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

#91

Post by mevile » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

pjungwir wrote: post #70

huehehue wrote: post #62

Bit of a tangent and, for those not familiar, Yik Yak is an anonymous, upvote-downvote, location-based forum (kinda) where posts are automatically deleted if they net -5 votes. In college, I was really interested in how Yik Yak worked and found out that, given a list of N user ids (which were super easy to generate), one could send downvote requests to the server and instantly delete any post with a score There was n…

A problem I've mused on for a few years is related to this: when a phone submits a lonlat to an API server, how can you make the server more confident it can trust the location? I mean with curl I could POST any lonlat I want---I don't even need a phone! I don't think this is truly solvable, but how can you make spoofing the location harder? The scale I'm thinking about is "Are you really in the store you say you're…

Swarm/Foursquare I believe solve this problem by tracking the time between check-ins and then consider the distance between the places you've checked into and how long it would take to travel between them. You can't check into a store in New York Times Square one minute and then the next minute check into a place in Los Angeles. Sure you can lie, but with this restriction and restrictions around how frequently you can check in and other levers they have made a high quality experience that works for what they want to do.

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

#92

Post by mjn » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

frogstomp19 wrote: post #27

sdflkd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.

Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing sp…

There's a medtech and health-IT cluster as well, partly due to Emory's med school, and Atlanta being a regional hospital center. Much of that's b2b too (though there are a few Fitbit-style b2c health-IT companies), but different set of people than most b2b companies are, and with its own set of startup incubators (Neurolaunch, Sling Health Atlanta, Global Center for Medical Innovation, etc.).

Random example companies: http://www.virtuallybetter.com/, http://safeheartus.com/

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

#93

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

huehehue wrote: post #62

Bit of a tangent and, for those not familiar, Yik Yak is an anonymous, upvote-downvote, location-based forum (kinda) where posts are automatically deleted if they net -5 votes. In college, I was really interested in how Yik Yak worked and found out that, given a list of N user ids (which were super easy to generate), one could send downvote requests to the server and instantly delete any post with a score There was n…

I think they started requiring a real phone number type identification to deal with the issue instead of any type of real IP/region/rate-limited/Captcha based spam detection.

I used it up until they asked for a real phone number. It was kinda cute, but yea, mostly filled with college students. Depending on where I travelled in the world, there may have been messages from three weeks ago on the top for that area. I was surprised how many remote areas had at least a few yackers; although very few non-English posts.

I think my favourite Yak: "If you ever feel down about Uni, just remember there's still someone from your home town trying to make it as a rapper."

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

#94

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #87

ChuckMcM wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send temperature and barometric pressure. Temp will vary (inside/outside) but pressure should be reasonably consistent.

How is that any more trustworthy? You can probably use the same source the server would use to verify that information. Not to mention, most phones may not have those sensors.

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-Phones-with-Barometer

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

#95

Post by tajen » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

pjungwir wrote: post #70

huehehue wrote: post #62

Bit of a tangent and, for those not familiar, Yik Yak is an anonymous, upvote-downvote, location-based forum (kinda) where posts are automatically deleted if they net -5 votes. In college, I was really interested in how Yik Yak worked and found out that, given a list of N user ids (which were super easy to generate), one could send downvote requests to the server and instantly delete any post with a score There was n…

A problem I've mused on for a few years is related to this: when a phone submits a lonlat to an API server, how can you make the server more confident it can trust the location? I mean with curl I could POST any lonlat I want---I don't even need a phone! I don't think this is truly solvable, but how can you make spoofing the location harder? The scale I'm thinking about is "Are you really in the store you say you're…

Can you ask them?

Make the user take a pic of the store, then check the EXIF for the timestamp. The pic should be very easy to shape-compare with other submissions of the same store (hardware doesn't move much, as opposed to faces), and the pic should never be exactly the same (refuse submitting twice the same pic).

Other solutions require the participation of the store: Dynamic QR codes, microphone authorization, or a website on the store's Wifi internal network.

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

#96

Post by alistproducer2 » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

noodle wrote: post #81

frogstomp19 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing sp…

> I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types" Two things: 1. Atlanta's tech scene is largely b2b. Its driven a lot by people who worked in industry and then had a great idea for a company and left. Or serial entrepreneurs who are capable of building a business but not a product. So a lot of companies simply originate from "business types" because they're founded by them, for them. 2.…

For those outside ATL, ATV = Atlanta tech village [1]

1: http://atlantatechvillage.com

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

#97

Post by jfktrey » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

mevile wrote: post #91

pjungwir wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A problem I've mused on for a few years is related to this: when a phone submits a lonlat to an API server, how can you make the server more confident it can trust the location? I mean with curl I could POST any lonlat I want---I don't even need a phone! I don't think this is truly solvable, but how can you make spoofing the location harder? The scale I'm thinking about is "Are you really in the store you say you're…

Swarm/Foursquare I believe solve this problem by tracking the time between check-ins and then consider the distance between the places you've checked into and how long it would take to travel between them. You can't check into a store in New York Times Square one minute and then the next minute check into a place in Los Angeles. Sure you can lie, but with this restriction and restrictions around how frequently you ca…

IIRC credit card companies do a similar thing to reduce fraud

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

#98

Post by btown » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:20 PM UTC

pjungwir wrote: post #70

huehehue wrote: post #62

Bit of a tangent and, for those not familiar, Yik Yak is an anonymous, upvote-downvote, location-based forum (kinda) where posts are automatically deleted if they net -5 votes. In college, I was really interested in how Yik Yak worked and found out that, given a list of N user ids (which were super easy to generate), one could send downvote requests to the server and instantly delete any post with a score There was n…

A problem I've mused on for a few years is related to this: when a phone submits a lonlat to an API server, how can you make the server more confident it can trust the location? I mean with curl I could POST any lonlat I want---I don't even need a phone! I don't think this is truly solvable, but how can you make spoofing the location harder? The scale I'm thinking about is "Are you really in the store you say you're…

There is no better case study for this than Pokemon Go, where the interest in spoofing location reached unheard of levels (outside of state actors). This is a good writeup:

http://engineering.shapesecurity.com/2016/08/pokemon-go-api....

Basically sign your API requests with the most obscure function of phone context variables imaginable, and recognize that if you get so popular that it's cracked, you can just hire a machine learning team anyways. And pin your certs!

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

#99

Post by NDT » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

alistproducer2 wrote: post #59

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #31

Pity, mainly because there seems to be a market for local anonymous communications, but a relatively small, and very vocal subset of users can ruin it for everyone. I wonder if some sort of anonymous reputation system could have saved them from making product decisions that were counter to the reasons for using the app in the first place.

whisper is a much superior, still alive platform that does the same thing.

I really disagree. I've used the app maybe 2-3 years ago and looking at their website, it doesn't seem like the main UI or features have changed much. If I didn't know what the app was, going on their website I would think it's a Buzzfeed clone given all their listicles and clickbaity headlines.

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

#100

Post by alistproducer2 » Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

NDT wrote: post #99

alistproducer2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whisper is a much superior, still alive platform that does the same thing.

I really disagree. I've used the app maybe 2-3 years ago and looking at their website, it doesn't seem like the main UI or features have changed much. If I didn't know what the app was, going on their website I would think it's a Buzzfeed clone given all their listicles and clickbaity headlines.

Listicles are not how it's mainly used. It's basically a chat app. Most of the activity on the main feed is people looking to chat. And there are very active groups.