sites:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237261>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2364425>

These discussions are about a single, unreplicated observational study. The study doesn't prove causation and may not be generalizable to other countries besides the UK (where the study occurred).

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html></comment>


Ask YC: The best platforms for building virtual worlds - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently putting together a report for a client on virtual world technology. Searching through the noise I've come across a couple that look good (including the obvious Second Life):
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/ - Can create 3D worlds through Flash
http://www.multiverse.net/ - A good development platform but not quite ready yet, I don't think
Does anybody know of any others that might be of use? I've searched long and hard and can't find much that I like.
Also...while I'm at it, does anybody know how many players can realistically be supported in the Source Engine? I know the "maximum" is 32, but is that just a hardwired restriction or can it be revoked? <comment><USER2> <http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page>, though I'd be surprised if it is ready for prime time yet

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys, these look like good options, but is there anything more like Second Life that doesn't tie you into it's own system, like Linden Labs does?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure what exactly you're looking for, but have you checked out Alice? <http://www.alice.org/></comment>


Ridiculous Math Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2020/Ridiculous.html <comment><USER2> For more ridiculous math problems I want to submit: _The Jewish Problems_ [0].

These were used when Jewish people were trying to get into grad school in Russia in the '70's. Basically designed so Jewish people wouldn't get in.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556](https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556)

<comment><USER3> Did this cause a toxin like stimulation making jewish students better because they tried to reach impossible goals ?

It happened in music a few times.. people invented techniques and subgenres because they tried impossible things or had below useful instruments.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it. Those problems are close to impossible to solve for ordinary students, therefore many talented but not necessarily genius students lost the opportunity to get good education. I'm a firm believer that students need to be pushed to stay in their discomfort zone, but Jewish Problems can easily push most students into panic zone.

<comment><USER5> That's one of the principles of deliberate practice: go just beyond the comfort zone, in the area where you feel a challenge, but an approachable one.

<comment><USER6> The point of the Jewish Problems is that:

1\. They're an entrance exam. They were explicitly designed to discriminiate against otherwise worthy candidates.

2\. The key feature of the problems is that they are not difficult because they are an average example of a difficult branch of math. Instead they are easy problems, but they are only easy if you can figure out the correct substitution. Otherwise, they are extremely difficult. In other words, getting good at the problems won't make you a better mathematician, it'll just make you better at passing that particular test.

<comment><USER5> I was only agreeing with the parent that students need to pushed out of their comfort zone, but just a little. Not a lot like the Jewish Problems were doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the cute banana, apple, pineapple math challenge that is actually an elliptic curve.

[https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-find-the-positive- integer-s...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-find-the-positive-integer- solutions-to-frac-x-y+z-+-frac-y-z+x-+-frac-z-x+y-4)

</comment><comment> dan-robertson A ridiculous problem I remember seeing was approximately this one:

      a/(b+c) + b/(a+c) + c/(a+b)=896.
      a,b,c positive integers

I think it probably used random symbols instead of letters and didn't have the integer requirement. Indeed if you allow real numbers or 0 then it is easy to find a solution. I think it didn't go particularly viral because it was too hard. I think there's a slightly easier version if you replace 896 by 16.

<comment><USER8> The version I first saw used '4' instead of '896'. Which frankly made the answer large enough that no reasonable amount of brute force could find it.

A good write up can be found here: [https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-find-the- positive-integer-s...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-find-the-positive- integer-solutions-to-frac-x-y%2Bz-%2B-frac-y-z%2Bx-%2B-frac- z-x%2By-4/answer/Alon-Amit)

<comment><USER9> That is an amazing, detailed explanation. (Don't be fooled by the quora location.) Spoilers: the solution to the equation is 80-digit numbers, which can be obtained by using elliptic curves, which the link explains in detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a difference between a ridiculous math programs (which are often amusing) and incorrect ones (for example, adding different units, or absolute units rather than relative ones).

The article mixes the two.

One type is funny and clever.

The other type reinforces misconceptions and is damaging to students.

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of the riddle by the good soldier Svejk:

\-----

"Would you know how to calculate the diameter of the globe?"

"No, I'm afraid I wouldn't," answered Svejk, "but I'd like to ask you a riddle myself, gentlemen. Take a three-storied house, with eight windows on each floor. On the roof there are two dormer windows and two chimneys. On every floor there are two tenants. And now, tell me, gentlemen, in which year the house-porter's grandmother died?"

\-----

[https://english.radio.cz/good-soldier-svejk-a-literary- chara...](https://english.radio.cz/good-soldier-svejk-a-literary-character-a- legend-8072464)

<comment><USER12> Which reminds me of the riddles in Yerofeyev's Moscow—Petushki (sorry, only in russian, my russian and my english are too bad to translate)

«Знаменитый ударник Алексей Стаханов два раза в день ходил по малой нужде и один раз в два дня – по большой. Когда же с ним случался запой, он четыре раза в день ходил по малой нужде и ни разу – по большой. Подсчитай, сколько раз в год ударник Алексей Стаханов сходил по малой нужде и сколько по большой нужде, если учесть, что у него триста двенадцать дней в году был запой».

«Когда корабли Седьмого американского флота пришвартовались к станции Петушки, партийных девиц там не было, но если комсомолок называть партийными, то каждая третья из них была блондинкой. По отбытии кораблей Седьмого американского флота обнаружилось следующее: каждая третья комсомолка была изнасилована; каждая четвертая изнасилованная оказалась комсомолкой; каждая пятая изнасилованная комсомолка оказалась блондинкой; каждая девятая изнасилованная блондинка оказалась комсомолкой. Если всех девиц в Петушках 428 – определи, сколько среди них осталось нетронутых беспартийных брюнеток?»

And my favorite:

«Как известно, в Петушках нет пунктов А. Пунктов Ц тем более нет. Есть одни только пункты Б. Так вот: Папанин, желая спасти Водопьянова, вышел из пункта Б1 в сторону пункта Б2. В то же мгновенье Водопьянов, желая спасти Папанина, вышел из пункта Б2 в пункт Б1. Неизвестно почему оба они оказались в пункте Б3, отстоящем от пункта Б1 на расстоянии 12-ти водопьяновских плевков, а от пункта Б2 – на расстоянии 16-ти плевков Папанина. Если учесть, что Папанин плевал на три метра семьдесят два сантиметра, а Водопьянов совсем не умел плевать, выходил ли Папанин спасать Водопьянова?»

<comment><USER13> Using Google Translate doesn't produce anything understandable. But searching for the text of the "favorite" part it can be seen that is is from this work:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow- Petushki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow-Petushki)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My math teacher used to give us silly problems like how long will it take the raising water level to reach the top step of a ladder hanging down from a ship. It trained us not to apply formulas blindly.

<comment> em-bee it depends on the size of the hole at the bottom of the ship

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Well this is a bizarre 4th degree polynomial equation, \\(x^4-2x^2 > -400x=9999\\) and he applies one approach to solving it, then comes to a > dead end and says "Hence ingenuity is called for" and finally finds that his > unknown number is 11. I, personally, would not have had a clue how to solve > it._

Here is what you can do. If there is an integer solution, we can keep the constant term 9999 on the opposite side and factor the formula.

As in:

       x^4 - 2x^ - 400x = 9999

      x(x^3 - 2x - 400) = 9999

Ok, so no we have x f(x) = 9999. From this we know that if there is an integer solution for x, x itself must be a factor of 9999: either a prime factor, or a product of factors.

