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Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

>High-throughput, large-state stream processing. For example, tracking GPS locations of millions of users, inferring their velocity vectors.

It baffles me they're so casual about it ...

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Inferring velocity vectors would be very useful for analyzing traffic flows, impacts of lane widening/reducing, signal timing, ML for adaptive traffic management, etc.

None of those things are nefarious and don't necessarily provide additional knowledge, as long as care is taken to fully deanonymize and fuzz start/stop/end locations of trips or associate trips together.

People agree to provide this information to services like Waze etc for exactly these tasks.

Which is still a disgusting and unethical use of technology.

It could be. It even might be. The baseline expectation, a better traffic forecast, is not good or evil -- but it is a benefit many people want.

Unfortunately it is under a company known for shutting down products and that spies on you. It is better to use alternatives like Open Street Map, or if there was absolutely no other option, Apple Maps.

I use Waze, I'm choosing to give them my driving data to get information on traffic in return. That's not unethical, that's a choice I actively make.

Them selling my data to others without telling me is unethical, but that's not the case that Jet describes.

Would you be interested in giving them your phone number? how about your contacts as well? maybe your own voice? apps have you've installed? and when you're not using the app, keep them posted on your location while you're at it too.

> Them selling my data to others without telling me is unethical.

Don't you think Google does this to you already?

Can you link to some evidence showing where google is selling data to others?

Ever heard of 'Real Time Bidding?', Google sells your data to advertisers to the highest bidder [0]. Planning on becoming an activist? I've got news for you, law enforcement also want your data and Google sells it to them upon request at any time. [1]

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/technology/google-search-...

I don't think either of those links say what you think they say.

Do you believe Google when they say 'We do not sell personal information to anyone?'

I know they do, but a lot of their users don't which is unethical. But this comment was about the Jet database listing a use case about speed vectors. There is absolutely nothing unethical about that use case nor technology. All the other issues you list, absolutely, but those are not things Jet does.

Do you use Google or Facebook or Twitter? Do you think you're not being precisely tracked/profiled with those services?

> Do you use Google or Facebook or Twitter?

No I don't. I actively refuse to use these surveillance services.

Hmmm... I think there are only a handful of nefarious uses for this technology but a plethora of real-world applications. Almost all of the nefarious uses revolve around GPS and individuals. If you take that out, the set of applications is enormous-1.

It’s strange to me that people read something like this and infer the absolute inverse of the actual situation. That is definitely a “thinking fast” reaction.

This statement comes from our benchmarking work:

https://jet-start.sh/blog/2020/06/09/jdk-gc-benchmarks-part1

The point is that Jet can track several million distinct keys, even on a single machine, and finding velocity vectors boils down to linear regression sliding window against two FP variables.

If your concern is why you would specifically want to track locations, the answer is that there are plenty location-based apps that track locations with user's consent.

Yes my concern is about how casual you sound about tracking millions of GPS locations.

By user consent you mean someone clicked a button without thinking to get to the app ?

Here are some examples where user consent is undisputed: ride hailing, bicycle rental, street navigation, running/biking/sailing contests, location-sensitive searches. These are the kinds of applications for which Hazelcast Jet offers easy scaling into millions of users.

See no evil :) There could be non-shady reasons to do this.

Besides, I think this statement is just meant to give a sense of the kind of processing that can be done, and the scale it can reach.

There could be non-shady reasons to do this.

I can't think of one.

maybe Pokemon Go?

Uber?

Car insurance Air traffic control Simulations

https://www.waze.com/waze

worldwide parcel shipping?

Using FindMyiPhone/Android to have more data on what direction a missing person was heading instead of just location pings?

Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the multitude of excercise tracking apps? Tracking is entirely the point of those.

https://www.strava.com/ for example.

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