Why Google + Will Win - <AUTHOR> http://m.garrettamini.com/2011/07/why-google-will-win/ It's been one day, and I'm sold. <comment><USER3> You know, if all these different social networks just worked towards an open, federated protocol, we wouldn't have to play this game every few years.

<comment><USER4> Why is everyone being downvoted in this thread? On HN, "I disagree" != "I downvote".

<comment><USER5> Excuse the question; I've been on here for a couple months now and there isn't a down arrow on the website UI at all. I've tried a few android apps and they have down arrows but I wasn't really sure if they actually worked since points are hidden from view. Is downvoting just not possible without a greasemonkey script, but its still enabled on the server or is there something I'm missing?

<comment><USER3> You don't get a downvote arrow until your karma hits a certain level.

<comment><USER5> Ah thanks; that makes sense. I haven't felt any particular desire to downvote anything on HN anyway, I was just curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Time and time again we see Google make the same mistakes. They are tone-deaf as to why Facebook is successful.

Sure, circles will get plenty of usage in the Bay Area, where the people who built it probably felt if only they could build this one extra feature then people would come flocking to them away from Facebook. But this misses the point.

Nobody on Facebook, other than techno-geeks, have been clamoring for this. Are you the type of person who would consider deleting your Facebook account? You're probably also the type of person that will be interested in Circles. But, you also are the type of person that, unlike 99.99% of the rest of the population, can comprehend having a social life without Facebook being the glue.

Facebook is cool. Facebook gets people laid and lets you participate in more debauchery online once you have stumbled home drunk from the bar. It doesn't feel like a hospital room or a bathroom, it feels like a party.

If Google wants a chance to usurp Facebook's dominance, it needs to do so under a different brand. Repeat after me: the Google brand will never be as cool as Facebook.

More importantly though, it needs to figure out what Facebook is missing. No, Circles are not what Facebook is missing. There's certainly _something_ that Facebook is missing, that the cool kids would want, but odds are whatever it is wouldn't pass the smell test of the type of things Google would consider building.

Imagine you are at a party. It's fun, the music is good, there is booze, and the people are good looking. What's missing? Google's response would be: "The music is hard to hear, we should upgrade the speakers." Facebook's response would be: "cocaine."

The reason Facebook has come up to where they are, after all, stems from the big brass balls they've had for pushing up against the standards of privacy and even decency held by society today, something Google has never and will never be able to (or should want to) do in return. This is why Google will keep fumbling around trying to "out-innovate" Facebook, and will fail again and again in spectacular ways. It's sad, but endearing.

<comment><USER7> Is that why your mom uses Facebook? Because it's so extreme, debauched, and envelope-pushing?

<comment><USER6> The generation that matters isn't my mom's or my own for that matter. It's my younger brother's. And, yes.

<comment><USER8> I don't know why you're being downvoted since what you speak is the truth, but have an upvote.

Anyone who thinks the average person is going to start using Google+ instead of Facebook is delusional at best.

Just listen to those Google+ introductory videos. Who the hell talks like that? Friends being worth your time -- what? "Adding people to your life"? Are these people real?

Here's the real deal: Google+ is sterile and lacks originality -- it's just Buzz and GTalk with a new uninspired interface.

Being able to group people in circles with JS animation is only exciting to geeks. No one else gets off on contact/group management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My reason why Google+ will fail. No one but the technorati will care.

(this sounds snarky but I'm quite serious)

Everyone seems to think Circles is a game changer, I'm not so sure. While it seems like a considerable improvement over managing lists in Facebook, I really don't believe that people like my mom really care enough for this to combat the network effect that Facebook already has.

Similarly this is the _only thing_ Facebook does. How long will it take them to steal any innovative interface ideas G+ has? Can Google really stay ahead of Facebook in this space?

<comment><USER10> There is a lot of things that Facebook won't do that Google+ can do. The reason managing friends lists in Facebook is so god-awfull is because Facebook wants it to be. There is also several other interface eccentricities put there to make the site harder to use in certain ways. The reason for this is to protect their user data and make it hard to corrupt or hide it and make it easy to expose it and add to it.

The bottom line is Google+ will probably serve ads programmatically, leveraging AdWords and other similar automated technolgies within the company. Facebook has nothing like this, it sells its user data to 3rd parties who could be doing anything with that data.

<comment><USER11> I'd just like to correct that last point.

Facebook doesn't sell any data about its users.

<comment><USER10> You are delusional. _any_ data? Facebook doesn't sell _any_ user data? Not only do they sell user metrics, they sell actuall user generated content.

<comment><USER11> They don't sell any data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The cool argument is the wrong way to go with why Google+ will fail. The real value that Facebook provides is information. Free and open information about anyone and while some people view this as an invasion of privacy they are kidding themselves. The reason Facebook has become so addictive is because of the things you can find out about people, different people who aren't necessarily your friends. I understand that people have this idea that they only want to share things with their friends and there is an easy and simple way to do that on Facebook, only add your friends. In reality we don't want to or really we don't mind that people who aren't our closest friends know the things about us we put on Facebook. Facebook's lack of "privacy" is its most valuable asset not only to their own business model but to their user base as well. As someone in another comment said its the college kids that push the adoption of sites like this and from my own perspective and that of people I know, Facebook's privacy issues have never been the big deal they are portrayed as by the media. Google+ is shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on creating "real friendships" and closed information circles because in reality the reason many people like Facebook is because of the openness it inspires.

A feature that I've seen a lot of the media cover as well, Hangouts, is one that while useful in certain situations I think displays how Google is missing the overall concept of social networking. Hangouts is a great feature if you're in a pinch and need to for some reason host a multi-person video chat but so is oovoo, another group video chatting fad. Its a feature that while nice is not a hook for many people and really doesn't relate to the overall theme of social networking. Social networking's goal is not to create the most realistic online portrayal of your life. It's really, from the perspective of the company, to make managing your network of friends easier and make connecting with them easier and more efficient. Video chatting is not the most efficient way to manage these relationships and is not a unique way to conduct it either as there are many video chatting services that are widely adopted such as Skype. While video is still an important part of our lives with streaming content and live broadcasts, in the sense of the video chatting it is more closely relatable to the phone call which we all know is not favored today like the text message. Which should tell Google something, we as consumers don't want "real relationships" on our social networking site. We want like the text message to have our social network be an efficient and fast way of sharing information, something Facebook has mastered.

Overall Google+ does not bring a bad platform as much as it brings an unnecessary platform to the table. Could there be a cult following by older people who want to strictly share content with their family members? Possibly but more likely than not I see this idea getting a long for a while on its Google name and then folding. The best application I see for Google+ would be a simple collaboration tool for small businesses through the use of group chat and video chat along with the rest of Google Apps.

</comment><comment><USER13> > If you already have a gmail account, you will soon have a G+ account.

But what is the penetration of Gmail? 200 million users? Every one of them could fully embrace Google+ and they still wouldn't have 1/4 of the userbase of Facebook.

For this reason I think point #4 should have been listed:

4\. Android - Nearly every Android phone owner ends up with a Google account and, we can expect, in the near future that will also mean having the Google+ app prominently positioned and well integrated. At 500k handsets a day this growth rate alone will give Google+ a huge leg up.