So we just factor 9999:

       3^2 11 101 = 9999

9999 has 3 as a degree 2 factor, and then also 11, and 101.

Looking at just the factorization breakdown alone, x could be the product of these combinations of factors: { (3), (11), (101), (3, 3), (3, 11), (3, 101), (11, 101), (3, 3, 11), (3, 3, 101), (3, 11, 101) }.

If we substitute these factors for x, in order from least to greatest, we will soon hit upon the solution.

Intuitively we can guess that x is small, because the opposite factor is cubing it. So for instance, it can't be the case that x is the product of 3, 11, and 101, such that x^3 - 2x - 400 then works out to the remaining factor of 3.

It's obvious that x can't be too small, like 3, because x^3 is only 27; that's not going to leave us a positive factor when we subtract 400 alone, let alone -2x.

</comment><comment><USER16> "If a ship has 26 sheep and 10 goats on board, how old is the ship's captain?"

oh boy

<comment><USER17> 42

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately, the actual answer is "there is not enough information on the question to provide a response". It's an exercise as to the limits of problem formulation, from what I understood.

<comment><USER17> are you sure?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=answer+to+the+ultimate+quest...](https://www.google.com/search?q=answer+to+the+ultimate+question+of+life%2C+the+universe%2C+and+everything)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not about algebra, but one good example of ridiculous problems leading to great discoveris in math is how, according to the legend, Cauchy invented complex analysis (at least the theorems on holomorphic and meromorphic functions) just to solve some random integral somebody had given him

</comment><comment><USER19> My personal favorite along these lines are the Busy Beaver numbers. It's not just huge... it's actually impossible to calculate (beyond very low inputs).

<comment><USER20> Impossible to _compute_ , only feasible to calculate for the first few.

<comment><USER19> Good correction, thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> the math equivalent of a dumb programming interview question

<comment><USER22> The similarity extends to the part where the real motivation for asking is to make the person asking look smart.</comment></comment>


Django: queryset-refactor branch merged into trunk - <AUTHOR> http://code.djangoproject.com/changeset/7477 <comment><USER2> This is newsworthy because it's the first time a branch created by Subversion was successfully merged back to trunk.

<comment><USER3> Do people really have that big of problems with svn?

I have used it for quite a few years and never really had too many problems. It isn't the ideal system, git may be getting close to that, but it works.

Maybe I just look at it differently - I have a few friends who work somewhere that still uses Microsoft VSS.

<comment><USER4> We use SVN exclusively for our projects at NeoSmart Technologies (private and public); and a huge number of highly-popular open source communities are also built around SVN...

Examples similar to Drupal: WordPress, Gallery2, etc.

<comment><USER3> Certainly a lot of projects use svn, even Django back to this original thread. I think every Python library I use is checked out of svn.

So do people just like to joke how it is so unusable? Or is there some glaringly obvious thing I am missing?

<comment><USER5> It's not that SVN is particularly bad for merging; it's that bzr and git are so much better at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of the major 1.0 goals for Django... Awesome, I think newforms- admins still has to be merged with trunk...

Can you smell it??? (Django 1.0)

</comment><comment><USER7> For people who have not been keeping up. What does this exactly mean? I looked in the Doc and couldn't find a link to anything about the queryset-refactor

<comment><AUTHOR> This might help:

<http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/QuerysetRefactorBranch>

Some other comments by the developer, Malcolm Tredinnick:

[http://www.pointy-stick.com/blog/2008/03/11/queryset- impleme...](http://www.pointy-stick.com/blog/2008/03/11/queryset- implementation/)

[http://www.pointy-stick.com/blog/2008/03/26/more-django- quer...](http://www.pointy-stick.com/blog/2008/03/26/more-django-queryset- notes/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the links.

1.order_by fixing: I always run into problems with it, this is much needed

2.model inheritance: finally!

3.querysets not loaded into memory: yay! I do some hackery around the old way that I can remove.

4.slicing to the end: nice, again this commonly results in a big of uglyness getting the total size of the queryset

5.reverse? nice feature to have. So if you order by date you can quickly reverse the order.

6.values retrieving through FK? Amazingly useful. If you don't already use values, I strongly suggest looking into it. For large sets of data it is a must-have feature, you can load a minimal amount of data. I do this for things like mapping a number of points, I just grab the id and lat/long. However, now I can simplify that function since I can grab values across FK's.

7.Values list? Actually somewhat handy, depending on the application. Dictionary is nice for my previous example of using values.

8.Restrictive select related? Very cool, you can do some optimization by providing a list of what you actually want to get.

9.None check? Perfect, I much prefer that syntax to the blah__isnull=True.

10\. Update for a queryset? Very nice - will consider how to use this to optimize some work. So instead of saving individual objects you could do one big update.

11\. Q class improvements? I currently don't use Q's, but with this added functionality I may revisit that.

Overall this looks great. Many positive improvements, and a very logical upgrade to Trunk. I imagine once the newforms admin makes use of this and integrates the model inheritance it will also be merged in.</comment></comment></comment>


Tencent Invests $60MM in Pocket Gems - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/13/tencent-backs-mobile-gaming-company-pocket-gems/

<comment><AUTHOR> Original WSJ article here:

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/tencent-buys-stake-in-u-s- game-m...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/tencent-buys-stake-in-u-s-game-maker- pocket-gems-1431547203)

Tencent bought a 14.6% stake in Glu Mobile less than 15 days ago.

UoP is said to be for global expansion (especially in the Chinese market)</comment>


Show HN: Reasons I love you (my first web app) - <AUTHOR> http://howdoi.herokuapp.com

<comment><USER2> Yah, looked at the site. Looks cool. I think the config file is a pretty straightforward manner to implement this. Normally, you will see a ways.txt.example which gets moved to ways.txt by the next user.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first deployed web app and I'd love to get feedback on it. Code, design, idea, implementation; any constructive feedback is welcome.

Thanks in advance.</comment>


Telstra rolls out 'world's fastest wireless broadband network' (Australia) - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,25066017-2,00.html?from=public_rss

<comment><USER2> I can't comment on the veracity of Telstra's speed claims, but Optus' are a complete joke. Most of the time I'm lucky to get even modem level speeds out of my 3G card, let alone 3.2Mbps. Once again, the schpiel quotes the theoretical maximum and conveniently ignores reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how relevant these speeds are going to be for several years - except maybe to keeping shaming the U.S. into making just _the basic_ steps toward even _adequate_ broadband a reality for its masses.</comment>


Randomness and Why I am No Longer a Fan of Coworking Spaces - <AUTHOR> http://foundersblock.com/anecdotes/randomness-and-why-i-am-no-longer-a-fan-of-coworking-spaces/

<comment><USER2> It seems that the new trend in "co-working" in NYC at least is towards startup focused spaces (e.g. Dogpatch Labs, General Assembly). Granted, the turn over may be even lower than the average co-working space (no numbers, but at Dogpatch NYC it's 6 months+ before you need to start looking for other space - there is actually going to be a fairly large turnover in the next month or so) but there is something to be said when everyone in the space is working on a company rather than just projects. It'll be interesting to see how these spaces develop, but from my experience at Dogpatch NYC, personally, I find them to be a great place for an early stage company.</comment>


Ask HN: More weird rankings on HN ... - <AUTHOR>

This item: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2237111
Two comments, each with 1 point, but the older comment is getting ranked higher.
I think I've noticed other cases where longer comments get ranked higher, but this isn't an example of that.
Any suggestions as to the logic behind this?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Comments are ordered in part based on the author's average comment score: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1398764>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that would do it. Many thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't looked at the source for this website, but I would assume that one of the factors that gets used in display ordering is user average karma. A user with higher average karma is, by some mathematical analyses, more likely to produce an interesting post than one with lower.

