I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it | Hacker News Reader

I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it

earpodsecret.tumblr.com

135 pointskunle62 comments

It's not the OP's fault, it's lack of integrity in the press.

You start by propagating a rumor on some insignificant source like Secret, then a blogger picks it up. The blogger gets noticed by people on Twitter, who catch the attention of some small news source. Bigger newspapers notice that the story is blossoming in the lower echelons and they pick it up. Suddenly, something which carries zero truth has become fact in a cascade of increasing credibility.

This is the problem with modern online media. When more clicks mean more money, the incentives will favor rumors and lies. And this doesn't only happen by accident, as in the OP's case, but it's done over and over again by media manipulators who have realized that it's a bug in the system that's easily abused for fun and profit.

>>> but it's done over and over again by media manipulators who have realized that it's a bug in the system that's easily abused for fun and profit.

To me, this is the most interesting part. You'd think in a media environment such as today, you'd think people would take more time when vetting stories like these, instead its the exact opposite. People are constantly jumping on and promoting stories without a hint of journalistic integrity.

90% of what I read now, I take with a grain of salt. You just can't trust anybody any more.

> 90% of what I read now, I take with a grain of salt. You just can't trust anybody any more.

But you (the ubiquitous you) still click and occasionally share to others who will click. Thats the only part that really matters to the decision makers.

> "lack of integrity in the press"

> "macRUMORS.com"

I enjoy reading macRUMORS.com. The name says it all, it's interesting to see what people think will happen but I don't rely on anything I see on the site. I would hope this is how all of their readers act.

I think this highlights something I've thought about recently.

I've realized reading the "news" is a skill. Particularly, HN. As a reader, you need to be able to quickly differentiate what matters and what doesn't; what's bias and what's not, what has actual substance and what doesn't; and what the stories mean in the grand scheme. Also, and most importantly, you have to be able to move on.

It's so easy to get distracted and sucked into the k-hole of news. News should educate and inform your worldview. But remember there's plenty of unsubstantiated ruminations and pointless, heavily-biased garbage out there.

Modern civilization is extremely complex; so much so that even seemingly cut-and-dry news stories are simply beyond full comprehension and understanding of what actually is going on.

My reading strategy for news is to allow a particular story to be substantiated by more than a few known trusted sources, but, again, to remember that it's just a distant narrative and to move on.

The Ukraine situation is a great example. I'm not from the Ukraine and don't know many Ukrainians so for me it's just another news story. It brings up interesting geopolitical, human rights and economic problems but for me it's still a distant narrative. I have friends who are in the same position as me, but seem to believe it's the beginning of WWIII; again, flying down the news k-hole.

Or the ferry disaster in South Korea. Or the Malaysian flight disaster. All sad but intriguing(they both raise questions such as: how could these happen? why did the leadership respond they way they did?), but one can only speculate on the implications what these stories mean beyond them being tragedies.

People will write speculations about these events; I can't let someone's speculation or assumptions to run wild within my mind because it's just not news. Again, it's important to differentiate real news from everything else.

Reporting on rumors doesn't preclude journalistic integrity.

This is actually a problem with capitalism in general. Integrity costs money. It's the tragedy of the commons writ large.

Integrity could also earn money. Most people would rather buy from a truthful and transparent organization than a shady one. The market often punishes liars over the long term.

That is a nice idea, but what makes you think it's true?

> It's not the OP's fault...

Really? So now it isn't your fault for completely lying to someone, it's their fault for believing you?

When the source is not an authority, when nothing the source says is verifiable, and when you have a duty to perform due diligence in regards to what you report to your customers as fact? Yes, it's their fault.

Umm...yes? Especially in journalism. This isn't about morality, it's about doing one's job and performing due diligence before believing and propagating a freaking anonymous social media comment as fact. If you are reporting things to people through a channel that is supposed to contain accurate and reliable information, it is up to you to uphold that standard, not the source you are drawing from.

There's really no need to apologize for this in my opinion. If people decide to trust a complete non-source that's their problem.