<comment><USER14> > _"But what is the penetration of Gmail? 200 million users? Every one of them > could fully embrace Google+ and they still wouldn't have 1/4 of the userbase > of Facebook."_

Network effects and critical mass. It's hard to launch a brand new social network because people have a high impedance to creating an account on anything.

If 200 million people created a G+ account, how many _non_ GMail users will follow simply because their GMail-toting friends are on this newfangled thing?

Facebook launched from an initial pool of users that's far smaller (just Harvard) - IMO Google's way of breaking the chicken and egg user-signup problem is pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> To me, G+ feels a lot like the launch of Google Buzz. Technologist rushed in, Robert Scoble, Leo Laport, and Jason Calacanis immediately had thousands of followers. Each of there posts received two hundred comments but most non- techie users didn't get sucked in as much. Sure Google Buzz had a botched launched and a slew of privacy issues but those were not the only problems it had in attracting users attention.

Circles is cool but people already have difficulties with private direct messages. Also, people don't want to curate lists.

</comment><comment><USER16> "For a social network, MySpace was incredibly introverted"

Not sure I agree with this. In my experience there was a lot more friending of strangers on MySpace. It was sleazier.

</comment><comment><USER17> "In the beginning there was myspace" - not really. In the beginning, there was LiveJournal. And Friendster.

<comment><USER18> Pah, in my day we'd just email stuff to huge copy-and-pasted lists of the email addresses of everyone we knew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Facebook already has circles. They're called friend lists. Adding UI sugar to make circles (if people actually wanted them) would be nearly trivial. For instance:

<http://www.circlehack.com/>

<comment><USER20> True as far as it goes, but I think more imporantly, it's instructive to consider which company _did_ it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My experience with G+ is a lot like Google Wave. It was fun for 20 minutes, then the novelty wore off and I found it cumbersome. For example Circles... my father has 3 e-mail addresses, and I need to add them ALL to the Family circle, thus duplicating him 3 times.

With facebook, individuals are one-to-one, but on G+ it is possible for them to be one-to-many.

As much as I hate to say, I'd rather use what I already have, and what all my friends have... facebook.

<comment><USER22> My experience with Google Plus is also like my experience with Google Wave but in a different way -- I think the service is very cool but the "slow trickle" invite system is making it mostly useless to me (what's the point of a social network when hardly anyone you know in real life is on it?).

If this plays out like Wave, by the time a critical mass of people I'm interested in interacting with are on the service I'll have lost interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For all the "circles" flying around, when I first heard about it I figured I'd be able to do some set-theoryish organizing via venn diagrams. But I can't.

Maybe I want to send a message to my "friends" circle except not this friend in that circle, and maybe I don't want a new circle for that new group but just for that message (or maybe I do want a new circle on the fly like that called "friends minus person" or "true friends" or something). Maybe I want to send a message to everyone who is in my friends group and my schoolmates group, but not people who are just in one or the other. etc.

And the feedback button on the circles page is stuck on "analyzing the page" so I have to come and post here. Edit: Looks like that was caused by a script blocked by noscript.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sums it all up pretty well. The solution for Facebook is probably what Facebook will do anyway. But it won't work. You can't just patch up disruption onto your old technology/business model. You have to start from scratch to compete, and that's something Facebook can do, which is the beauty of all disruptions.

I know Google+ doesn't exactly look like a disruptive innovation at first sight, but more like a direct competitor to Facebook, but if Circles _re- defines_ the game, then that pretty much means it's a disruption and it will take the path of that all disruptive innovations take, which is to _replace_ the incumbent (gradually).

<comment><USER5> The thing is that Facebook is likely implementing literally everything that is on Google+ right now. If they launch every feature they have before Google+ goes public then the only advantages that Google can possibly maintain is integration with their other products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While Google has made mistakes (I am still sore about them dropping Wave - <USER2> liked the Robot APIs + AppEngine) I agree with the author that supporting multiple groups (circles) is what most people want. I don't want my family to have to sift through computer science stuff, my technical friends to have to wade through my latest hiking pictures that now are just visible to my hiking circle - etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> The design of Google+ is nice, but it has its issues. For one, how do I figure out which of these people is my girlfriend? <http://i.imgur.com/V843H.png>

<comment><USER27> I completely agree that you shouldn't have to hover over the cards to figure out what email address they are associating with each card. That's a huge blunder.

<comment><USER26> Actually, hovering doesn't reveal the email address in this case. I only see the "Sharing via email only" text, and I can't quite work out what determines whether or not I see an email address, some descriptive text (Google Talk? Google Profiles?), or nothing at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> good read.

after all this talk about who will win, though, why don't we all just use what's best for us :) can they both exist simultaneously? i don't know, but if enough people like each of them, then why not?

</comment><comment><USER29> Reason why none of that matters now: Zynga's crack-like games.

2008: You sign up for Facebook and are immediately bored. Then you discover pokes and inane surveys, and have some fun once a few friends are signed up.

2011: Facebook entertainment has become Zynga's click-slave crack-code, and that's what brings in the 'normals'.

Google+ is where Facebook was in 2008, but without the fun.

These are the first questions I had upon signing up to Google+, and to my knowledge they are unanswered:

* Where are my friends?

* How do I bring over my contacts from Facebook? (the Facebook --> Yahoo --> Google+ thing was ridiculous)

* What can I do for fun?

Google+ has exactly the same problem that almost every other Google product has had: its value isn't immediately apparent. It's amazingly opaque for a product that people hope will dethrone Facebook. Add to that the fact that there are none of the 'fun' things that Facebook has, and I fail to see how this is any sort of competition.

<comment><USER18> _Where are my friends?_

They seem to be showing up one by one.

 _How do I bring over my contacts from Facebook? (the Facebook -- > Yahoo --> Google+ thing was ridiculous)_

Ah, but that's exactly what I _don't_ want to do. I want to start over with a friends list that contains people I actually like and am comfortable sharing stuff with, rather than a sundry collection of people I met twice plus folks I sorta-knew at high school plus ex-girlfriends I can't bring myself to defriend.

 _What can I do for fun?_

So far it's mostly "talk to my friends". And that's not too bad!

Right now, G+ seems like a more "grown-up" place than facebook. If the market segments so that twenty-and-thirty-something professional types are primarily using G+ and facebook remains the hangout of choice for cow-clicking high schoolers and their grandparents then I'm fine with that.</comment></comment>


Rocket Lab gets NASA certification for official smallsat launches - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/rocket-lab-gets-nasa-certification-for-official-smallsat-launches/ <comment><USER2> I've been a fan of Rocket Lab since they started, but desperately wanted them to build a reusable rocket. A quick check on Wikipedia shows that they are in fact working on this! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab) (even if using a parachute/helicopter and not direct full, rapid, reusability, it's something)

<comment><USER3> It's just not in the same direction they are trying to push things. Landing hardware is extra mass and with the payload fraction they can actually launch with their rocket's small size it just doesn't really make much sense to land the rockets under their own power a la SpaceX.

<comment><USER4> They are going to catch them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rocket Lab regularly streams their launches on YouTube, check it out:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/RocketLabNZ](https://www.youtube.com/user/RocketLabNZ)

While they are currently a leader for smallsat launches, they've got some competition ramping up.

Exciting times!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing the YouTube channel! My daughter has been really into watching rocket launches and we have run out of SpaceX videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my best friends has worked there for years. Crazy hours, but he loves what he does. Go NZ!

