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The accidental genius of Yo

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Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#61

Post by wave_function »

hk__2 wrote: post #38
tlarkworthy wrote: post #37

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact... /pedant

> The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. t's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit. It’s still one bit. The time is not part of the transm…

I’d argue that choosing the time to send a “yo” constitutes log2(N) bits, where N is the number of times the yo could have been sent (It’s not quite an integer but you might say resolution faster than a minute is irrelevant and call N the number of minutes). Not much, but still more than one.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#62

Post by spiznnx »

This reminds me of feature I liked about Google's Duo app (like Facetime): send a heart.

It's pretty clear what the heart means in the context of a video call app: "I am currently thinking about you and wouldn't mind a video call, if you want to." It solves the problem of instant-anxiety of getting an impromptu video call when you weren't expecting one.

Unfortunately now you can send one of 10 different emoji instead of just the heart, complicating the feature unnecessarily by adding more bits.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#63

Post by tsimionescu »

capableweb wrote: post #40
hk__2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. t's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit. It’s still one bit. The time is not part of the transm…

Time is absolutely part of the transmission. It matters when you say "Hi" to someone. Differently timed "Hi"'s can say different things. Even if you repeat "Hi" many times, it's still just "Hi" but the amount of them also matters and becomes part of the transmission when looking at all of them together. I feel like many, especially developers, fail to see what is in between the data to matter as well as the data itse…

You're arguing past each other. The amount of information transmitted is 1 bit. Someone receiving a PCAP with the data would not get more than 1 bit of information.

However, you're also right that the people sending and receiving the bit can derive more information from it.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#64

Post by thaumasiotes »

tsimionescu wrote: post #63
capableweb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time is absolutely part of the transmission. It matters when you say "Hi" to someone. Differently timed "Hi"'s can say different things. Even if you repeat "Hi" many times, it's still just "Hi" but the amount of them also matters and becomes part of the transmission when looking at all of them together. I feel like many, especially developers, fail to see what is in between the data to matter as well as the data itse…

You're arguing past each other. The amount of information transmitted is 1 bit. Someone receiving a PCAP with the data would not get more than 1 bit of information. However, you're also right that the people sending and receiving the bit can derive more information from it.

> You're arguing past each other. The amount of information transmitted is 1 bit.

I don't understand the argument here.

In order to get up to one bit of information, you need to take account of the fact that "yo" is only sent at particular times. If you ignore that fact, sending "yo" provides exactly zero bits of information, because it is the only possible message. All of the information content comes from the existence of the message; none of it comes from the contents.

So in order to claim that there's any information present at all, you have to admit that time of sending carries information. The amount of information carried then depends on the duration over which messages might have been transmitted, since that possibility is what imbues information into messages that are transmitted. It also imbues information into messages that aren't transmitted, unless you believe that a binary message of 01000110 transmits just 3, and not 8, bits of information.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#65

Post by sethammons »

ralph84 wrote: post #39
pcardoso wrote: post #16

Years ago calling and immediately hanging up was immensely popular among teenagers/young adults as a way to ping someone. Used as a way of flirting, telling something was ready, arrived at home.

My middle school had a pay phone in the lobby. After-school activities had a variable end time so when I needed my mom to pick me up I’d call her collect. She never accepted the charges, but knew it was time to head over to the school.

Yup, call “collect” from a pay phone.

For the unfamiliar, the collect call recording asked for your name and played it back to the call recipient. You had a a small window whereby you could get info across.

“You have a collect call from ‘555 4784’, would you like to accept the charges?”

Then whoever could just call you back.

The real power was unlocked with a Blue Box - a phone phreaking device that played the same tones as if money was entered into the pay phone. You could trick the phone and make your call. I remember looping the tone on a cassette tape and calling some random number in Japan for several dollars worth of tones. Good times.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#66

Post by danhorner »

ralph84 wrote: post #39
pcardoso wrote: post #16

Years ago calling and immediately hanging up was immensely popular among teenagers/young adults as a way to ping someone. Used as a way of flirting, telling something was ready, arrived at home.

My middle school had a pay phone in the lobby. After-school activities had a variable end time so when I needed my mom to pick me up I’d call her collect. She never accepted the charges, but knew it was time to head over to the school.

Thanks for the throwback. We LOVED the collect call thing as teenagers too cheap to drop a quarter into the phone:

- "You have a collect call from AtTheStationMyBusLeavesIn18Minutes. Do you wish to accept the charges?"

- "No"

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#67

Post by StavrosK »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #51
admax88q wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're in different locations and we run a wire between us, and I send a single pulse down the wire. That's one bit of information. You as the receiver derive the other relevant information from that. A timestamp was not encoded and transmitted, a single bit (pulse) was transmitted from me to you. That's the thesis of the article I believe. That single bit can "carry" a lot of additional information due to the cont…

That’s not one bit of information. If there is only one possible message you can send, there’s zero bits in the message itself. One bit would be if you had two messages to choose from. All the information in Yo is in the timing.

You do have two messages to choose from. One is no message, the other is a message.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#69

Post by pmiller2 »

Swizec wrote: post #8
sambostock wrote: post #6

Years ago, I hooked up my apartment buzzer to Yo with a raspberry pi. https://github.com/sambostock/yoorbell It was super insecure, but if you yo'd it, it would let you in, and if someone buzzed the buzzer, it would yo me. Exactly as much info as needed.

Reminds me of the saying that millenials are killing the doorbell industry by texting “here”

Tell that to my neighbors, whose guests love to sit out in the parking lot of my apartment building and honk to get their attention. :/

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#70

Post by ackbar03 »

mhh__ wrote: post #57
andruby wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how could they’ve monetized? Would you still use it with ads inserted?

When you say monetized do you mean buy a car or buy an island type money. You could definitely market it well enough to sell some merchandise or similar, it's just not going to make you a billionaire.

But that's the problem because vc money got involved, at which point it essentially had to go big or go home
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