It's actually a fascinating demonstration of the dynamics of these rumors.

I think the apology stems from the possibility that the rumor was close enough that it could have gotten someone (at Apple) in trouble (and that person would have no control over the rumor). Just like if I bump into someone accidently, I say excuse me or sorry.

Agreed. I can't see how this did anyone any harm, which means there's nothing for which to apologize, although I certainly can understand the instant "oh my God what have I done" fear, upon seeing something one thought inconsequential suddenly cease to be so, which might motivate someone to offer an apology where none is required.

In any case, whoever and wherever the anonymous "leaker" might be, she should be proud! If nothing else, this is an excellent demonstration of the high relative bogosity level of tech journalism in general. (Although I am pleasantly surprised to see that the Register let this one pass without comment. They've always been surprisingly respectable over there, as far as red-top rags go.)

I also feel there is no need to apologize. It was a silly rumor and I find it amazing that people will spend so much time on such silliness (instead of, you know, building things, or doing anything that adds value).

I don't feel sorry for those who picked up the rumor and ran with it. If you make it your mission/business to pick up hearsay and pump your pageviews, you deserve what you get.

It’s a long shot that the poster would have actually endangered anyone’s position at Apple, but I suppose it’s already a somewhat long shot that he managed to nail both the patent and an area of expertise of a recent hire, all without any prior context. Given that, I think this was the right thing to do.

Even if it did manage to get somebody at Apple in trouble, the fault lies entirely with Apple laying down false accusations with insufficient evidence, not with the guy who made a lucky guess and didn't even do it intentionally.

Yes, but Apple's actual shitty behaviour or this hypothetical shitty behaviour might stop someone putting food on the table.

If someone loses their job over this, the fact it's just Apple being arseholes won't be of much comfort to the newly unemployed (unless it's a lucrative wrongful dismissal suit I guess.)

Does anyone have any confidence in Apple doing the right thing by its employees or indeed customers?

I don't mean to imply that Apple wouldn't do it. Just saying that if we're assigning blame, that's where it should go.

As for putting food on the table, in general I'd agree, but do ex-Apple employees in SV really have trouble finding new jobs?

They do if they want to work for Google, Adobe, Intel...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/technology/settlement-sili...

http://pando.com/2014/03/27/how-steve-jobs-forced-google-to-...

1. That's not being done anymore.

2. Even if it was, it didn't apply to people who have been fired.

3. Even if it did, there are lots of other places for programmers to work.

It's like the digital equivalent of the butterfly effect. A few strings of text pushed into the ether causes a big shift in market forces... pretty nuts, and really shows that the Internet has the power to act as an equalizer (harnessing that is a different matter).

The thing is that made-up or not, this is a really good idea. An idea whose time has come. Something like it is probably inevitable.

Everywhere you go, you see people walking around with Apple headphones in their ears much of the time. The hardware connected to those headphones doesn't merely send music out to the ears from the phone, it also accepts signals in the other direction to enable microphone input and a few buttons for pause/play and volume up/down. So sending other sorts of signals back doesn't require any new hardware on the phone.

There currently exist devices that take body temperature by sticking a sensor in the ear. Apple has a history of sticking all sorts of tiny sensors in their phones to enable new software features. So why not an earbud thermometer?

If they stuck a temperature sensor in the headphone it would enable these features:

(1) an plain old on-demand thermometer app. Think you might have a fever? There's an app for that! Wonder what temperature it is outside? Same app! A temperature sensor inside the phone mostly tells you how hot the battery and processor are but a temperature sensor in the earbud tells you your own temperature (when you're wearing them) or the ambient local temperature (when you take them out). Both are useful information.

(2) A background thermometer-based health check. Listen to music on headphones and the iPhone can warn you if you have a fever or are overheating during a workout.

Even without more speculative features - blood sugar or blood pressure testing - this is doable. Somebody will make this product.

