Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak • Hacker News Board

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#141

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #137

ChuckMcM wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some very popular phones have a barometer[1]. If you are getting data from a bunch of phones, and most of them are legit, then you'll have a good idea of where the air pressure 'should' be, and if you get a barometer reading that is outside that data set by a standard deviation you can probably 'guess' that it is not coming from a phone at the same lat/lon as the other ones. [1] https://www.phonegg.com/list/303-Cell-…

That only adds one extra step to spoofing - now I have to check weather.com for the barometer reading in the location I plan to poof before sending. NBD... Also, pressure in vs outside can vary more than you'd think...

As with anything, it can be over come at a cost, and the only thing anyone can hope for is to keep the cost of defrauding a system higher than the expected return of successfully defrauding it.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#142

Post by ynniv » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 8:30 PM UTC

FrobozzElectric wrote: post #75

charlescearl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mailchimp?

I would imagine MC would qualify as a unicorn. Off topic - I always get such bizarre vibes when I interact with anyone from MC or hear of others' interactions with MC employees (ATL here).

What kind of vibe? Email me?

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#143

Post by Trundle » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 1:40 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #65

problems wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm continually amazed by the level of absolute garbage people can ship with any level of popularity. And worse, get funding to ship it.

The quality of code and level of popularity are not directly correlated. In fact, I've found often times they're inversely correlated. Maybe something to do with where time is spent?

It amused me last year when I realised that 95% of my phone use was the facebook app, tinder, and pokemon go. One a notorious battery drain, the next crashed regularly, and then the last was worst at both. I definitely think there are a lot of programmers who place a too much weight on the effect of quality when it comes to consumer apps.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#144

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 9:42 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #117

komali2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So users on phones without barometers cannot use your app, and you are decidedly mobile-only, forever.

Not at all, the question was how to combat or at least estimate fraudulent 'adjustment' of the karma in a location based service. The way to do that is to take information that is specific to the location, and changes, and provide that data in the input stream to help understand where your clicks/votes are coming from. If one in 5 phones has a barometer with a high degree of probability, then you can use set bounds o…

This is a really clever idea. Do you have sources of information about what sensors are present in which phones?