Comment by input_sh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by input_sh | Hacker News Reader

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Correct! This is just Meta doing malicious compliance by being "compatible" with companies with no actual product, three-months old waitlist, no actual users within the EU, and nobody to push back on WhatsApp's definition of interoperability. Then when some real product tries to actually become interoperable down-the-line, Meta's gonna be like "well these two did it just fine according to this backwards implementation, why can't you?"

They're both b2b products that are gonna try to find their first users by pitching the idea that you can use their products to spam WhatsApp users.

Haiket doesn't even try to hide its connection to Meta. All you have to do is to go to their website, click on press, and see in the only press release they've ever posted that its CEO holds patents in use by Meta. Here, let me save you a click: https://haiket.com/press/release-nov11.html

> Alex holds over 10 patents in voice and communication technologies, assigned to and used by Google and Facebook.

> Haiket doesn't even try to hide its connection to Meta. All you have to do is to go to their website, click on press, and see in the only press release they've ever posted that its CEO holds patents in use by Meta. […] Alex holds over 10 patents in voice and communication technologies, assigned to and used by Google and Facebook.

How does this imply he has any connection to Meta? Companies license patents all the time.

Okay, what about three sentences above that one?

> Before Haiket, Alex founded a number of technology start-ups and helped develop innovative voice solutions for Facebook and Google.

At the very least, I think it's safe to say he has some connections within Meta that he utilised for this purpose. He's definitely not a complete outsider whose startup (with no actual product) just happened to be picked by Meta.

> what about three sentences above that one?

My bad. I searched for “Meta” instead of “Facebook.” Quite a few other red flags in that press release.

> Haiket is launching the Beta trial from today, with a pipeline of future innovation for early adopters, including a pioneering silencing technology that will allow users to speak privately in public, with voice communication that only your device can hear.

>> including a pioneering silencing technology that will allow users to speak privately in public, with voice communication that only your device can hear.

Does anyone else think this sounds beyond ridiculous?

> voice communication that only your device can hear.

This is fairly straightforward - you have the device spew out noise with similar characteristics to human speech (ie. random overlapping syllables in the speaker's voice). Take a recording then subtract the random syllables.

Only your device can do the subtraction, because only your device knows the waveform it transmitted.

Obviously in a room with lots of reverb this will be a bit harder, since you will also need to subtract the reflection of what was transmitted with a room profile and deal with the phone moving in the room, but it sounds far from impossible.

Countermeasure: set up four microphones some distance apart, use autocorrelation to pinpoint the sound sources, and then isolate them, recovering the "masked" speech. The countercountermeasure would be to fully surround your mouth and vocal tract with an active noise cancelling system and then produce noise (to push whatever little sound gets through far below the noise floor: the signal is unpredictable enough that you can't use averaging techniques to recover it). The countercountercountermeasure would be to use a camera in the radio band to look at the vocal tract directly, using the phone as a light source, and recover the phonemes that way. The countercountercountercountermeasure would be to construct an isolated box… at which point you're no longer having a voice call in public: you have a portable privacy booth.

> you have the device spew out noise with similar characteristics to human speech

Surely this only works if you're using the phone as a speakerphone (and are therefore almost certainly being an arsehole in public[0])?

[0] Because if it was an actual speakerphone situation, hiding your voice would be stupid.

I see a second round of legislation might be needed. They'll get it right eventually.

Eh, there's no specific definition of interoperability written in the Digital Markets Act. It's decided on a case-by-case basis and I'm sure that the legislators in charge of this case will push back on this piss-poor implementation in like a year from now.

By the time this back-and-forth reaches its end, these two will find some shady b2b customers and are gonna be touted as "successful European startups".

They never got cookie popups right. What makes you so confident?

They got cookie pop-ups right, current rules:

- the default choice needs to be "strictly necessary cookies

- with other less prominent buttons for "allow all" and "deny all"

- a site is not allowed to force you to have the press a bunch of buttons or select a bunch of things to deny most/all cookies

The problem lies in enforcement. Unless you are a huge player, there is almost nil chance you're gonna get fined.

I think about the only thing missing is that they should have RFC'd a standard akin to Do Not Track, except this would have communicated to sites if your default is "strictly necessary", "allow all" or"deny all". With it being set to "strictly necessary" by default.

> The problem lies in enforcement. Unless you are a huge player, there is almost nil chance you're gonna get fined.

I am curious: why is that difficult? Define the fine as a percentage of the revenue of the company, have users report links, and pay someone to check the link and send the fine.

Sounds like easy money... I mean it's very profitable to pay people to check parking lots and fine drivers who don't follow the regulations. This should be even more profitable?

If I am business outside Europe, why would I send Europe what my revenue is?

I don't know — why do businesses outside Europe care about GDPR compliance at all? They could just track Europeans all they want to, without any cookie banners.

Tbh most do. It makes sense only for big companies with a multinational presence.

But admitting you are subject to the laws of a country/entity is one thing, sending them your books (when your company is not based there) is kind of on a different level

If you don't care about GDPR at all, then you don't have a cookie banner. So if you have the abusive cookie banner, I think it's fair to say that you care about Europe.

Optimistic. They've got sideloading done, browser and search choice done, ad transparency done, more choice for payments done, many dark patterns banned.

The gears are turning slowly, but they're doing really useful work.

Also, there's a lot of hate from US commenters but don't forget that the US was trying to do the same when it still had a sane administration.

The DoJ was trying to stop the Google search deal, trying to split them up etc. Big tech is too big and this is a problem everywhere.

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