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome!

Now looking forward to them catching their rockets with helicopters!

</comment><comment><USER9> Go kiwis!</comment>


Just Manic Enough, Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html?hp=&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> The article focuses on the founder's Hypomania, but here's the elephant in the room that no-one's talking about:

Quote:

"But it is hard to tease out what Norman and Suzanne Priebatsch — a biotech entrepreneur and a financial adviser at SmithBarney, respectively — bequeathed ..."

His parents, who were successful in their fields, took the effort to groom him from childhood. Nurture is definitely at least as important as nature in this case, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that this highlights (perhaps an extreme example of) what is expected by founders. To be workaholics, sacrifice social life, home life, hobbies etc in order to build their companies.

While it's obvious that a lot of people do this and succeed it's not something that I'm sure other people want to do, it's certainly not something that I want to do. While others may see this of lack of commitment and consider me a non-serious business person, I don't.

I want to build a successful business that makes all the other stuff in my life better, more resources, more fun, more people to meet etc, but maybe that makes me a bad investment to VCs.

<comment><USER4> It's a little strange to see social-networking startups founded by people who seem to have relatively little interest in social life (including the 800-lb gorilla in the market).

<comment><USER5> It probably makes more sense if you think of people as the product being sold and not as the customers being sold to. Then again, I'm not sure that the people involved would like to be thought of in that way...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We all have to be a _little bit_ broken to do this, when we could sleepwalk our way to six figures at an insurance company and be done at five.

<comment><USER7> My great-to-the-nth grandpappy didn't claw his slimy tetrapod ass out of the Devonian sea just so his no-good descendants could sit in a cube playing Farmville all day!

<comment><USER8> And yet, we have the same great-to-the-nth grandpappy as every other human on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the book titled "The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun-

"The talent for taking two unrelated concepts and finding connections between them is called associative ability. Persons with low associative barriers may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experience or that cannot easily be traced logically. Read that last sentence again: it's indistinguishable from various definitions of insanity. The tightrope between being strange and being creative is too narrow to walk without without occasionally landing on both sides, explaining why so many great minds are lampooned as eccentrics. Their willingness to try seemingly illogical ideas or to make connections others struggle to see invariably leads to judgement (and perhaps putting some truth to stereo types of mad scientists and unpredictable artists.) Developing new ideas requires questions and approaches that most people wont understand initially, which leaves many true innovators at the risk of becoming lonely, misunderstood characters."

<comment><USER10> I think the difference between creativity and insanity is that the former has lots of ideas and hates all of them, and the second can't help but fall in love with every last one.

<comment><USER11> I see the difference between creativity and insanity as a function of society. If a given society sees the connections as useful, it's creative. If instead, society cannot make sense of the connections, it's insanity.

As an analogy, mentally challenged children were seen as cursed in ancient Sparta and were routinely put to death. On the other hand, Mayan culture viewed mentally challenged children as "divine gifts," and the children could easily rise to positions of religious prominence and status in adulthood.

It's less a matter of the individual than how that individual can fit into society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> was anyone else thinking of jesse schell's presentation of a gamelisted world when reading this? (link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FSsztwbRW0> )

i wonder if i get more points for cooking a burrito myself.

<comment><USER13> Yes! I knew I heard this idea somewhere before...

I like games. Lots of people do. But it's always the innovative, creative, never-been-done-before games that are the most fun. The common games can be addicting, but I wouldn't necessarily say satisfying.

The concept of corporations designing games for people to play sounds like a more organized and centralized version of what they are already doing. My credit cards give me points, the local Japanese fast food restaurant has a frequent buyer program, and grocery stores give me discounts if I agree to give up information about what I eat.

In general, I don't like these games. I am not going to alter my spending habits just to get 250 more BankPoints. If they give me points anyways, I will of course cash them in, but I don't like the feeling of being manipulated by large corporations via a game.

On the other hand, the companies seem to love it. I haven't seen any data, but considering how popular these 'games' are, they must work. And if they work by themselves, imagine how much better they will work when they're consolidated into a a website, which catches on like a fad and all the cool kids use it. Once the cool factor wears off, the industry has already been transformed to run all games on the defacto gaming website (SCVNGR in this case). So there's really no down-side for companies, and customers will think they're getting even better deals than they used to, because now it's just so easy to play games -- rack up points, earn achievements, get discounts.

I don't look forward to the days foretold by Jesse Schell, but it feels inevitable. The people who like playing corporate consumerism games today will be thrilled to take it to the next level on a popular website where companies are constantly trying to drum up more 'fun' (spend more, save more). I'll try it out, like I try out most new tech, but I'm not expecting to have much fun.

At least we know Seth Priebatsch will be having fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've worked for an entrepreneur who seemed to experience manic episodes. There is an incredibly sad quality to working with such people. Most of the time, these people do not do well. And yet, they are full of potential, and ideas, and energy. They can be charming. You want them to do well. But they fail.

The person I'm thinking of, let's call him P, could be persuasive. He generally made a very good first impression. He lacked technical skills but imagined himself a good designer and eventually got to the point where he could design a page in Dreamweaver (the HTML would often be bad, and we'd have to get someone else to clean it up. For instance, divs with fixed height would have to become more fluid). P had inherited several million dollars from grandparents, and spent nearly all of it trying to build the next Google.

P had amazing amounts of energy. He generally worked 16 to 18 hours a day, sometimes for 7 days a week. He would start work at 10 AM or 11 AM and work till almost dawn, the next day. For a few months I lived at the large residential complex he had. Every meal was a business meeting - breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night snacks. It was exciting to be so wholly focused on work, and to let the rest of life just drift away. It is freeing to give up on a normal life and commit to doing just one thing. The long hours matched my own style, and I had a chance to learn a lot of new things.

P would often fantasize about what life would be like after the startup was world famous. He would talk about what kinds of charities he would donate money to, and how the media would approvingly write about the donations he made. Then he would tell us how each of us was going to get rich, we would all get equity and someday it would be worth billions. We would all own our own tropical islands. He really did talk this way. (I find when I describe this era accurately, people assume I am exaggerating.) The talk about equity slowly lost meaning, as all of us slowly lost faith in the project. It all sounded believable in 2002, less so by 2004.

The downsides to this type of personality is that they tend to get frightened by reality. They want to live inside of their lovely dream, where everything works out amazingly well. When we came up against good competitors, he would freak out. His euphoric episodes mixed with episodes of intense anxiety and guilt. Sometimes he would worry that, rather than building the next Google, he was just wasting away all the money he had inherited, and his parents were going to be mad as hell at him. Which is exactly what happened.

In his fantasies, the startup was suppose to sail smoothly to big success. Building the company was not suppose to involve tough decisions, rather, it was suppose to involve moments of brilliant insight, one after the other, as his company easily leaped in front of any potential competitor. When the years went by and nothing successful devolved, he began smoking a lot of pot, to try to control the anxiety.