You guys have nearly identical total karma, but the top user has an average post score of 6.48 - yours is only 2.53.

That's my guess, but like I said, I haven't checked out the source.

</comment><comment><USER4> following occam's razor, my guess would be that absent any other data to weight them by, chronology wins out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe one is by the original poster, so it's ranked higher. That logic would make sense - not sure how it's applied here though... would anyone who knows care to tell us??

Linked for your clicking pleasure: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2237111></comment>


Show HN: Recent – My first chrome extension - <AUTHOR> I got tired of seeing old results from 2011 and beyond when using google search. Its more frustrating when searching for code tutorials.
So I developed this silent chrome extension which automatically filters the results to last one year.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recent/kgjcmcglncjgphbehaafkhalbooffinb <comment><USER2> Good idea, I was looking forward to find something like this.

About the description, try to explain it more lightly and tell how it works, how to enable it or use it. Felt like a commercial.

Google has a lot of domains for different countries, adding "[https://www.google.*/*"](https://www.google.*/*") would be much appreciated.

Publish your extension's source code on github, I'll help out with a couple of PRs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have added the files to github -> [https://github.com/cryogee/Recent-Chrome- Extension](https://github.com/cryogee/Recent-Chrome-Extension)</comment></comment>


YouTube's best beauty tutorials don't teach you anything about makeup - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90301667/youtubes-best-beauty-tutorials-dont-teach-you-anything-about-makeup <comment><AUTHOR> Hilarious cyber security videos by Addie Wagenknecht</comment>


Facebook Really Is Spying on You, Just Not Through Your Phone's Mic - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-really-is-spying-on-you-just-not-through-your-phones-mic-1520448644 <comment><USER2> I find this statement from Facebook in the article to be oddly worded, as if it was carefully constructed by a lawyer to avoid getting caught in a lie:

"Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed."

OK... so they are saying they don't use your microphone to target ads. But how about precisely enumerating how FB uses your microphone?

Do they use it for any purpose other than helping you communicate during a call?

Do they try to infer any persona information about you, which can then be used indirectly to make money from your data?

I too have had odd coincidences where eerily relevant ads show up after I have had a conversation. If only FB was more transparent about what they do, I might not be so paranoid about it.

<comment><USER3> I think you're on to something here about the indirection.

I too have witnessed the uncanny ads, but not even from my own phone (I don't have Facebook on my phone). A friend mentioned a particular restaurant I have never been to, been near, or searched for.

I can only assume my friend's conversation was geo-tagged either by my phone (android, no non-system mic access), or the data was combined on the server end to place both of us at the same place / same time, and used his recording to market to me.

I'd also like to note, the 'amount of bandwidth needed' is almost nothing by today's standards. Not to mention it can wait to transmit that data until on wifi. 8khz audio (telephone quality) is just kilobytes per second. A reasonably unsophisticated algorithm could trim the audio for an highs and lows (IE, statistically, sound below or above some dB threshold is trimmed because it won't be useful) and uploaded. We're talking about just a few kb per conversation.

Of course, the Facebook app is a memory, storage, and cpu hog (IMO), so I don't think it's unreasonable that given today's modern phone hardware some word recognition software may be present on devices themselves.

<comment><USER4> Or consider another scenario: your friend went to said restaurant and paid for something; read an article about the restaurant; viewed/interacted with an ad for the restaurant; liked a social media post for the restaurant; or was geo- tagged at or around the restaurant. Any of the above would be sufficient to associate your friend and the restaurant, and I'd wager targeting your social graph after you've interacted with a product/service would have a good ROI.

<comment><USER5> Alright here's another anecdotal experience. To preface it, i don't have Fb app or messenger on my phone but have WhatsApp and Instagram. I opted out of whatsapp's data sharing policy when you were able to do it.

So i was walking with co-workers for coffee and somehow we talked about a college. Now i can assure you that i have never ever searched for that college and i didn't even know it existed before that conversation took place. And 30 mins later, i'm browsing instagram at work and there is an ad of the said college. If this isn't creepy af, i dunno what is.

<comment><USER6> It might be creepy, but it might not be. It is possible that the conversation influenced the ad shown. But it is also likely that ad would have been shown no matter what the prior conversation was about. If the conversation hadn't included talking about the college prior to seeing the ad it would have been a non-event. But being primed in advance makes it at least feel like a freaky coincidence or at worst nefariously creepy targeted advertising.

These kind of events happen by chance and have been happening well before almost everyone started carrying mobile recording devices in their pockets and even pre-internet.

I have no doubt that advertisers would love to have that kind of insight but I can't help but feel that the anecdote of the form, we talked about A and A showed up X minutes later, is too easily explain by coincidence. How many topics were discussed, how many ads were shown? When I read something like this I imagine the anecdote should read more along the lines of how we talked about A, B, C, D, E and F and among the dozen or so ads I saw afterwords one of them was topic A! Can you believe it? And yes, yes I can, that is a pretty neat coincidence.

On the other hand if out of all 6 of the topics discussed all of the ads that were shown afterward were related to them, maybe not all, but more than one or two. That sounds like there is something fishy going on.

I don't mean to single out this particular example, it was to be a simple comment that had more to say. So, thank you for the inspiration!

<comment><USER7> The first time it happened to me, I considered it a coincidence. And the next few times too. It must because the game is new, or they know I've been searching for new floors on my computer, ect. But it keeps happening, and it's always in the time following after it was talked about, but not searched for. It has happened for things we talked about at friends place, that is completely outside what my wife and I would do.

The most blatant I've experienced was on the Wii U. The controller with the screen powers up and shows ads for new games every now and then. We actually had a bit of fun with it, casually talking about new games and guess what happened. An ad for that particular game was shown. I'm 100% certain now, that it happens with smartphones as well.

<comment><USER8> It could be the ads came up a more conventional way - the makers are priming the publicity for the game so it shows up in magazines and ad buys etc. If you and your friends are avid gamers - you probably get some early exposure before more general ad channels buys show up.

But to really answer this question, we could build a better experiment. Write out a set of topics on index cards. You have to be careful that topics aren't new product rollouts (otherwise you really have to think about how you decided to write that topic down in the first place). Draw a card, don't talk about or search the topic for some amount of time, then inject the topic where it might be observed (talk about it and/or search for it somewhere), then for some amount of time, see if it comes up.

<comment><USER9> Also keep track of every time that you see references to each topic both before and after bringing them up.

And have a control group that you simply don't bring up at all. Make sure to have more than one, so that you still have more remaining if someone around you brings up one of your control topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did quite a bit of Jailbreak/tweak dev in the past, and I was curious if you could just hook into AVAudioRecorder and show an alert any time it was invoked.

So, I did this sort of thing years ago when I wrote a tweak for the InPulse smartwatch (later became Pebble) [https://github.com/brandontreb/inPulseNotifier](https://github.com/brandontreb/inPulseNotifier) .I was able to hook into the system messaging, forward it to a custom bluetooth stack (sending it to the watch) and forward the message up the stack to be displayed by the system.

It would stand to reason that the same sort of process would be effective for catching Facebook invoking audio recording. Once you hook into the AVAudioRecorder's interface, you could theoretically observe the following:

1\. Open the Audio Recorder app and hit Record - An alert should show to prove your tweak is working.

2\. Open the Facebook app. If you receive a similar alert at some point, you could at least prove that FB is invoking the audio recorder at some point without the user's expressed permission.