That this is a good idea that seems completely reasonable with today's tech is why this thing took off like it did, especially combined with the current buzz on personalized healthcare. Honestly, the author probably could not have chosen a device more likely to sweep the rumor mill by storm.

It's possible, there is a company called Valencell (http://www.valencell.com) that has been working on this for a few years. There a few products using that technology that are out already, not sure how good they are right now, but promising technology for sure.

Meh, I think the idea is thin.

So I can have biometrics info only when i stick something in my head? Quantified Self or whatever you want to call it is certainly big business, but it NEEDS passive data collection to ever be a mainstream success. Thus the fitbit, and possibly the iWatch. "Just stick these sensors in your ears" is not a good solution to this. And "All the info you want about what your body is doing while you listen to music" is not exactly what I'm going after when I use these apps.

> "All the info you want about what your body is doing while you listen to music" is not exactly what I'm going after when I use these apps.

When is it that you want the info on what your body is doing? Lots of joggers seem to listen to music at the same time.

When I sleep. When I get passive exercise like taking the steps instead of the lift. When I'm exercising with somebody else. When........

Yes exactly. I want it monitoring when I sleep, not just when I listen to music. Fitbit isn't sweating this one.

Having the option of getting biometrics when you stick something in your head doesn't prevent getting data other ways too. Me, I listen to podcasts for an hour a day or so while my phone is in my pocket and the only thing touching my body directly is the earbuds. It'd be easy for the phone to be passively collecting data during that time - any time I'm listening to something via headphones - and it wouldn't require me to change my behavior or carry yet another device around.

I live in New York, so I listen via earbuds while I take the subway. In California a lot of people listen via earbuds while they go jogging or work out at the gym. There are almost certainly enough people who listen via earbuds daily to make that feature "a mainstream success", even if it doesn't match your own use case. If you never use the earbuds, you don't have to buy the earbuds that do biometric monitoring. Or you can ignore that feature.

There already exist apps that check your pulse (using the camera) and that check your sleeping patterns (you leave the phone charging on your bed; it uses the motion sensor). This would be just one more option along those lines.

But I'm curious: What would you consider "a good solution to this"?

Something you can wear passively. Like a watch, bracelet, hell a toe ring. But earbuds are an awful UX for a sensor IMO.

Biometric EarPods are real -- but the product is called The Dash, made in Munich by Bragi. The Dash monitors movements like pace, steps, cadence and distance as well as heart rate, oxygen saturation and energy spent. Two tiny LEDs emit low intensity red and infrared light into the capillaries in the ear. The optical reflection of the emitted light reveal the relative amount of red and white blood cells more than 50 times every second. A precise heart rate and oxygen saturation level is calculated with the data.

The Dash Kickstarter is already fully funded; I'm a backer waiting with eager anticipation. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellobragi/the-dash-wir...

I wouldn't go as far as to say they are "real" yet - they are still working on the prototype: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellobragi/the-dash-wir...

The Dash looks really great. I'd love to read a review on these when they are delivered.

If anything, this story calls out the sensationalism of a tech press that just sucks up anything it can find and runs with it as a story. We've seen unsubstantiated "reporting" of Apple rumors like this for years, and these stories never add anything valuable to the discussion. I'm glad this fake rumor got so much traction. Maybe enough people have egg on their faces that we will do better in the future. But probably not.

> Maybe enough people have egg on their faces that we will do better in the future. But probably not.

This definitely won't do anything to stem the unsubstantiated rumors. It's all about page views and entertainment.

There is an audience for these types of things (that is probably growing?), so it will continue. I'm sure many, like myself, don't care if they are fake either. Much of it is just something somewhat entertaining to read when browsing the web.

The part toward the end where he talks about Apple hiring someone who deals with biometrics makes you wonder why more companies don't "float" ideas to see how much traction they might get with the market. An easy and cheap way to see if there's even a market for an idea. Yeah, you tip your hand a bit toward the competition, but if you're truly good at what you do, the competition doesn't matter anyway.