I worked with this person, on and off, from 2002 to 2008. We first came up with a CMS to compete with TypePad. But then TypePad got way ahead of us so he switched our focus RSS feeds and podcasting. We started work on something like Odeo, about 6 months before Odeo showed up. When Odeo showed up, P quit working on podcasts. Then we worked on the CMS some more, we were going to sell it and compete with Expression Engine. That would only make sense if we were way better than Expression Engine, which was a moving target. WordPress was also a moving target, and by the end of 2005 it was becoming clear that WordPress was going to be really good. We went back to working with RSS and music and we came up with something very much like Hype Machine. This was early 2006, a few months before Hype Machine started. We gave up on that project for no obvious reason. Then I wanted to work on something like Google Pages, and this was about 6 months before Google Pages came out. I worked on this for a month. I couldn't interest P, so he killed the project after a month or two. Then we did some client work and then we did some web sites devoted to mp3s and videos, but none of these projects were developed enough to be taken seriously. In short, we tended to drift from idea to idea, as P would lose interest in one thing and then get manic and over-excited about the next thing. Then we went back to working with RSS, but the next project was embarrassingly stupid, it didn't amount to much more than grabbing Yahoo Pipes and running it through a PHP script to strip out any mention of Yahoo Pipes. That is about when I left.

On the one hand, working with someone who likes to daydream can be exciting - work becomes a brainstorming session that lasts for several years. On the other hand, as they say, who can live for long in an euphoric dream? There comes a point where you want to get to work. There comes a point where you want to stick it out with something, to try really hard, to take some setbacks but still keep going. Every startup needs to change the plan a few times, but to change the plan every 2 months, year after year, is a good way to burn through several million dollars and accomplish nothing. Which is exactly what happened.

For my part, I mostly had a good time, though the whole thing was like a minor tragic epic. It is rare that you see someone burn through so much money, with such an odd mix of manic intensity and crushing anxiety.

<comment><USER10> The focus on money speaks to motivation problems. You need to be in it for the process, not the success...

<comment><USER14> I think you are correct in theory, but it is difficult to put that into practice. The biggest hurtle, regarding money, is the question of when to increase the burnrate? That was an issue that P struggled with. In 2002 and 2003 we mostly just tinkered with stuff. He did not spend serious money on the web at that point. In 2004 it was clear that the music industry was changing in a big way. He had been dabbling with RSS projects, and he had been working with musicians. We played around with some podcasting stuff, we talked late into the night trying to imagine how iTunes would effect things, iPods, free music, FLAC files, more bandwidth, etc. In 2005 he felt it was time to go all in. So he hired a lot of people, so he could pursue some of his more ambitious projects. At that point he was spending maybe $30,000 a month.

At some point, you do need to start thinking about money. It becomes an obsession, I think for nearly any entrepreneur. I see the problem like this:

1.) if you crank up your burnrate too soon, then you will run out of money and fail

2.) if you do not ever crank up your burnrate, then you do not ever build a big business

Obviously, there are some qualifiers that it would be good to add, but I think the above problem covers a situation that maybe 80% of all entrepreneurs must face.

Once you do crank up your burnrate, then you need to think about money. A lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With a powerful enough vision coupled with a devotion to be the greatest, anything is possible. The world is just boring when we are 'stable' and 'normal' just for the sake of being accepted by people who don't have any dreams.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm hitting a paywall for this article...washing it through google seems to have done the trick:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=just+manic+enough>

<comment><USER17> Are you sure it's a "paywall" and not just an account sign-up? I made a throw away account for NYT years ago and it seems to access the page fine, I wasn't aware they had activated a paywall yet?

<comment><USER16> You know what, you're correct. I was mistaken, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to meet this guy

</comment><comment><USER19> For the _manic_ guy, sorry 'bout him. My experience with people who are driven, determined, and brilliant but also unstable psychologically is that the instability is a serious flaw, gives instances of irrationality, and, net, can, from some of the instances, be fatal to whatever effort is being attempted and sometimes also to the person making the attempt.

I don't believe that the article is much about _manic_ entrepreneurs and had another take: The article was from an NYT _newsie_ trying to write something shocking to grab people by the gut to get eyeballs for ad revenue. So, the article is NOT about communicating realistic information about manic entrepreneurs but JUST about getting eyeballs for ads. Or, as in the 1951 movie _The Thing from Another World_ where the newsie character Ned 'Scotty' Scott said about writing a news _story_ : "If it's not good, I'll MAKE it good".

To get some _entrepreneurship credibility_ to help in his eyeball grabbing effort, the NYT newsie went to

Mr. Paul Maeder

General Partner

Highland Capital Partners

There Maeder played along: Maeder seems to have wanted to have his name in the paper to help him get deal flow. And in particular he wanted to suggest that he was open to funding even "crazy" efforts. So, Maeder gave the statement:

"You need to suspend disbelief to start a company, because so many people will tell you that what you're doing can't be done, and if it could be done, someone would have done it already," says Paul Maeder, a general partner at Highland Capital. "There are six billion human beings on this planet, we've been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we're a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It's kind of crazy."

I flatly do NOT take this statement at _face value_ at all. Instead, the statement is (1) to give the NYT newsie a _grabber_ "crazy" (to go along with the _manic_ part of the article) and (2) again, to suggest to entrepreneurs that all of entrepreneurship is "crazy" and, thus, he, Maeder, is willing to fund even "crazy" ideas from "crazy" people.

On "crazy" ideas:

"There are six billion human beings on this planet, we've been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we're a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It's kind of crazy."

This statement is DUMB: Maeder is in effect claiming that no one can do original research and discover results that are, and clearly seen to be, new, correct, and powerful for real, practical problems. Nonsense -- totally misinformed and/or uninformed, just plain wrong, dangerous, brain-dead, head in the sand, disconnected NONSENSE. The NSF, NIH, and DoD provide contradictions by the hundreds each year and have for decades.

Any entrepreneur who understands how to find new, correct, powerful, valuable ideas at anywhere near the level of the work of the NSF, NIH, or DoD will have to conclude that Maeder will regard the work as just "crazy" and stay away from Maeder.

Next, anyone familiar with venture capital and the _plans_ approved by the limited partners will know that nearly all venture partners, and likely also Maeder, make Series A venture funding decisions heavily on objectively observable numerical measures of _traction_ and also on the founders and their track records and _personalities_ where being "crazy" is NOT an advantage. That an idea is "crazy" does NOT improve the chances of funding; that there is good traction may permit ignoring that an idea is "crazy". That is, good _traction_ , a "crazy" idea, and a _manic_ founder are not nearly as good as just good _traction_.

More generally, part of the venture capital _sales technique_ to attract _deal flow_ is to toss out lots of vague cliches about the _purpose_ and _criteria_ of the venture firm. Instead, the purpose is to make money for the limiteds within the 10 year or so life of the fund, and the criteria are nearly all just _traction_ and/or earnings, rapidly growing. There is little role for "crazy".

NYT newsies are at it again, as the NYT finances spiral down from the long river of various kinds of their brain-dead nonsense.</comment>


The life of Kurt Vonnegut, played out over 1000 tweets - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/VonnegutTweets <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I posted this project of my friend's. But it is quite cool. He's also done Wittgenstein and Phillip K dick and Oppenheimer</comment>


Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html <comment><USER2> iOS now forcing "While Using" option on all apps is the greatest thing ever. Before this, some apps where forcing the "Always" option on users. Uber and Waze come to mind.

iOS also gives you a warning from time to time about apps using your location in the background. I think iOS right now has the best location management.

\---

People are surprised when seeing the Activity section in Google's account details, then freak out about Google tracking their location. At the very least Google is being transparent about it and gives you the option to turn that shit off.