Am I crazy or could this test actually work?

<comment><USER11> It's possible Facebook could be using an exclusive method to access hardware more directly, much like how Uber had access to restricted developer debugging tools which allowed them to record the screen even when the app was closed.

[https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/uber-screen-record- iphone....](https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/uber-screen-record-iphone.html)

<comment><USER12> I have checked. Facebook does not do this.

<comment><USER13> how have you checked (what do you have access to). if you work for Googe on Android would be a good answer for example :)

<comment><USER14> From his bio:

> information security research. ceo @ sudo security group > ([https://verify.ly](https://verify.ly)).

> previously: founder of "Chronic Dev Team" responsible for many years of iOS > jailbreaking solutions (24kPwn, absinthe, corona, greenpois0n, etc).

<comment><USER13> I still think "how have you checked" is a fair question.

<comment><USER12> My company collects/analyzes apps from the App Store to test their security, so I have pretty easy access to the machine code for apps.

Certainly a fair question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's worth nothing that the reason security researchers haven't just intercepted the traffic from the Facebook apps to see if its transmitting voice data is because the apps use Certificate Pinning, which prevents the SSL traffic from being decrypted using the SSL certificate generated by mitmproxy/Charles.

In light of that restriction, what might be interesting is looking at the _amount of data_ transferred by the Facebook app with/without the microphone/location services enabled. (this is a data project I have in the pipeline)

<comment><USER16> Facebook already has plenty of issues with people not trusting them. Lying about this and then being caught red handed would be devastating from a public opinion perspective. Even if you assume a completely amoral team that cares about nothing but ad revenue, do you genuinely think they'd risk something as dangerous as that? Especially given how much you can still achieve with the data that is known to be collected?

<comment><USER17> How devastating would it be, really?

It would likely be a blip in the news, and then people would move on, as usual.

Remember the Sony rootkit fiasco? People still buy Sony, and most people probably either never heard of that incident, don't remember, or don't care. Buying whatever the new Sony gizmo of the day is is more important to them.

Microsoft has had endless spyware fiascos, and people still routinely buy Windows, as long as they can play their games or run Office, that's all that matters to most of them.

Then there have been scandals like Enron, where the execs knew that they were doing something that was clearly illegal, and that their company really would be devastated if what they did was ever revealed. These "smartest people in the room" did it anyway.

Corporate history is full of just such deceptive and destructive practices. I'm not sure I'd put Facebook above that sort of thing, a priori.

<comment><USER18> Speaking of badware: last week I found Mac Afee installed on the laptop of a relative that I manage. I assured me that he had not installed it himself (I had not installed anything actually). Could it have come from windows updates ?

<comment><USER19> No, Windows Update doesn't distribute third party software. And even if it did, MSE is technically a competitor to McAfee so there wouldn't really be a solid reason to distribute it.

Your relative probably installed something and pressed "Next" through all the dialogs including the ones asking if they want to install super helpful bundled software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reply All did an episode on this that was really good: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook- spying#ep...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook- spying#episode-player)

The thing I thought was interesting is just how adamant people are about FB spying via mic.

They also had an update in their year-end episode: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/113-reply-alls-year- en...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/113-reply-alls-year-end- extravaganza#episode-player)

Both worth a listen.

<comment><USER21> > just how adamant people are about FB spying via mic

I'm of the opinion that it's easier for your average Jane/Joe to believe (and maybe even preferable to believe) that someone is listening and responding to your words than a computer piecing together a picture of you from unrelated clues via some nebulous "machine learning algorithm".

Anybody can listen to your words and advertise to you based on them. It is, on the other hand, not feasible for a human to look at a stream of unrelated posts and figure out that you're pregnant.

<comment><USER22> A lot of it is confirmation bias as well. People will remember when an ad is creepily relevant, but they don't remember the dozens of times they were completely irrelevant. It's like when my friends made me watch Stranger Things, it felt like Stranger Things references suddenly started to appear everywhere on the internet.

<comment><USER23> Confirmation bias and the Baader Meinhof Effect. I've talked with friends about topics I didn't know about before. Then I got fitting ads about it on my phone. I wouldn't have noticed these ads if they weren't fitting. It seems more creepy because it's new to me (consciously).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hey Facebook, if you got nothing to hide, _show us the code._

We showed you our friends, our relationships, our interests, our intimate and disarmed states, our rants, and probably half of the websites we visited. (in retrospect, that was dumb)

Oh, your tin can and strings might show? Competitors might get ideas? Please.

Until then, not a fan of you, not clicking on your ads, and generally avoiding your site. In fact I think I'll start deconstructing my profile as soon as I can muster the courage to choke back my gag reflex.

Sincerely, A growing group of mugged social network burnouts.

<comment><USER25> Which code ? Server side code is unreasonable to expect. For client code, you can just use the browser. It may not be as convenient or full featured as the app, but it'll do the job if you absolutely must use FB. The situation is much better with stuff like FB which is not that essential. It's more problematic with Google Maps, where you can't get turn by turn navigation unless you use the app.

<comment><USER26> _> Server side code is unreasonable to expect._

Honest question: why would it be unreasonable for us to expect server-side code to be open-source? Facebook's value lies in its brand and its infrastructure, not in its code, so there's no risk of upstarts taking Facebook's code and standing up a clone (which, even with the code, is way easier said than done).

<comment><USER27> First let's talk about value, because it is relative for different audiences (and my take is obviously not canonical either). For Facebook's users, the value is primarily the network. For Facebook's partners, the value is converting sales from users engaging with advertisements.

Facebook must offer enough to the users that the network is still worth coming back to while still giving advertisers a chance at having their eyes. A major breach could cause user and partner abandonment because of security concerns. Once the genie is out, there is no putting it back in. Their stock will fall faster than they can rewrite the product.

It is unreasonable for us to expect open-source for server-side code because it exposes Facebook (and potentially it's users) to a lot of risk for only a small upside. 1) While open-source software has myriad benefits, those benefits require the public at large to audit their code as it is being continuously changed and deployed. Can we keep ahead of the criminals exploiting freshly merged and deployed commits? 2) Knowing the source code is one half the battle, the other half is knowing what is actually executing at runtime. How would users verify this to get the value of open-source? 3) Open- sourcing server side code of Facebook could have serious negative consequences for users or Facebook in the event of a breach due to intimate knowledge of the system only afforded by being privy to the source code.

Not a point, but a philosophical question: *) Where does this stop being virtuous? Should Microsoft open-source SMB tomorrow? Would you feel comfortable with that?

Edit: grammatical fixes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The claim of the article is that it would be technically infeasible - and they go into how difficult it is to interpret context. However simple keyword matching would be more than enough.

Facebook has a lot of compute resources, but they wouldn't have to use it. Your smartphone is more than fast enough to do simple speech recognition. The accuracy rate wouldn't have to be that high - you won't get mad if you see an ad for a misheard keyword.

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't that destroy your battery life?

<comment><USER30> Does the Assistant listening for OK Google destroy your battery life?

Your phone reads sensor data as a base state.

<comment><USER31> The Google Now only listens for the trigger phrase when idle - which is done all locally, without needing to talk to the servers.

It has a battery impact but much less than sending all the voice data continuously to a server somewhere. The biggest battery killer would be the wifi or 3G transmitting non-stop in that case.

