Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing Cover

coverscreen.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 99 posts

Re: Introducing Cover

#21

Post by oscargrouch »

avree wrote: post #17
cik wrote: post #11

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Mind you, I say all this without knowing if it requests network access. How do I know you're not sending my usage patterns upstream to CoverCorp? How do I know that you're not reading the Android Music Provider database, and sharing my…

How do you know that Google is not doing all this as part of the Android OS? Or any other app on your phone that requests network access? Secondly, why would you care?

> Secondly, why would you care?

Where have you been the past months, under a rock?

Privacy and trust are very valuable concepts these days, after months of NSA spying and companies trying to monetize every byte of your personal(and public) data..

Its just a bad time for this, everybody is pretty sensitive over this sort of things right now, and we cant blame them

Re: Introducing Cover

#23

Post by grimtrigger »

tene wrote: post #15
cik wrote: post #11

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Mind you, I say all this without knowing if it requests network access. How do I know you're not sending my usage patterns upstream to CoverCorp? How do I know that you're not reading the Android Music Provider database, and sharing my…

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

Just because its fun to play "worst case scenario"...

An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada

Re: Introducing Cover

#24

Post by unlogic »

Right, unlocking the phone prior to opening apps is so hard and boring. Let's just launch them directly from the lockscreen. Wait, apps are accidentally being launched in my pocket. Can I have a lockscreen for the lockscreen?

Re: Introducing Cover

#25

Post by recuter »

oscargrouch wrote: post #21
avree wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that Google is not doing all this as part of the Android OS? Or any other app on your phone that requests network access? Secondly, why would you care?

> Secondly, why would you care? Where have you been the past months, under a rock? Privacy and trust are very valuable concepts these days, after months of NSA spying and companies trying to monetize every byte of your personal(and public) data.. Its just a bad time for this, everybody is pretty sensitive over this sort of things right now, and we cant blame them

For extremely narrow definitions of 'everybody'.

Re: Introducing Cover

#26

Post by brymaster »

tene wrote: post #15
cik wrote: post #11

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Mind you, I say all this without knowing if it requests network access. How do I know you're not sending my usage patterns upstream to CoverCorp? How do I know that you're not reading the Android Music Provider database, and sharing my…

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

When we give up all privacy, suddenly it no longer exists.

Re: Introducing Cover

#27

Post by explosivo2k2 »

samstave wrote: post #6

Heh. What the Facebook phone could never be; useful. It would be good to be able to define actions based on location (either by which wifi I connect to or GPS) - as well as time of day. (I'd like to have my screen auto dim at 10PM)

Tasker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....) is perfect for this kind of thing. There is a learning curve but it's worth it - very powerful app.

Re: Introducing Cover

#28

Post by jjcm »

cik wrote: post #11

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Mind you, I say all this without knowing if it requests network access. How do I know you're not sending my usage patterns upstream to CoverCorp? How do I know that you're not reading the Android Music Provider database, and sharing my…

I feel like the benefits outweigh the potential for downsides. Seeing potential is immediately obvious - but a company having anonymous application launch data seems harmless, and finding a way that the information you're sending them could directly impact your life in a negative way seems like a snipe hunt. Especially if you limit it to scenarios where the data benefits their company and negatively impacts you - it just doesn't seem realistic.

I may be biased here though - I do a lot of work on user interface tailoring for Microsoft, which inherently requires a lot of tracking.

Re: Introducing Cover

#29

Post by radley »

They're going to have the same problem as Facebook Home. They're essentially doing an overlay activity like most of us do. It only works as they describe provided the user keeps the device unlocked in the system. You can't bypass the device lock screen without rooting the device.
Post reply on HN