Also I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Maps now remembers searches you've made without location history or app activity tracking being active. This wasn't the case about a year ago, when I last tried it, a dark pattern of sorts. They probably changed the behavior being forced by the GDPR or something similar.

So if you haven't done so, turn off "Location History" in your Google account: [https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols) (I turn everything off and I don't see a difference in usability)

\---

On the article, I love the maps and the animations. Visualization is the best way to make people understand the threat.

On GDPR, I've seen people complaining about the high cost for implementing it, however for privacy it is a godsend.

<comment><USER3> I respectfully disagree on Google being entirely transparent about tracking location, especially if you run Android + Google Play Services. I have a tablet (Pixel C) that runs LineageOS + Google Play Services and a Phone (Nexus 5x) that runs LineageOS vanilla (no MicroG, no UnifiedNLP, no Google Play Services). Some things I have noted:

\- When you install MicroG/Google Play Services, they take over location services (i.e. they run in /system/priv-app, and if you disable their location, location on the device is disabled totally).

\- Android by default has the default on option to scan wifi and Bluetooth when you turn them off to find wifi/bluetooth and coorelate it to your location.

\- On my Pixel C, when if I try "high accuracy" or "battery saver" mode Location services, Google Play has tried to force me to agree to their location tracking and I have disagreed every single time. Location services does not work if I use "device only" (which is supposed to only use GPS).

\- I have noted that on my phone now, if I disable location and then reenable it when I have moved more than 20-30 miles, the GPS has to reacquire the signal and can take up to 2 minutes (I also tried it when I drove several hundred miles, it took several minutes to reacquire). This is indicative of the GPS module being off totally. This was not so when it had Google Play Services on, it was able to reacquire my location extremely quickly, sometimes almost instantaneously even if I moved a long distance. I suspect that Google Play was still tracking my location even if I turned off location services (due to it totally controlling my location).

\- EDIT: Another interesting note is that on my phone has had location services off and then turned just back on (i.e. no GPS lock), it appears to give the last time GPS was acquired as my current location. OSMAnd shows that location but says it doesn't know my location, but other apps do not realize that. I am suspecting that Android does not necessarily have a "stale" location, just the last reported location.

Putting my tin foil hat, I hypothesize Google anonymously tracks your location even if your location services if off (allowing them to do traffic, how busy a restaurant is, etc.).

EDIT: As correctly pointed out, networked assisted GPS is a thing, and may also play into the differences in GPS reacquiring. I believe that network assisted GPS is in AOSP. When I turn on and off GPS in Android, it appears to have the almanac for where to look for satellites based on SatStat, and how quickly my phone acquires the GPS signal is a function of where it used to be compared to where it is now. In addition, UnifiedNLP [1] scans for networks/cell towers and correlates it to location, it does not appear to implement networked assisted GPS. [1] [https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp](https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp)

<comment><USER4> _> if I disable location and then reenable it when I have moved more than 20-30 miles, the GPS has to reacquire the signal and can take up to 2 minutes (I also tried it when I drove several hundred miles, it took several minutes to reacquire). This is indicative of the GPS module being off totally. This was not so when it had Google Play Services on, it was able to reacquire my location extremely quickly, sometimes almost instantaneously even if I moved a long distance. I suspect that Google Play was still tracking my location even if I turned off location services_

This is more likely access to network assisted GPS.

To know your location, the receiver needs the GPS ephemeris and almanac data (basically the status/location/trajectories of the GPS satellites). This is transmitted by the satellites themselves, but extremely slowly (50 bps with the entire navigation message taking 12.5 minutes)#.

To speed things up substantially (almost instant vs minutes), this info can be delivered over the network instead. I presume that in your case it was being provided over the network as part of the Play services.

# [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Navigation_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Navigation_message)

<comment><USER3> Heh, interesting. My assumption is that even network assisted GPS is a part of AOSP versus Play Service. This assumption was that UnifiedNLP [1] scans for networks/cell towers and correlates it to location, it does not appear to implement networked assisted GPS.

[1] [https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp](https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We're not doing anything not disclosed in our terms of service." is rapidly becoming a no longer acceptable answer to consumers.

Don't tell me a weather app needs to know my location all the time to give me the best weather info then sell my location to the highest bidder. Don't tell me that buried in some 20 pages of leagalese in your Ts&Cs is some vague references that make this "legal."

<comment><USER6> I would respectfully disagree.

It is not acceptable to roughly the amount of people (and I include myself) who make a deliberate and self conscious decision to oppose it.

This is a small, small group. I have a phone with Replicant OS, which puts me within a niche group of an already niche group (those willing to install alternative OS and strip Google on their phone). In a wider computing sense - what percentage of HN use GNU/Linux? Of them, who runs as fully Free OS? What percentage of them are rocking a 12y.o. librebooted thinkpad?

The general public are apathetic at best. Contrary to popular opinion, people are not ignorant to the behaviour of tech giants - they just don't care enough to stop. Clearly, it is still an acceptable answer to consumers.

It's like claiming that people don't go vegetarian or vegan because they aren't aware of the suffering. Of course they are aware. It's just easier to keep eating hamburgers and live with the cognitive dissonance.

It's the same with these apps.

<comment><USER7> > _Contrary to popular opinion, people are not ignorant to the behaviour of > tech giants - they just don 't care enough to stop.

Contrary to _your* opinion, people do care enough to stop but they don't know how. Tech giants have insinuated themselves into literally _every_ aspect of their lives by abusing the lack of knowledge of the users. Now, they don't see a way out without drastic change.

How can you get a job if you don't have a phone? How can you get a job when literally _every_ affordable phone tracks you?

Even my apartment complex online portal tracks me. What the flying fuck?

The only way to actively _stop_ is to not have any computing device whatsoever. Good luck living in a modern world like that: even then there's still facial tracking and vehicle tracking.

People that say that consumers don't care enough to stop is living in their own bubble insulated from real people.

<comment><USER6> >people do care enough to stop but they don't know how

I'd guess the vast majority of HN users will be primarily users of Windows/Mac OS and proprietary software. Many HN users will use GMail, Google Maps, Google Play Services... an so on.

Are we going to pretend that your average HN user doesn't understand the pros/cons of their software choices? Personally, I'd prefer to credit them with the intelligence to have made a balance and reasoned decision (albeit one I fundamentally disagree with).

This trickles down to less tech savvy users too. Many of my colleagues in Medicine are more than aware of such issues due to rules and regulation on data storage and the like. They know, for example, why patient data should never be on Google Drive or GMail. They still continue to use those services for personal use, despite being aware, because they simply aren't sufficiently motivated to change their habits. GMail is familiar, and hence easy, so why switch to ProtonMail (for example)?

>How can you get a job if you don't have a phone? How can you get a job when literally every affordable phone tracks you?

I have a very good career and have used Replicant OS and Lineage OS. I now use a dumbphone because I dislike smartphones for other reasons. There are many, many successful people who can function perfectly well without the latest iPhone.

>People that say that consumers don't care enough to stop is living in their own bubble insulated from real people.

Please don't resort to ad hominem attacks on Hacker News. It is uncalled for, and there are more appropriate ways to put your point across.

<comment><USER8> > I now use a dumbphone because I dislike smartphones for other reasons. There > are many, many successful people who can function perfectly well without the > latest iPhone.

I'm curious - how do you handle navigation (both in car and on foot) with a smartphone?

