Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#51

Post by BinaryIdiot » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:03 AM UTC

msabalau wrote: post #4

msabalau wrote: post #2

In other words, Apple is incapable of competing at delivering valuable user experiences on the basis of machine learning, so they are trashing the concept.

Downvote if you want, but billions of people get value every day out of Facebook, Google, and Amazon knowing them. Saying scary words about advertising isn't going to keep people from abandoning Apple's premium priced lower quality photo service.

So I downvoted your original comment not because people get value out of machine learning (which I agree with) but that you purport that Apple is incapable of delivering something based on machine learning. Unless you're a core Apple engineer I don't see how you could know this for sure; it sounded more like an opinion that didn't further the discussion.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they use machine learning for a few things (they do collect data after all just not as much).

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#52

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:04 AM UTC

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #37

icpmacdo wrote: post #3

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.” This is a great strategy to win the hearts and m…

But it's still mostly bullshit, though, especially coming from a company using closed source software for most of its products. Nobody can really tell what they are collecting, what they do with it and how much of it they share with third parties (including governments). If you google a bit, I bet you will find similar speeches from every single big company CEO these past years: "Privacy is our number one priority, b…

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#53

Post by hackuser » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:04 AM UTC

I'm repeating myself (from other threads) but Mozilla should use this sales pitch. Very few users can evaluate business' privacy practices; they only can trust the business. Due to their non-profit, public good status, their mission, and their track record, nobody could compete with Mozilla on trust.

EDIT: I'll add: Certainly the other two leading browser makers couldn't compete, and in mobile platforms only Apple, if they sell Cook's pitch effectively, can provide any competition.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#54

Post by vacri » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:05 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

joelrunyon wrote: post #7

This, combined with a few reports from a couple months ago, sounds like Apple might be ramping up a search engine competitor that could be more privacy-focused.

I would like to see that happen. In an ideal world, I believe, we would be able to pay for search, cloud storage, email, etc. with strong privacy and security guarantees.

'Private search' already exists. If that's what you want, then use duckduckgo. As a bonus, it's outside the Apple ecosystem, so you're diversifying your risk.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#55

Post by threeseed » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:06 AM UTC

resu_nimda wrote: post #19

threeseed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get value from the core service of Facebook, Google and Amazon not their machine learning driven advertising/recommendation engines. And I would argue that given that since those engines are used to drive company profit first and user experience second they are of limited value to the user. And if you are talking about Google Now style functionality well I haven't seen that changing the world same with Siri, C…

Personally I do get value from Facebook ads, I very often see ads for vendors and events that I am interested in and did not know of before. Regardless, what is the value of Facebook being free? Would most people rather pay with their money or with their data? Can you make a definitive argument that giving my data to Google or Facebook costs me anything?

I am not disputing that people may get value from advertising but (a) it is not the reason people use the service and (b) it is not even close to being a popular feature of the service.

And giving data costs you when something goes wrong. Dealing with identity theft, stolen credit cards etc is not fun a experience to deal with.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#56

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:06 AM UTC

pervycreeper wrote: post #49

[deleted] wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

>You're arguing over semantics. Selling a product (ads) that is a direct result of having that data is basically selling that data. For some definition of "basically" that means "not whatsoever". Selling involves exchanging money for goods or services with another party (to paraphrase Homer Simpson).

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#57

Post by MCRed » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:07 AM UTC

You see here, in all the apologists for those who violate privacy the real truth of the Hacker News crowd. Their hatred of Apple exceeds their desire for privacy, security, and an end to the intrusive police state we have.

For years, literally since the days of the Apple //e, I've seen people online (BBSes then) attacking Apple because they couldn't afford one and got something else. This didn't stop when Apple started shipping better quality products that could also run windows for less money. It only got worse when google decided they wanted to counterfeit the iPhone and started this anti-IP ideology. (yes, it didn't exist as a movement outside of Stallman before then.)

Mac users just wanted to be left alone, but the Cult of Apple Hating would use any opportunity to bash Apple. This has been going on for 40 years now, and the claims are still the same "costs more does less!" (even when both are false, as they have mostly been for the past near 40 years.)

Apple has gone from a startup to the most valuable company in the world in that time period.

