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My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

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Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#341

Post by cyphar »

mapmap wrote: post #227
cyphar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop pretending you know what you're talking about. Calm down. > Do you know how much money is saved by not keeping those pictures? Okay, fine. Even if the pictures aren't stored indefinitely (I'd assume they'd do batch deletions at the end of the day or something when latency isn't as important), all of the photos are encrypted with the same symmetric key which can be found in any Snapchat binary. Which means that…

Why aren't they encrypting end-to-end with private keys on the devices?

Because they don't do crypto properly. Some friends of mine broke Snapchat quite badly a few years ago (one of them goes through HN, so he might read this). The tl;dr is that you shouldn't trust any aspect of your security to proprietary services. Especially ones that don't do crypto properly.

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#342

Post by cyphar »

auscompgeek wrote: post #337
mapmap wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't they encrypting end-to-end with private keys on the devices?

An idea that a couple of friends (can't remember if cyphar was one of them) and I came up with: piggyback some actual crypto on top of Snapchat, using steganography to initially transmit public keys. Would be interesting to see this happen.

I think I was there. Can't remember though. The issue is that Snapchat has gotten more stringent about image formats and things (remember when bad crypto could cause the app to crash?).

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#343

Post by JabavuAdams »

MicroBerto wrote: post #340
JabavuAdams wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a provincially-ranked tennis player as a teenager. But yeah, definitely regret not going further with that while I was young. Had a stroke last year. It was pretty hard realizing that after a certain point, no you really can't be an elite athlete.

Sorry to hear that. It's not about being elite. I know a ton of guys in the bodybuilding community, and they basically say "if I don't think I'm going to WIN, I'm not even going to start." So now it's been three years since they've stepped on the stage. That's a ton of wasted time for a "bodybuilder". I don't get that way of thinking. When I compete in sports, I compete to have fun, make friends, and compete to NOT G…

> It's not about being elite. I know a ton of guys in the bodybuilding community, and they basically say "if I don't think I'm going to WIN, I'm not even going to start."

Yeah, this is a trap. I actually enjoy the training, as long as I'm seeing some progress.

> When I compete in sports, I compete to have fun, make friends, and compete to NOT GET LAST PLACE.

I'm not interested in the social aspect at all, for better or worse. In part this is because I've seen social / club players fail to improve because of bad habits they pick up and reinforce during social play. My parents spent a bunch of money on training, but I also picked up a lot of bad habits due to incorrect technique from parental coaching.

I should say that for me the sweetest moment is after hitting an ace, a winner, or running down a ball I didn't think I could get. It's not necessarily about the win, but about the perfect shot, the sweet feeling of it, the sound of it, the smell of the ball, etc. So, that's definitely something I can still enjoy.

I spent some time this fall solo-practicing against a ball-machine and watching Roger Federer videos on Youtube. My backhand is better than it's been at any point in my development.

I think it's important to aim for excellence, not just competence, because I see many players' development limited by basically not taking the sport seriously.

But of course, what ever makes you happy. My cruel task-master is that excellence makes me happy.

So overall, very positive. The core of the regret is more like -- huh, if I had realized how to study / train systematically ten-twenty years ago I could be on a different trajectory.

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#344

Post by ryandrake »

phormula wrote: post #242
ryandrake wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't "get" Snapchat any more than I get Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. etc. These social apps (which are about as social as reality TV is reality) all are more about promotion than communication. In order to get into these apps you need to have a personality that seeks constant attention from others and external validation. The platforms are all about "broadcasting me and tracking the acknowledgement of me", w…

What you described is extroversion which by some measures is 3/4 of the population.

What I described is narcissism

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#345

Post by pmlnr »

lmm wrote: post #320
pmlnr wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is because everyone needs to be able to say and do things that aren't recorded. That go away. And kids need space to experiment and grow in ways they are not watched. I miss the old IRC. I do mean it, the world of emojis and stickers and selfies is too vibrant for me; IRC wasn't recorded, it was text, private and I do miss it. Still using it for IT and Open Source, but not for private stuff any more, because pri…

IRC has a protocol for avatar photos. Some clients will even download/display them automatically. And a lot of clients render emojis these days.

If by emoji you mean the unicode table, yes, you're right.

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#346

Post by Orangeair »

lotu wrote: post #268
doublerebel wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MMS for picture messaging: * picture quality sucks * not ephemeral * requires multiple clicks (snapchat is just one button) * difficult to BCC (snapchat sending is ALL bcc, which is awesome ) * doesn't work well from country to country (if at all -- but getting snaps from my international friends is really really cool and works the same as local) * no easy way to send video * expects a reply * is awkward to send in t…

Half of those are not true on iOS

That's because it isn't MMS. It's Apple's proprietary messaging system.

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#347

Post by mercer »

gavman wrote: post #29

It's amazing that at age 22 I've already seemingly "aged-out" of being an early adopter/power user of new social media (not that Snapchat is new, but I use it maybe once or twice a day and I've never even heard of "Triller" and "VSCO"). My 15 year old sister is always rolling her eyes telling me how to "correctly" use my existing social media apps and I've never heard of most of the new apps she's into.

In my experience so far it's a selective thing. Certain types of social media, apps or pop culture I am 'with' (Rick & Morty, certain indy games), but others I didn't even really understand years ago (twitter, myspace).

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#348

Post by PeterTMayer »

gavman wrote: post #29

It's amazing that at age 22 I've already seemingly "aged-out" of being an early adopter/power user of new social media (not that Snapchat is new, but I use it maybe once or twice a day and I've never even heard of "Triller" and "VSCO"). My 15 year old sister is always rolling her eyes telling me how to "correctly" use my existing social media apps and I've never heard of most of the new apps she's into.

With technology, the cultural gap between generations widens, but the time gap between generation ages actually shrinks. Every generation has their own technology and apps and I think it is fine. You, being 22, might not even use Facebook at all, whereas I, being 38, still use it, so I feel "aged-out" versus you. :) The problem with some of these new apps is the loss of "real" human connections. Like this girl said she almost does not even pay attention to her snaps because she gets so many. She just responds. What is the point of that? It seems it is more important for her to get high scores to show she is popular than the actual interaction. This might create some social and psychological problems for her later in life. At least this is my humble opinion. Full disclaimer: I am working on a social app too, but opposite of these current alternatives, we are focusing on the "real" part, the non-idealized part of human interaction.

Re: My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

#350

Post by freshhawk »

jon-wood wrote: post #317
mattlutze wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bit of game theory they actively present is Seinfeld's "Don't Break the Chain" technique. Snapchat marks and elevates contacts you individually snap at at least once a day, moving those contacts into more-and-more personally named categories ("close friend", "best friends", etc). That bit is right in your face and rewards you for increased use.

I had no idea that was the case, but that's some next level psychological shit to be pulling on a predominantly teenage customer base. Does no one see the proposal to do something like this and think to step back for a second and consider the effect its going to have on people's lives?

In general the only people doing that are in marketing, and they only do so in the frame of trying to monetize that relationship/power/leverage.

Political wonks talk about it a lot and have various daydreams of having that type of power.

It's not talked about much, and when it is you can counter it by labeling it as a "kids these days" type argument.

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