<comment><USER6> Without a smartphone?

In the car I have a Garmin satnav unit which I can use. They are great quality and I paid about £20 or 30 for it used. I strongly dislike this modern trend for using phones in cars. They are too distracting (I hate this modern trend of huge tablet interfaces in cars for the same reason).

On foot... I honestly don't need maps that much. I struggle to recall ever needing to have live directions while walking. I have a good in-built navigation brain through - probably from growing up doing lots of hiking, orienteering, and so on. I also think that reliance on blindly following a screen stunts the development of such skills. I find I have a very good mental map of my city compared to younger friends.

I spent my teens and 20s without technology like this. I find it quite depressing when this question gets raised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Freakonomics did an episode not too long ago with the new CEO of Ford. The guy was practically salivating at the mouth about all the data new vehicles will be collecting and how Ford could potentially monetize it all. Scary times ahead.

<comment><USER10> I submitted that article on HN but it didn't get any attraction.

It seems Ford CEO thinks they can collect and monetize drivers data: \-- So the case I would make is that we have as much data in the future coming from vehicles, or from users in those vehicles, or from cities talking to those vehicles, as the other competitors that you and I would be talking about that have monetizable attraction.

\--The issue in the vehicle, see, is: we already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us. We know what people make. How do we know that? It's because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work; we know if they're married. We know how long they've lived in their house, because these are all on the credit applications. We've never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that's the leverage we've got here with the data.

<comment><USER11> Struggling to find this article - could you link me to it?

<comment><USER10> Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357)

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/)

<comment><USER11> Ok listened to it, finally.

It really comes across that he doesn't understand what he's talking about around tech. "Transportation Operating System"? It's cargo-culted technobabble.

But yes it did veer in to the creepy side there

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hedge funds have been using location data to 'predict' corporate earnings for at least 5 years, that I know of. There's also speculation that they use the data to identify locations of VIPs and where they're going (by clustering activities of the VIP's entourage). It's unfortunate that news organizations as reputable and prominent as the NYT only get on these stories so late in the game. This information would have been more useful to the public back in 2013.

What I don't understand is why these types of activities by hedge funds aren't considered insider trading.

<comment><USER13> Because the hedge funds are by definition not insiders? They are literally not using non-public corporate data at all.

Insider trading laws don't exist to make sure there isn't information assymetry, the market is all about that assymetry. Insider trading laws are about insiders stealing from other shareholders.

<comment><USER12> Well, it is non-public data. I once spoke with a lawyer to see if I could legally use location data to do the same thing (for instance, it's easy to correlate changes in activity at certain retailers with quarterly earnings), and I was told it's risky.

<comment><USER14> Non-public and insider are two different concepts. I could send a satellite to space, take pictures of parking lots, count cars, and it'd be a pretty decent indicator to the relative success of a retailer. Add some other signals into the model and it'd probably be good.

I don't need to give the public access to my satellite images. But if I wanted to make a subscription service for 100k/month, I could. It would be non- public, but not insider.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/136...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/13680468/1/orbital- insight-uses-satellite-images-to-give-hedge-funds-trading-tips.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is selling this data not illegal and harshly prosecuted?

You'd expect to find this data being stolen by trojans and sold for bitcoin by anonymous actors on blackhat sites, not by registered companies with offices and employees.

<comment><USER16> It hasn't yet been used to expose a congressman?

The US lacks GDPR-style general privacy law, but there is a very specific one for video rental records passed specifically as a result of exposure of Robert Bork: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act)

<comment> shaki-dora A more generous interpretation, that does not require buying into the generic, unactionable cynicism that everyone is corrupt, is simply that new laws require neat, easily comprehensible and emotional stories to be enacted.

As examples I would cite federal hate crime legislation, enacted after a particularly abhorrent lynching of a gay teenager IIRC. Or the current change of approach to Saudi Arabia's ruling sadists: of course their industrial slaughter and engineered starvation of children in Yemen is the far larger crime, but the smoking bone saw of Istanbul just grips us far more viscerally.

<comment><USER16> > the smoking bone saw of Istanbul just grips us far more viscerally.

This is a brilliant, horrifying, piece of phrasing.

<comment> shaki-dora To give credit where it's rarely due, I believe I stole that particular turn- of-phrase from Lindsey Graham.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like it how iOS displays this arrow when location services are or were used, and how one can see in "Privacy -> Location Services" a brief history of which app did what, and enable or disable location access at all per app.

<comment><USER18> That does nothing for IP based geo location though. Every rest request to modern cloud services gets geotagged and those tags can be surprisingly accurate in populated areas for people that use wifi.

<comment><USER19> >That does nothing for IP based geo location though

Of course, since ip "geolocation" is just ip data + location agregatted from ISPs. How can the OS maker "fight" this ?

<comment><USER20> Android requires apps request location permissions in order to access Wi-Fi IP info.

<comment><USER21> Aren't they able to get the ip just by connecting to any server?

<comment><USER20> Yes, although they won't get the whole Wi-Fi scan list, which means no fine grained triangulation, and also no BSSID, but it's definitely imperfect.

It's also very frustrating if you are using the Wi-Fi APIs for legitimate purposes. Having to explain to a user why you need location permissions in order to set up a Wi-Fi peripheral isn't easy.

<comment><USER18> That doesn't matter at all if your request is being location stamped because it came from a Starbucks / your home WiFi IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That reminded me to check my privacy > location services settings and look for any apps that have "Always" and change them to "While Using" only

<comment><USER23> I wish there was something similar on Android. I used to keep my Location services off but needed to switch it on for Google Maps and HERE maps so I got lazy and leave it always on.

Its shameful that Android 2.3 let you have more control of your phone than Android 8.1.

<comment><USER24> Not exactly android but if you buy a phone supported by LineageOS then you have that functionality from privacy guard. You can set various app permissions to always ask as well as other things such as (dis)allow an app to start at boot.

As a bonus you can be confident those settings will remain the same after updates ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> shaki-dora The production value of these lavish spreads by the New York Times is impressive.

<comment> 52-6F-62 IIRC Mike Bostock used to work for them and while there was responsible for D3js and more. They've taken the smart path in publishing and took the transition to digital seriously.

[https://bost.ocks.org/mike/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is an idea for online advertising. Use IP and text based contextual targeting. No stalking required.

Stalking everyone and building increasingly creepy online profiles to target better is an abuse of basic human privacy, if you stop to think about it, and completely unethical and takes your hurtling down the path to a surveillance society.

The only reason its even possible because of the lacuna in a new space and laws catching up, and when they do, it won't be possible. The idea that making money makes everything ok is a primitive and fundamentally antisocial ideology. And if everyone thought like that would end civilization as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER26> The next thing I want Apple to do: If an app will request location services, it must: 1\. Have a specific publicly available URL that contains all "location data" terms, conditions, and privacy information. 2\. Monitor that URL and reset the permission dialog if the URL ever changes. 3\. Immediately disable location services for that app if the URL disappears.

</comment><comment><USER27> What is the correct way to regulate this?

The problem is that, from small business to mammoth company, there is no codified, unified, agreed upon manifesto when it comes to handling data at any level. A "Constitution" of sorts that explains the rights and / or wrongs of the data usage of the average user. Somewhere where a user can look at a document, see which company falls where on the spectrum, decide if they are comfortable with the sharing of that, and actively signs off on it. As an addendum, it's also important to think, while my for example, email data might be shared, it will enable certain benefits that I sign off on like Google providing me flight details, etc., but it comes at what expense.