> makes you wonder why more companies don't "float" ideas to see how much traction they might get

How do you know they don't? Whether to test the waters of consumer reception, or to decoy me-too competitors into doing something foolish, it's too good an idea to pass up, and I think it's reasonable to suspect Apple of having done both in the past -- see, for example, the persistent rumors around the "Apple Phone" which cropped up a couple of years before the iPhone did, and the similar rumors around the "iWatch", which, being the bad idea it is, seems less likely to materialize with every passing day, but which has certainly convinced Samsung et al that it's worth investing in that bad idea just in case Apple knows something they don't.

This was obviously fake because measuring blood pressure isn't something you can do via the ear canal in a non-intrusive way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_pressure#Measurement

Kind of sad that even a single person believed this. Why is everyone so willing to forego scepticism?

I think a lot of people, especially non-technical ones, could have gotten caught up in what I will call the "Apple Innovation" effect. People just assume that because Apple has been a source of innovation in technology in recent years, they can jump across technological barriers just by focusing on it. At least, that is my take.

Suitably advanced technology is magic and so most people (who don't really know what blood pressure is, nor how it's measured) will be happy to believe that some widget you can plug into your smart phone will do all kinds of stuff.

Also, UK papers are happy to fill their pages with nonsense. They are not saying it's true. They are reporting someone else saying it's true.

Probably because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that the amount of skepticism they exhibit is optimal given their different utility functions.

This makes me wonder how many actual products were dreamed up "on the shitter".

Or in the shower (or, as I like to call it, "The idea chamber").

I keep a notebook in the bathroom...

in case you run out of TP?

Not just that, I have found the shitter to be a powerful problem solving tool in general. I have conquered three-day-old challenges with a Eureka moment atop the throne.

It's probably the time our brain has to itself. Same with sleeping on things.

Companies could start "leaking" things via secret to make it useless as a means of real leaking. Personally, I think that in this new information age, that is going to be the only way to get privacy, either for corps or individuals. Decreasing the signal is infeasible, but increasing noise is certainly possible.

See, these great ideas will now come to market, save numerous lives and improve quality of life for people, and you're going to get nothing.

I have an idea. We come up with a shitter station for you since this is where your great ideas come from. We'll serve you up with food and fun. You just make the business you do.

The article reads like an excerpt from Foucault's Pendulum if perhaps a bit less sinister.

I told my wife's uncle about the biometric EarPods. He happens to be one of the most renown ear specialist in the world.

His response: it actually makes sense, it's 20 year old technology.

Apparently, you can measure things like oxygen from your ears. Quite possibly other stuff as well.

I personally think it's be a great to see something like this exist one day.

Don't apologize. This is hilarious.

Noble words, and quite possible. But it also sounds like a great way of protecting his leak source.

Either way, good form.

I think people have become numb to "Apple leaks" given the volume.

For a while the Yahoo homepage had a Kardashian article EVERY SINGLE DAY. Now, it seems that iPhone 6 "news" is in the same situation on the site. Correlate from that what you will.

Good. These "news" outlets need to learn how to source their news correctly and not from some anonymous online crap. Hopefully egg on their face here makes them think a little harder about using stuff like this as a source in the future.

This makes me think of the State Farm commercial, "They can't put anything on the Internet that isn't true."

Bonjour indeed.

Possibly a real leak now trying to be disguised as an external fake leak?

This is the most responsible and humble disclosure of a fake leak I've seen in my life.

Even though this guy/gal started it all, if we felt a little more responsible about the effect of the words we say and write like that, it'd be a better world out there.

It's easy to just wave your hand and say it's just bullshit rumor, but yes, it does have effect on people at Apple and the industry as a whole. The very fact of realizing this is more than most people can understand.

They didn't intentionally start a rumor. They didn't even try to make it sound realistic. Shouldn't we blame the press instead, for lending credibility an unsubstantiated rumor by an anonymous source?

>but I’m still sorry for any stress I caused anybody at Apple or who works with Apple.

Wow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com