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I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

earpodsecret.tumblr.com

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Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#21

Post by drham »

glenra wrote: post #14

The thing is that made-up or not, this is a really good idea . An idea whose time has come. Something like it is probably inevitable. Everywhere you go, you see people walking around with Apple headphones in their ears much of the time. The hardware connected to those headphones doesn't merely send music out to the ears from the phone, it also accepts signals in the other direction to enable microphone input and a fe…

It's possible, there is a company called Valencell (http://www.valencell.com) that has been working on this for a few years. There a few products using that technology that are out already, not sure how good they are right now, but promising technology for sure.

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#22

Post by stevenp »

If anything, this story calls out the sensationalism of a tech press that just sucks up anything it can find and runs with it as a story. We've seen unsubstantiated "reporting" of Apple rumors like this for years, and these stories never add anything valuable to the discussion. I'm glad this fake rumor got so much traction. Maybe enough people have egg on their faces that we will do better in the future. But probably not.

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#24

Post by _Adam »

This was obviously fake because measuring blood pressure isn't something you can do via the ear canal in a non-intrusive way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_pressure#Measurement

Kind of sad that even a single person believed this. Why is everyone so willing to forego scepticism?

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#25

Post by mesozoic »

Good. These "news" outlets need to learn how to source their news correctly and not from some anonymous online crap. Hopefully egg on their face here makes them think a little harder about using stuff like this as a source in the future.

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#26

Post by mikeash »

mortenjorck wrote: post #17
jhh wrote: post #5

There's really no need to apologize for this in my opinion. If people decide to trust a complete non-source that's their problem. It's actually a fascinating demonstration of the dynamics of these rumors.

It’s a long shot that the poster would have actually endangered anyone’s position at Apple, but I suppose it’s already a somewhat long shot that he managed to nail both the patent and an area of expertise of a recent hire, all without any prior context. Given that, I think this was the right thing to do.

Even if it did manage to get somebody at Apple in trouble, the fault lies entirely with Apple laying down false accusations with insufficient evidence, not with the guy who made a lucky guess and didn't even do it intentionally.

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#28

Post by rabidonrails »

roderickm wrote: post #13

Biometric EarPods are real -- but the product is called The Dash, made in Munich by Bragi. The Dash monitors movements like pace, steps, cadence and distance as well as heart rate, oxygen saturation and energy spent. Two tiny LEDs emit low intensity red and infrared light into the capillaries in the ear. The optical reflection of the emitted light reveal the relative amount of red and white blood cells more than 50 t…

The Dash looks really great. I'd love to read a review on these when they are delivered.

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#29

Post by encoderer »

glenra wrote: post #14

The thing is that made-up or not, this is a really good idea . An idea whose time has come. Something like it is probably inevitable. Everywhere you go, you see people walking around with Apple headphones in their ears much of the time. The hardware connected to those headphones doesn't merely send music out to the ears from the phone, it also accepts signals in the other direction to enable microphone input and a fe…

Meh, I think the idea is thin.

So I can have biometrics info only when i stick something in my head? Quantified Self or whatever you want to call it is certainly big business, but it NEEDS passive data collection to ever be a mainstream success. Thus the fitbit, and possibly the iWatch. "Just stick these sensors in your ears" is not a good solution to this. And "All the info you want about what your body is doing while you listen to music" is not exactly what I'm going after when I use these apps.

Re: I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

#30

Post by msvan »

It's not the OP's fault, it's lack of integrity in the press.

You start by propagating a rumor on some insignificant source like Secret, then a blogger picks it up. The blogger gets noticed by people on Twitter, who catch the attention of some small news source. Bigger newspapers notice that the story is blossoming in the lower echelons and they pick it up. Suddenly, something which carries zero truth has become fact in a cascade of increasing credibility.

This is the problem with modern online media. When more clicks mean more money, the incentives will favor rumors and lies. And this doesn't only happen by accident, as in the OP's case, but it's done over and over again by media manipulators who have realized that it's a bug in the system that's easily abused for fun and profit.

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