<comment><USER32> It wouldn't have to transmit non-stop -- it could do some parsing/cleanup locally, then queue it up and upload it periodically with other, expected FB traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If somebody wants to definitively answer this, there's no reason you couldn't just say random advertising related words in front of your phone (1 per day) and check how many come up in your search. There are basic statistical methods to establish if the results can be explained by chance.

This would have the upside of not requiring any reverse-engineering.

<comment><USER34> Yeah. For example, if you don't own a cat, you could just talk about cats and brands of cat food in front of your phone for a while. If you end up with a bunch of ads for cat products, then that would be seriously weird.

<comment><USER35> In saying that, Twitter thinks I:

        * Own a cat, dog and other animal
        * Have between $100k- $999k liquid investible assets
        * Have a net worth between $1 and $1m
        * Am highly affluent
        * Am a high spender
        * Am a frugal spender
        * Own a house
        * Have multiple families

Yet none of these are true (well, I guess apart from the 'has income' demographic I'm in).

I know Twitter isn't known for being an advertising powerhouse (esp. compared to Facebook), but I wouldn't take too much stock in Facebook serving me up irrelevant ads.

I moved to the other side of the world 2 months, updated my "living" location on Facebook and have been tagged at multiple locations in my new city, yet Facebook still serves me ads for buying an iPhone or Car back in my home town.

[https://imgur.com/a/HIkic](https://imgur.com/a/HIkic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've seen stories where people could not explain why they were suddenly seeing certain ads in their feeds, and they thought Facebook had recorded some keywords from a conversation.

For example one guy had a buddy who had recently purchased a certain motorcycle, and all of a sudden he started seeing ads for that motorcycle.

But... really there's a simpler explanation than the microphone. Although of course it doesn't by itself rule out the microphone being used.

Facebook can just see when you are in the same location as some other people, and see what things those other people are into, and then signal whatever ad networks that you might also be a prospect for those things. Visit your buddy and see his new bike? Start getting ads for the same bike. No audio needed, just location services and some posts on FB from your buddy about his motorcycle. And there are other sensors beyond that. A lot of things are possible once the user has granted permission for use of various inputs.

Also if it _is_ the microphone as the story suggests it could be in some cases, the evidence for it being any one particular app is thin. There are other apps that get granted microphone access by users all the time, and some of them should be looked at, not just Facebook. Not to defend Facebook here, but the net should be cast wider than just one app, even if the ads are appearing on Facebook, which itself is perfectly capable of gleaning interest information from multiple sources including other ad networks fed by other apps.

</comment><comment><USER37> A couple of weeks ago I search for (on Google) and played (on YouTube, logged into my account) the Meow Mix song to play it for my 4 year old.

Less than an hour later, Instagram showed a Meow Mix advertisement on my wife's account, on her phone.

We have no animals. We have never had animals. She probably (though maybe not) has never logged into Instagram or Facebook on my browser.

It was too much of a coincidence.

<comment><USER38> IP address, or if you have any shared accounts you could have a cookie identifying you as the same user. Ads also target connections of people who're interested in a product so you could get the ad from being friends/following someone who watched the videos. The ads will find you.

<comment><USER37> Even if FB/Instagram knows my wife and I share an IP address or there were both FB/Instagram and Google cookies on the same browser where I searched for Meow Mix, how would Instagram know my Google/Youtube history?

<comment><USER38> That's easy. The ad network that serves you ads on YouTube also serves ads on Facebook. They have a profile of you that connects your facebook and google accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The last thing to install on ones phone is FB app - technically one gives up all privacy. If you need to use FB then stick to browser and clear browser data afterwards.

<comment><USER40> It's potentially not just the app. The Facebook SDK is embedded in probably 50%+ of _all_ the apps we use e.g. In top 10 most popular cocoapods - [https://libraries.io/search?order=desc&platforms=CocoaPods&s...](https://libraries.io/search?order=desc&platforms=CocoaPods&sort=rank) \- the FBSDKCoreKit - [https://libraries.io/cocoapods/FBSDKCoreKit](https://libraries.io/cocoapods/FBSDKCoreKit)

<comment><USER41> But that's open source and can be audited.

<comment><USER40> Yes but there's a gap between "can be audited" and "is being audited". If they got caught doing anything malign they can just pull the "oooops we didn't mean to" defence as they've done before[1] - their track record here says "if we can find a way, we're at least going to experiment with it"

Also consider this in the light of recent EU rulings on Facebooks tracking of non-users via the Like button on websites being an illegal violation of privacy[2]. As usual the law lags the technology by many years - was the EU even aware of the Facebook mobile SDK being wisely installed in many 3rd party apps when they made this ruling? (edit: reading the report from the University of Leuven it seems they were at least aware of the implications of things like Facebooks Mobile Advertiser network)

[1] [https://www.google.ch/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebo...](https://www.google.ch/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook- says-it-fixed-a-bug-that-caused-silent-audio-to-vampire-your-iphone- battery/amp/)

[2] [https://www.google.ch/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2...](https://www.google.ch/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/facebook- tracks-all-visitors-breaching-eu-law-report)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I know we are all really concerned about privacy but we need to take a step back here for a second. Facebook will continue to show you ads - that will never stop. By following what the author mentions in his article, all that will happen is that you will see less relevant and useless ads. Would you rather less ads which are useful or those which are completely disconnected from what you want? I have discovered some really nice SMB stores via FB ads - that would have never happened otherwise.

Good luck to the author as now he will see generic AT&T and Galaxy S9 ads. Privacy has its costs and one should make an informed decision eitherways.

<comment><USER43> It might be just me, but I rather see irellevant ads like on TV which don't have that much power influencing my decisions on what to buy and what not to buy than a really targeted ad which makes it almost impossible to resist to spend my money on something I really don't need but just want.

<comment><USER42> In that case, you should follow the author's steps. I personally love the ads which FB and Google show - they are well targeted and look nice and some of them are very influential which I think is a good thing. Otherwise, I will still see ads but they aren't that helpful and just take up space.

<comment><USER44> This might sound snarky, but I don't mean it to.

Why do you need help from targeted advertising?

What are the things where targeted advertising is a good way to get help?

Is targeted advertising on Instagram and Facebook the zenith of this help for you? Can you imagine another way of getting this help?

<comment><USER42> Let me give you an example. While I was furniture shopping for my house, FB showed an ad of a nice boutique furniture store which opened less than a mile from where I lived. Since this was a new store, it had no Yelp reviews and had no word of mouth references. I visited the store and absolutely loved and bought a number of large items from there. I believe this is a positive development and these ads, at least to me, are a lot better than some of the non targeted things I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Drove by a scion iM in a parking lot one time.. and I said out loud "Scion iM? What the heck is that?" \-- ads on IG and FB for Scion iM when I got home 20 minutes later. No search, no associative info, no dealer info... I simply said it.

I've had quite a few of those, and usually I can trace it back to me googling something, etc. But this time, nada.

<comment><USER46> I'd blame this on confirmation bias - there must be dozens if not hundreds of times you use or mention a product every day that you don't notice ads for, but the rare time you do, it reinforces the belief that they are reacting to what you said.

<comment><USER47> Why don't you run an experiment, say something totally random that you know you've never searched and is out of the range of normal interests you have and see what happens. I have done that on more than one occasion and it confirms we are being recorded. It's not just Facebook.

<comment><USER46> I did that experiment this morning -- before work at home and on the way to work, my wife and I were discussing getting a new car, and spoke about a particular car brand that a coworker just purchased.