You'd get a wide spectrum of those who couldn't care less to those who are tin-foiled, but no matter where you fall on this spectrum, you'd at least know which software does what. If that manifesto-like document is broken, consequences would be maintained.

<comment><USER28> The way to do it is to push for new data formats where the inherent value of even "leaked" information is going to be limited by the format (e.g. expires in some form, and/or must _always_ be combined with some new recently- refreshes data to be considered valid).

Unfortunately, something of that magnitude in this age would probably require the cooperation of large entities like Google and Facebook. Guess who profits from the current leaky model.

Honestly, Apple may be just about the only one capable of shifting the tide. They're big, they claim a privacy focus, and they've delivered some (e.g. Apple Pay, iMessage). If they could come up with more secure technological replacements for the things that are currently leaked by apps, we might have a chance.

The "one time card" approach of Apple Pay seems like the basis for such a system. For example: stop giving apps "my location" tied specifically to me, instead give them "location of unspecified user" where that token goes away after one app transaction.

<comment><USER29> Apple in some ways is like a quasi data privacy regulator because they have control of the App Store. They can use App Store policy to forbid these third party frameworks being included in apps.

But that's not a scalable solution. Privacy legislation is required to raise the bar for everyone. Apple's not going to be able to sue or fine companies nor can they police companies about how they use data they've managed to collect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are people reading this article surprised that your devices know your locations? We are constantly getting "helpful" notifications that should make it VERY clear that's happening: "Parked car location updated" "It's 8am, are you on your way to work?" "Can you share feedback about that restaurant you were at but didn't check in at?" If people don't already know, then good for the Times for making sure everyone is checking their settings and paying attention.

</comment><comment><USER31> Where is the list of offending apps? How hard would it be to name and shame them and keep track?

The NYT article cites the company MightySignal claiming 1,200 Android and 200 iOS offending apps.

EDIT: The NYT outlines their reporters' testing, and the apps they used: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/location- track...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/location-tracking- apps-privacy.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> It's going to take serious amounts of data leaking before something is done to combat this.

<comment><USER33> A couple of politicians having their affairs outed would do it.

<comment><USER34> Evidently that doesn't damage your public support anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Someone should create an app that translates a companies T&C into layman terms with simple stuff like "they track your location", "sell your usage data", etc. Just need a team of lawyers to interpret them, and a nice web site.

Call it something like AppSideEffects.com "Things that may be harmful when using these apps/web sites"

<comment><USER36> Terms Of Service; Didn't Read is very close to what you're looking for.

[https://tosdr.org](https://tosdr.org)

<comment><USER37> And more people who contribute reviews are always needed: [https://edit.tosdr.org](https://edit.tosdr.org) (tool in beta, but functional)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why do Apple and Google get a pass here? Who knows what apps are doing with your photos and contacts. Apple doesn't. Facebook was grilled for not aggressively shutting down an app that sold much less sensitive information.

<comment><USER39> FB didn't explicitly give you the ability to shut the offending app down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There needs to be a distinction at the api & permissions level between course and fine geolocation. My weather app doesn't need to know my exact address... location within a half mile or mile would be fine. Similarly with "gas station locator app". But my GPS navigation app DOES need fine location.

If you could control this permission at the app level, many of the privacy issues brought out in the article would be mitigated.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would love for someone from The Times who worked on this story to share the source of their data.

No one on Twitter nor in their interview on The Daily answered my main question: What was the source?

Sure, they don't want to reveal private information about the people they highlighted, but what about the millions of dots they plotted on the map?

That data came from somewhere. Did someone leak it? Did The Times buy it? Some transparency would be great.

</comment><comment><USER37> > On Fysical's map, a bright red box near the Capitol steps indicated the > general location of President Trump and those around him, cellphones pinging > away.

My main worry is that these practices allow many people to doxx and subsequently bribe journalists, lawyers, politicians, etc.

This feels like a judicial security hole. I wonder if something like responsible disclosure for software security issues could help, and what the moral issues are with that: doxx the people in charge of the laws, then contact them to say that you will make public how you obtained their personal data in <x time>, so they better make sure that the judicial hole is plugged before that time.

</comment><comment><USER42> i quite like when apps use my location info to do unique things like recommend places in the vicinity that are good(foursquare) or give me specific filters for a location(snapchat) phones should obfuscate the location provided in some way so that users can take advantage of location services without continuously sharing my movement to the backend

</comment><comment><USER43> Just looking at location settings on my android phone, it says Google Play Services queried my location recently

But on looking in the settings for Google Play Services there's no option to disable the Location permission in the permission settings, which means location is permanently on (if you keep the location sensors on)

</comment><comment><USER44> I scanned the article, but this mostly sounds like they are painting this as an application behavior. It isn't true. There are tons of companies that use RAW location data that you cannot opt out of.

[https://airsage.com/](https://airsage.com/)

<comment><USER45> AirSage is very clearly offering non-anonymized (read: private) information about individuals. That is, they offer "insights like the home and work locations of people".

> AirSage uses its massive source data and patented algorithms to understand > the movement of population and trips start to finish, origin to destination > every day for the entire country. It's not just about the where and when. > Through years of research and development, AirSage also knows the "why", or > purpose, of the more than a billion trips made in the United States every > day.

> Understanding populations as they relate to the physical world has been the > core competency of AirSage since the beginning. For any physical point of > interest in the United States, insights like the home and work locations of > people seen in an area or duration of stay or frequency of visits are all > characteristics that can provide a new level of understanding never before > capable.

> Brands and Marketers recognize that the world is not just about what takes > place on the screen of a tv, computer or mobile phone. It's about how > technology helps enhance our real physical world. AirSage is a leader in > providing insightful information about the audiences advertisers want to > reach as they relate to the locations and places that people spend their > time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I often have trouble explaining to people why this is problematic. I encounter the "I've got nothing to hide" or "Who cares if I get ads that I'm more interested in?" arguments.

What do you say to those people?

<comment><USER47> I try to relate to something they understand a bit more, usually a field their interested in.

For example, my brother is not techy at all, but he's big into cars.

I asked him if he would enjoy Ford sending everything he's doing in his car to the mothership, then selling that info to insurance companies, or used for "marketing." (immediately he understood the issues)

Then I ask if he's comfortable with knowing that if he accidentally speeds, turns too fast, or breaks too often, he may have to pay more for insurance.

This obviously won't work for everyone. I do have the "i have nothing to hide" friends, but i ask them what if someone DID have something to hide? Not everyone loves "showering with the windows open."

It's fine if they don't care about their lives, but what about their childrens lives, or lives of someone they care about? Once it hits that point, they usually just mention that it isn't important and go off about something else to change the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The original title was much better: Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret.

<comment><USER41> You're likely seeing a version of the headline meant for social media.

Regardless, this is a better headline style wise.

<comment><USER48> This is the title of the New York Times article and as posted here before it was edited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> i want my location history - for me. i just don't want it sold to third parties. if google will store it foe me and map my walks etc, great- but i don't want them to sell it or even use it much.

and i don't think that's a lot to ask. want me to pay for the 50cents storage costs ? sure.