And what do the cultists say? "Oh, people are just stupid, they like shiny things" (of course they don't say that when people were buying huge android phones with big screens-- a necessity to have a large enough battery given the terrible battery performance of android, no they simply ignored all the things that sucked about android and pretended simultaneously like it was superior to iOS, and that it was a direct ripoff was ok because there's no such thing as intellectual property")

You lot are a bunch of god germans.

Celebrate your USA FREEDOM ACT and your USA PATRIOT ACT that Obama extended and renewed-- how many of you voted for him, anyway? Any of you regret it?

Mac users just wanted to be left along to use their macs. They weren't going around saying that windows sucked, or that microsoft was going under. They weren't claiming %100 marketshare when the truth was Apple hat %25 market share at that time.

You've sold your principles, your integrity and your honor. And for what? Because the computer that worked better was too expensive when you were growing up?

Well, you can afford one now.

So Shame on you.

I for one am disgusted at this massive endorsement of the violations of your privacy and your security, simply because you were jealous when you were 14. SHAME.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#58

Post by mkozlows » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:07 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #47

mkozlows wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's very different. If I'm concerned about my privacy, I'm concerned about who knows stuff about me. Google knows a bunch of stuff about their customers inherently (because their customers have all their email on Google servers, do Google searches, etc.), so Google customers have already decided they trust Google with that information. If Google were selling it, they'd be passing it along to other organizations…

(1) Google also puts ads and other little tracking widgets (google analytics, G+ social buttons, etc.) all over the web, gathering massive amounts of information about people’s browsing habits unrelated to any direct customer relationship or informed consent. (2) Use of Google search does not at all imply that a customer wants all of their searches to be associated with their identity, processed, stored indefinitely,…

Re 1 - I agree that is by a mile the most problematic part of Google's business. It's not a problem that Google knows what's in the emails I store on their servers -- of course they do, I put them there -- but it is problematic if they know I go to www.controversialsite.com when they should have no reason to.

But the implication there is that Google's most privacy-invasive product, by a mile, is Google Analytics, which doesn't really help Cook's case in any meaningful way, because that has nothing to do with the Google services that compete with Apple.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#59

Post by zak_mc_kracken » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:08 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #41

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's still mostly bullshit, though, especially coming from a company using closed source software for most of its products. Nobody can really tell what they are collecting, what they do with it and how much of it they share with third parties (including governments). If you google a bit, I bet you will find similar speeches from every single big company CEO these past years: "Privacy is our number one priority, b…

[deleted]

As magicalist points out in his response, you are taking Schmidt's quote completely out of context. Don't feel bad, you're not the only one.

Schmidt (and Google) are extremely pro-privacy and against sharing information with the government. Google must have like ten lawsuits going on at all times on the entire planet trying to fight intrusive data request from governments. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to prevent governments from gaining access to their data.

At least with Android being open source, they have a reasonable track record of transparency (obviously, that doesn't apply to their search logs, which are still proprietary).

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#60

Post by tolmasky » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:10 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #22

msoad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people from Apple data-related teams and talk to them a lot. Trust me, they simply don't have what it takes to build good data-heavy software.

I know people from those teams as well. Pretty sure Siri, iTunes Match, iTunes Store, App Store, iMessages, iCloud etc use just a little bit of data so clearly they aren't idiots. And with the acquisition of the guys from FoundationDB pretty sure they will have at least some skill in high end database engineering.

You just listed a bunch of broken products that do nothing but make me skeptical of apple even being able to properly store my data, let alone analyze it.

imessages is notorious for not even being able to deliver messages in order many times. It is easily apples worst service, and should be brain dead simple.

App Store is s bare minimum store that's only real change since its inception was just now supporting videos and a higher reliance on curation (because they can't possibly figure out more automated ways). It loads horribly, and barely has any helpfulness in suggesting new apps. Search is a mess that will often not give you an exact string matchas the first result. It's a joke compared to a real online store like Amazon, and it doesn't even have physical products or difficult problems like figuring out shipping.

iCloud has had repeated public embarrassments, and can't seem to guarantee basic uptime and service despite being overpriced, and IsItself the result of several relaunches due to predecessors making such a bad reputation for themselves (.mac, MobileMe).

Siri was a purchase, and despite having is integration does not compete that great against Google now. Same goes with mapping of course.

Apple may get good at services someday, but that day is not now.