I just asked her to check her Facebook and she doesn't see any car ads. I checked too but didn't see any ads for cars or that brand, but I don't have the Facebook app on my phone (she does) and our Facebook profiles aren't strongly linked (i.e. she's not listed as my "wife", we just friend each other). She uses her phone for navigation while driving, so it was in a position to clearly hear us.

I haven't done any research on that car brand, but I suspect that once I do a Google search, then the ads will start flooding in.

So maybe this is confirmation bias in the other direction, but I don't see any evidence that Amazon Alexa, Facebook, or Google Assistant are spying on us. Though it could just mean that this particular carmaker doesn't purchase ads based on keyword spying

<comment><USER48> For experiments like this, use items that have high CPM. Gold, silver, niche personals and preserved food are great canaries.

Try doing different things. I don't think name brand vendors do pervasive audio surveillance. I do think they broaden the scope of your intents. Use GBoard dictation or similar tools to write. Write stuff down in different contexts. Use apps in different ways.

Amazon and Facebook share in near real time. Anything you do in a consumer Amazon property is feeding context to FB.

<comment><USER46> Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I wanted to do this test, I just happened to do it by accident this morning -- using a very similar term as the writer of the parent post, he said he mentioned Scion, I mentioned another major car brand that starts with S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think that one should consider the possibility of FB group indirectly accessing this data.

They don't have to collect information only directly from their FB/Instagram/WhatsApp apps: what they can do is buy information from other companies that publish thousands of "free" apps on appstores.

You have to wonder how so many of these free apps seem to sustain themselves since GDN advertising does not seem to be profitable enough.

FB group should be obligated to disclose whether they are buying information from these kinds of third parties.

More importantly they should disclose whether the price they pay is illogical, effectively making them silent partners in an indirect scheme to access your camera/mic information, while at the same time maintaining the allegation that "we do not access your mic through our apps".

<comment><USER38> They buy the info from massive data brokers, who buy data from other large and small data brokers, who buy the data from app makers, services, etc. firstname.lastname@example.com expressed interest in buying kitty litter isn't exactly sensitive information so there's probably not much in the way of auditable logs maintained, probably impossible to determine the original provenance of the data in many cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The notion that Facebook is secretly recording your microphone is beyond idiotic and shows how ignorant the general population is (and consequently how vulnerable). It is the fantasy of an aspiring but untalented screenwriter.

Facebook isn't spying on your microphone because they don't have to. They know enough about you to monetize the shit out of you from things that are out in the open. When the populace trusts Facebook and Google with nearly their entire digital lives, and the DOJ lets these giants acquire the rest without a fight, why would they need to resort to clumsy subterfuge?

</comment><comment><USER51> I think people really underestimate the power of ad retargeting and advertising analytics. Take in some location information and cross-reference it with friends lists and their product searches and you can explain 90% of these occurrences without voice data.

</comment><comment><USER52> > Data brokers run personal information through an algorithm before uploading > so it's not identifiable, Facebook says, but it still can be matched with > Facebook account information.

You keep using that word...

<comment><USER45> Well, if you had known what you were looking for you would have seen it written on my dorm room window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ghostery found 39 trackers on that article. The irony is strong today.

<comment><USER54> Doesn't Ghostery sell data to advertisers too?

<comment><USER18> Privacy Badger is a good alternative.

<comment><USER55> I use uBlock on safari but that's it. Can you recommend an alternative to Privacy Badger (or a trustworthy implementation[0]) that works on Safari? HTTPS everywhere and PB are not supported.

[0] Some company called softtonic has a "Privacy Badger" branded extension but I am skeptical about downloading from an unofficial source.

<comment><USER56> DuckDuckGo's extension maybe? [https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy- simplified/](https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy-simplified/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Full article here:

[http://archive.is/dghhy](http://archive.is/dghhy)

<comment><USER58> The real MVP is always in the comments

<comment><USER57> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Obligatory link: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121962391804567765](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121962391804567765)

Key quote (from 1999 - Scott McNealy): "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

Darn - I hate when they're right.

</comment><comment><USER60> In my humble opinion, we are missing something here. I am not a Facebook user since a long time. But something really interesting happens whenever me or my girlfriend are talking about a particular product.

She gets related ads in the web wherever she goes. She has Facebook installed in the phone while I don't.

But the interesting thing is that this is not happening to me. Never. I do not get ads for scuba diving suits if we speak about it. She does. How can we explain this?

<comment><USER61> Does she scuba dive as well? Or she may have possibly mentioned that you scuba dive in a message to a friend? Or somebody posted a photo of you related to scuba diving without you knowing?

<comment><USER60> We don't scuba dive. But some people in her family does... Now it kind of makes sense. _Removes tinfoil hat_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Am I alone in not really caring about my privacy that much? I understand many people care about theirs, and I fully respect their right to their privacy. With that said, I could care less how much data Google/Facebook acquire on me. For now, all it is for more targeted advertisements.

My tune would obviously change if that data were used in more malicious ways. But as long as it is advertising targets, I personally don't care.

<comment><USER63> My question is whether I am alone in actually caring very much about my privacy.

I don't consider myself to be paranoid, but I have never been willing to share details of my life with strangers. I recognize that any online activity is subject to surveillance, but I do what I can to minimize sharing that. There's a lot you can do along those lines, with really fairly minimal effort -- though I consider "minimal" to include not having a facebook account and not having any photos of myself on the internet, for example, which I know from having these conversations in the past is for many people some insurmountable hurdle.

Anyway, why would I want strangers to know the details of my personal preferences and tastes? There's no benefit to sharing it as far as I can tell. That is what has always stumped me when people say they don't care about their privacy.

<comment><USER38> Not just online activity. Bank/credit card transactions. Utility/tax information. Postal information. Subscriptions to anything. DMV records. A detailed profile of you is for sale to anyone who cares to pay. Probably less detailed than most people, since you're careful, but enough to be spooky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> As my meatspace identity, I don't worry about this stuff very much. Indeed, it would be an identifier for me to do so. In meatspace, I'm just a regular guy. Mirimir, he's the privacy freak.

Anything that I want to keep private, I do as a compartmentalized persona. Separate hardware. Separate LAN. Separate Internet connection path. No overlapping Internet activity or interests.

<comment><USER65> Hell yeah, OPSEC!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I uninstalled FB from my phone because it cut the battery life in one third, even if not used at all. One can imagine how busy it was behind the curtain to need all these joules...

</comment><comment><USER67> So I was trying to remember the buff old guy from Avatar, Stephen Lang. Once I found him, I noticed that I am suddenly being recommended videos on YouTube that include him.

Okeydokey, machine-learning, moving on.

</comment><comment><USER68> I've disabled auto update for all apps on my android. However, Facebook and Messenger still updates automatically. This itself raises suspicion of Facebook's control over my phone.

<comment><USER69> 1\. Some big features in Facebook/Messenger already exist in the app, and are just enabled/disabled remotely. This is pretty common in most big apps, it's how they can control rollouts. For example, the Snapchat design update: not everyone got it at the same time because the code was living in the app and they gradually enabled it for each user.

2\. Wouldn't surprise me if part of the app were heavily reliant on things that can be updated remotely. Chunks of big apps will sometimes be just views fetching some web components. Facebook created React Native, and iirc it can be updated dynamically, like a web site.

When you have lots of people working on an app you have a high probability of introducing bugs. I worked at a company that shipped a faulty update; it looked OK to users, but it was essentially DDoS-ing the servers. Having to wait for the App Store to approve your app to fix things like that is annoying and costly, so people tend to look for alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> "How to limit the amount of data Facebook and advertisers are collecting about you"

on wsj.com privacy badger and ublock origin go apeshit..