</comment><comment><USER50> Any gap in the market for a privacy phone? i.e. Android customised to block all telemetry by default.

<comment><USER51> LineageOS gives you Android without google, and fine-grain app permission control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I keep Location Services on iOS and GPS off at all times, unless I really need them. Even on iOS, I make sure that the only app that can use it is google maps. This works great for privacy, but I have issues with compass calibration.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've brokered terabytes of data over the last 10 years.

It's worth paying attention to companies like [https://alternativedata.org](https://alternativedata.org)

</comment><comment><USER54> This seems hilariously sanctimonious and hypocritical from NYT.

For example, consider some of the navel-gazing bullshit projects they spend time on:

\- [https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press- relea...](https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-release- details/2018/The-New-York-Times-Advertising--Marketing-Solutions-Group- Introduces-nytDEMO-A-Cross-Functional-Team-Focused-on-Bringing-Insights-and- Data-Solutions-to-Brands/default.aspx)

Particular "Project Feels"

\- [https://digiday.com/media/project-feels-usa-today-espn- new-y...](https://digiday.com/media/project-feels-usa-today-espn-new-york- times-targeting-ads-mood/)

</comment><comment><USER55> Any tips for avoiding location sharing on Android?

<comment><USER56> I believe as long as you connect to WIFIs that are already geolocated by other people's phones, you are in.

Uncloaked WIFI probes also can expose you to stalker routers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Folks here may be interested in knowing that our team has been working with many others on building out a Privacy-Enhanced Android, which seeks to offer new programming models, new isolation mechanisms, and new user interfaces to help improve the entire ecosystem of privacy. This is a DARPA-funded project.

Some of our team's work (past and present) that may be of interest to folks here: \- We analyzed the privacy of Android apps at <a href="[http://privacygrade.org">http://privacygrade.org</a>](http://privacygrade.org">http://privacygrade.org</a>). The basic idea is that we use crowdsourcing to generate a model of what people are concerned about, and then apply that to all the apps we crawled. We're working on an update of PrivacyGrade using network data too, to map out who knows what about us and why.

\- Perhaps one of the biggest findings from our team's research is that over 40% of apps that use sensitive data only do so because of third-party libraries (e.g. advertisers or analytics). We've mentioned this in talks to the FTC, Google, Apple, and others, that these third party libraries are the biggest point of leverage here if we want to solve the problem. See this paper: <a href="[http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/does_this_app_really_n...](http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/does_this_app_really_need_my_location_context- aware_privacy_management_for_smartphones_2017/pub_download">Does) this App Really Need My Location? Context-Aware Privacy Management for Smartphones</a> (PDF).

\- <a href="[https://privacyproxy.io/">https://privacyproxy.io/</a>](https://privacyproxy.io/">https://privacyproxy.io/</a>) (sorry, self-signed certificate is a bit out of date). This is a VPN that scans outgoing traffic for likely personally-identifiable information

\- <a href="[http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/">http://www.android...](http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/">http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/</a>). This requires rooted phones, intercepts calls to sensitive data on your phone, and aims to help you make better decisions by surfacing these calls and showing you how what the majority chose to share

\- <a href="[https://privacystreams.github.io/">https://privacystreams.gi...](https://privacystreams.github.io/">https://privacystreams.github.io/</a>). This is a new programming model that aims to make developers' lives easier, and improve privacy as a side effect by making accesses to sensitive data easier to analyze. A key observation is that most apps don't need fine-grained data, but currently apps require all-or-nothing access. For example, raw audio vs "just loudness", or exact GPS vs "what city". We offer stream-like processing that makes it easier for devs to get the granularity they want, which also makes the app much easier to analyze. So we can analyze an app and output "this app uses your microphone to get loudness"

\- <a href="[https://www.slideshare.net/jas0nh0ng/fostering-an- ecosystem-...](https://www.slideshare.net/jas0nh0ng/fostering-an-ecosystem- for-smartphone-privacy">Fostering) an Ecosystem of Smartphone Privacy</a>, this is a talk I gave last month that summarizes a lot of our team's work on privacy

Our DARPA PM has asked us to focus a lot more on tech transfer activities for our final year, so if any of you are interested, send me a mail. (This is tech transfer in terms of getting industry to adopt our ideas, not necessarily commercialization or licensing.)

</comment><comment><USER58> The article says NYT was able to go through the users' location histories.

How?

</comment><comment><USER59> Anyone know where to get the kind of dataset that the times has?

<comment> shaki-dora If you use Google Maps to share your location with friends, you can find an URL (using the browser's devtools) that is stable and gives you location data in JSON.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Deep Thought Tabs for Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TheCodeArtist/deep-thought-tabs <comment><AUTHOR> Deep Thought Tabs for Firefox adds funny, profound observations in newly opened empty tabs, with fresh images each time.

* Few interesting bits of code:

       - Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm.
       - Ken-Burns effect.
       - Visual (image-preview) tooltips in CSS+JS.
       - Asynchronous XMLHttpRequest.

* Checkout the source at [https://github.com/TheCodeArtist/deep-thought-tabs/tree/mast...](https://github.com/TheCodeArtist/deep-thought-tabs/tree/master/addon-src) to learn creating webextension addons for Firefox in pure JavaScript (no external libs).</comment>


SendWithUs and GDPR compliance - <AUTHOR> https://ibb.co/kJX4Vx <comment><USER2> Update: We want to thank all of our European and international customers that reached out to us. In late 2018 we took steps to ensure GDPR compliance and implemented significant changes in our system so our Sendwithus customers have more control over their data and can be compliant with the GDPR.

Our other product Dyspatch -- [https://www.dyspatch.io](https://www.dyspatch.io) \-- is also fully compliant with GDPR and built for teams with strict data hosting and privacy constraints.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting here is:

\- this is the first confirmation I've received from a company stating outright that they're not going to be GDPR compliant and you should stop using them if you need to be.

\- they're explicitly saying it's too much effort to store data in a compliant manner and ensure their processors are complaint. this possibly raises some interesting questions about what exactly they're doing with the data they have today.

\- this GDPR thing is like async code, once it gets into a system it has long tentacles. I don't think this company fully realises just how many companies need to be GDPR compliant to continue doing business online. if you're in the SAAS business, it's very likely you're dealing with EU customers - or at the very least a customer that deals with EU customers, or an customer of a customer that deals with EU customers. You get the point - this tentacle keeps reaching down. You may think you're not excluding many of your own customers by not being compliant because THEY aren't EU-based, but it's their customers/controllers etc that require them to be compliant and thus you.

This tentacle is all encompassing.

<comment><USER3> Also interesting since there's been GDPR advice from their CEO: [https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/gdpr/how-to- prepare-...](https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/gdpr/how-to-prepare-your- email-marketing-program-for-gdpr/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, hadn't seen that. I like the comment at the end...

If approached in the right spirit, GDPR compliance can be a win-win for email marketers, quite possibly providing a much-needed correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> We wanted to offer some clarification on a recent email regarding Sendwithus and GDPR compliance. While our initial communication is accurate, our team is planning to launch an enterprise-grade, GDPR compliant solution in the coming months. This new product, which is currently in private beta, will ensure that you can continue to easily send the right message to your customers at the right time, while ensuring GDPR data protocols are met. Please contact our Support Team or your account manager if you have any questions about Sendwithus and GDPR.

Sincerely, The Sendwithus team</comment>