</comment><comment><USER71> [http://archive.is/iCnWG](http://archive.is/iCnWG) non paywalled link.

<comment><USER72> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I have suspicion that at least instagram is listening. I started saying words that I've never looked up for in the past, nor have I ever saw an ad related to them like 'dog walker', 'babies'.. and over the course of minutes I started seeing ads for both. Not sure how to explain this.

</comment><comment><USER74> > Facebook works directly with six data brokers, all of which allow you to opt > out from their sharing of your personal data, everything from your email to > your purchase history.

And that sort of explains everything.

I kept wondering how the info that keep to the Google-verse (search, Gmail) makes it to Facebook. Now I know.

Does it mean that Google collaborates with these data brokers? While it doesn't harm them directly, it seems like a myopic thing to do, arming a company that may undercut your sole major source of income. Yes, I imagine they take it directly from the device, but doesn't Google have control over the Android internals?

Also, I am in somewhat unique position. Being a Microsoft zealot, I still carry a Windows phone (v8.1) with slowly dying services. I almost don't use Facebook yet I still get these too relevant ads, mostly according to what I google on my desktop.

<comment><USER75> How much use do you make of Bing, if you don't mind me asking? Is it a case of mainly using it (as you are a Microsoft fan) but occasionally needing to refer to a Google search?

<comment><USER74> I am more used to Google which I use on the desktop, but when on the phone, I use both interchangeably.

When it comes to the US and global content, there is virtually no difference in the results. Google is much better in the local content and the knowledge graph results though, as well as the maps. Video search is better in Bing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> It's simply impossible for FB to record audio.

When I worked in the OEM industry, there were rigorous standards and compliances that had to be met to ship our phones. If an app was invoking audio recording without the proper permissions, this would be a huge red flag. Google would never approve the phone to be shipped as it would be breaking their CDD.

Also, if audio data was being transmitted using some obscure APN that does not use mobile data or Wi-Fi, OEMs could still easily detect these from the modem side, no matter how encrypted the data is. After all, the app is still JUST an app, in the system folder with all the other apps like Candy Crush. Unless this specific audio recording feature was built into the Android framework, I will say it is 100% impossible.

Note: this is just for Android. I have no idea how iOS works.

<comment><USER77> > It's simply impossible for FB to record audio.

You should check your sources again - that statement is false.... You only have to look at the release notes from the dev preview on Android P today to see that was possible for any background app to access the camera and microphone at _any_ time:

[https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior- changes.html#...](https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior- changes.html#all-apps)

> Android P strengthens privacy by limiting the ability of background apps to > access user input and sensor data. If your app is running in the background > on a device running Android P, the system applies the following restrictions > to your app: Your app cannot access the microphone or camera.

<comment><USER76> It says that apps in the "background" cannot access user input and sensor data. This means that even if the app gains permission in the foreground, it won't have access when the app is running in the background.

Note that this use case was extremely rare anyway, but I know Google did this simply to ease people's minds (I know several people on the Android framework team).

<comment><USER77> Ooops, I misread your message. You are stating they can't access your microphone without the permission - I'm not refuting that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> For all the perhaps unfounded paranoia here and elsewhere, still yet to see a major manufacturer offer hardware camera/mic switches.

Call me cynical but surely there's some top-down pressure about adding a simple $0.07 component to $1000+ devices.

</comment><comment><USER79> Step 1: don't use Android. Step 2: don't use smartphones at all. Step 3: black-hole FB and others at your router at home.

I personally skip step 2 because I'm addicted to being able to quickly search for things, read blogs. But even so: a) don't login to any websites, b) clear website data often, c) minimize use of apps, d) recall that when you browse the web from an app you're using the same cookie jar and other state as the main browser, and that you're letting the app track you.

<comment><USER80> I think this is the exact opposite approach to take, it is a cat and mouse game to avoid being tracked, and you will always be the mouse.

If anything, go out of your way to ruin the creepy tracking, analytics and bullshit metrics. Add as much noise as possible to their databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Signed up for Facebook Workplace trial and let it expire. They've now shared our details with third party implantation consultants who are approaching us. Not great.

<comment><USER82> I know that's a typo, but let this comment age a few years and it may not be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I work at Google and I'm a long time hobbyist Android developer. I have a lot of non-technical friends ask me about this.

What I always say is that this would not be possible. To constantly listen for audio, process it, and upload the results would use so much data and battery that you'd notice. Only a plugged in laptop/desktop could get away with this.

Am I wrong? Would it even be technically feasible for Facebook to listen all the time?

<comment><USER84> "OK Google" seems to handle it.

<comment><USER83> I'm pretty sure it's optimized to listen for a single hotword and then initiate the network connection to process what comes next.

What people accuse Facebook of doing would require constant processing of the audio stream for random interesting tokens. Either process on device and then send metadata (more battery, less network) or send the raw stream and process on the server (less battery, more network).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I have an android 6, from archos, which is relatively clean in term of vendor layer.

I regularly go in the storage part of apps, and despite the fact that I don't use many apps, they still manage to generate megabytes of data, which are not clean by the "clean cache" functionality.

I'm not using it for texts and calls, I only use it with wifi, but still, I have low trust in the android ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER86> NetGuard [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.ne...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.netguard) allows for blocking traffic for apps per-domain and per-app.

AFWall [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.ukanth.ufi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.ukanth.ufirewall) patches iptables to block domains used by apps that are not allowed network access.

I did Android QA for a VPN/Proxy app. Had to benchmark battery usage and verify that we upgraded to SPDY properly. A lot of rooting, and tcpdumping. Eventually we got a WiFi network set up by sysadmins that mirrored traffic to one Ethernet socket. Plugged it in on a local SSH-accessible machine and I could tcpdump the whole WiFi traffic without fiddling with devices.

Facebook and Instagram are awful network hogs. Both send a lot of packets every 5-10s when the screen is on to Facebooks tracking domains.

I removed both and haven't looked back since I saw that.

Google and other tracking companies of course are not better, hence the apps mentioned at the top.

This is not a viable solution long-term though. They will find ways to eventually circumvent these restrictions.

Now I'm thinking about setting up the same thing I had at work at home, just to see what kind of crap goes through my network daily.

You're on Windows 10? Guess what Microsoft does. Install Wireshark and check for yourself how much MS domain hits you get. Not to mention HTTP traffic from random apps and/or websites that circumvent privacy protection domain lists.

The implication here is that you're the product but not for that company or another. You're for all of them, ISP included. The more crap leaks on your network the more they know and sell.

As a side note, I have no idea why DNS traffic still goes in pretty much plaintext...

Have you heard about tracking data exchanges?

The overall problem is that everyone is spying on you on multiple levels because there's money to be made on profiling. Facebook just grabs the headlines. Apps listening to you are scary but the fact is you don't have to speak to be heard by them.

</comment><comment><USER87> Am I alone in being horrified by the reality that many people today consume most if not all of their news and entertainment holding a camera and microphone on proprietary communication systems running software controlled by the same entities producing the content?

How is this not the greatest threat to democracy in the entire history of democracy?

<comment><USER88> It's just another step in the long slow boiling of the pot. The mass media already are nearly uniform in their interpretation of events with the exception of how they inflame cultural grievance. The American public is the most heavily propagandized in the world.

[https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/no-there-will-not-be- any-...](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/no-there-will-not-be-any-civil- war-in-america-e7b76b9d8e09)

Edit: removed a section of this comment because it seemed too much to me.

<comment><USER89> > Here's an example of someone that has encased himself inside of corporate > propaganda so completely that it physically surrounds him at work, at home, > and even his inner thoughts:

Interesting piece, but was the rent of that place $4800 per month? How does that make any sense?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> This is why I like Caffè Nero's loyalty cards. They are little pieces of cardstock with nine coffee cups printed on them. You get a stamp every time you order. Once all nine cups are stamped, redeem the card for a free coffee. There's no PII on the card and your name isn't going through an additional computer (on top of the standard 17 a day, per Cereal Killer).

More places should do this.

<comment><USER91> This is the kebab shop business model in Europe, is it really that rare to find simple loyalty cards with stamps where you live (assuming USA)?

<comment><USER90> This is the USA we're talking about, where if an unethical way to wring out more dollars doesn't have a law explicitly forbidding it (and there are laughably few such laws here), it WILL be used against you.

I know of a few places that have simple stamp loyalty cards. Oftentimes they are mom and pop shops, or chains still finding their footing. Most cards are electronic and want a name and phone number associated with them.

<comment><USER92> App loyalty cards, while still having some information on you, are largely about large merchants (ie starbucks) avoiding credit card interchange fees by giving rewards for people who load money to the app and purchase from there.

So, all incentives are not against consumers. The merchants avoid the credit card oligopoly fee and pass on the rewards to consumers.

<comment><USER93> Avoiding a credit card processing fee could be done the same with with a punch card.

<comment><USER92> By having a punch card and forcing customers to use cash? While cash is making a come back in many places, there are still plenty of potential customers who would not buy if cash was required.

<comment><USER93> I wasn't aware a punch card was "cash-only".

<comment><USER92> At this point I think I am unaware what a punch card is. I was assuming a card that gets punched each time you visit a place, and after N punches you get an item for free. Is that right or totally off?

<comment><USER93> Lol! Yes. I think we're both confused. Let's just leave it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> GNU founder Stallman has a big page with many other reasons against using Facebook. You should read it too.. [https://stallman.org/facebook.html](https://stallman.org/facebook.html)

</comment><comment><USER95> It seems to be pretty basic. They access the photos within the photo library and the location of the device(both of which you've most likely granted Facebook to access).

FB then cross reference with any other devices nearby and any identified objects within the photos are cross referenced with their ad inventory.

</comment><comment><USER96> I find it hard to take this article without a truckload of salt, given the Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp.

Murdoch has money to make by gaining leverage over FB.

I haven't had a Facebook account in almost 4 years and I block their traffic on my router, so I have no love for them. But I seriously doubt this story's motives.

<comment><USER97> FWIW (admitedly not very much, anecdotally from another rando HNer) The newsroom side of the Journal is among the vanguard of quality journalism and has largely remainined that way post-Murdoch. The editorial pages on the other hand are extremely opinionated and seemingly in a completely different reality than the newsroom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> On desktop I use a custom hosts file redirecting all facebook and instagram traffic to localhost. Can the same be done on my iphone?

A "like" or "instagram this" widget is all they need to track basically everything you do even if you don't have fb.

</comment><comment><USER99> Already said a few months ago: [https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks- listening-smartphone-m...](https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening- smartphone-microphone)

</comment><comment><USER100> I find it amazing that people even notice. I don't have an ad blocker on all my browsers, and except for YouTube and interstitial ads that Chrome will soon block, most ads are simply not registered by my brain.

<comment><USER101> Are you sure? Everyone says that they are "immune" to advertising (or propaganda), and yet here we are where the collective result shows that it works, surprisingly well too. Another theory could be that people just get the causal order wrong:

ad display => subconscious influence, nudge => eventual product purchase, mention etc => recognized ad => spooky feeling

<comment><USER100> Yes. I know it works. Why would these companies spend so much money if it was not. And in addition they have good metrics to know which campaigns work. But this flies in the face of my personal experience... Aside from YouTube, I can't remember when was the last time I saw and ad and what it was. Must have been weeks ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> > I keyed in my phone number so I could get loyalty points.

Do this: lie. 234-567-8901 works at a lot of US stores. Sometimes you can even use it for gas discounts.

<comment><USER93> I prefer 867-5309.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> What is Facebook going to do about GDPR?

</comment><comment><USER104> Honest question:

If this behavior disturbs us so much, why does anyone continue using Facebook?

<comment><USER105> I'd suggest it's because 'us' is a very small, and not exactly unbiased, sample of 'anyone'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I just revoked the location permission on android, facebooks app still works fine

</comment><comment><USER107> I wish they would disable distractions while driving.

<comment><USER108> It's really too easy to tap the "I'm not driving" button. We have a global cell-phone-use-while-driving epidemic going on that's taking way too many innocent lives. I wish tech companies would start sharing phone use data while driving. That's when people will start to care about the lives of others and the rule of law, the moment they see their premiums going up things will get better rather quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> The only "app" I use to access Facebook and other social media is a well locked down browser. IMHO if you use apps, then your a schmuck and a sitting duck ;-) :-)

</comment><comment><USER110> Similar Guardian article with no paywall: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook- spying-on-you-microphone-creepy-data-conspiracy-theories)

That said, this is a quite silly conspiracy theory. Believing the "recording" theory requires you to believe that Apple and Google both are in cahoots with Facebook to give them a rootkit-like API for mic and location access that override all of the OS-level controls and warnings about when that hardware is in use, and hide it from the data and battery usage stats on the phone.

This API, when (not if) found, would be a watershed moment for privacy legislation directed at all three companies. Little to gain, potentially the whole farm to lose.

<comment><USER111> > requires you to believe that Apple and Google both are in cahoots with > Facebook to give them a rootkit-like API for mic and location access that > override all of the OS-level controls and warnings about when that hardware > is in use, and hide it from the data and battery usage stats on the phone.

You mean like when they gave Uber special access to grab screenshots even when the Uber app wasn't running? Yeah, totally impossible to believe.

<comment><USER110> You mean the access that had a completely legitimate reason to be used and was trivially located by way of reading the app's manifest files?

<comment><USER111> I don't know of any access to record my screen that I didn't authorize that is legitimate, so you must be talking about something different.

<comment><USER110> Let's can the snark. That access was only ever used for screen rendering for a flagship app on a flagship device, temporarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Any other source or way to get around the WSJ paywall?

<comment><USER113> The best way to get around the WSJ paywall is to subscribe to the WSJ

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> Paywall?!

I assume they are doing it through toilet cams.

Is this a rehash of the Reply All episode?

[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook- spying](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying)

</comment><comment><USER115> 1) FB doesn't listen to you. 2) Why are people getting so upset for seeing relevant ads? Ads is what pays for many of the services we use for free, would you rather see obnoxious irrelevant ads?

<comment><USER116> In my experience most targeted ads are both creepy and irrelevant. It's quite an achievement. After shopping for custom USB keys online I saw custom USB key ads for _months_. Long after I had already found a supplier for them. The experience is not unlike being followed around a mall by a really pushy salesman after you glance at a toaster; because now he thinks all you want to buy is more toasters.

If you bring this up with someone who works in adtech, the stock response is that we need even _more_ tracking to fix it. It's like the adtech version of "no true Scotsman".

Edit: That's not to mention what a huge waste of money this must be for the client buying this ad space. After ordering something from an Adafruit-like electronics shop, I saw ads for them around the web for quite a while. Often trying to sell me the very thing I had just ordered.

How did I find them in the first place? Second or third page on Google search.

<comment><USER117> It's like there's an assumption of increasing marginal utility...</comment></comment></comment>