
How the Napa Earthquake Affected Bay Area Sleepers - ismavis
https://jawbone.com/blog/napa-earthquake-effect-on-sleep/
======
antr
The fact that Jawbone has this information on their users (yes, I know they
say it's aggregated and "anonymised" data) is pretty scary to me. In my
opinion, this data should only be visible to each user, and no one else. I
really doubt Jawbone users are aware that their UP devices are sending data to
third-parties... it feels like 21st century shackles.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Comments like these make me think that the pro-privacy crowd is officially a
cult. I just don't see the argument about anonymized data that you can opt-out
of being such a threat to the end user. I love these types of analysis,
especially the ones about dating from OK Cupid. Tivo used to reveal all sorts
of interesting things about viewership that was very enlightening. I'd hate to
lose this data just because a minority think its a threat to their civil
rights. There's a reason why no one outside of reddit and HN knows what the
EFF is or cares about their mission. It doesn't fit in with most people's
politics.

I really think the privacy advocates are holding us back at this point. They
refuse to make reasonable concessions and while they think they're fighting
the good fight, they've just marginalized themselves to the point where only a
tiny extremist minority is engaged because moderate voices are shouted down as
"selling out to the man" or the NSA or whoever the villain of the day is.

Its also sad to see a arguably progressive community like HN fall for this
stuff. Not only are we doing this stuff all the time, the current fad of
health devices, smart watches, etc are going to make this a lot more common.
We're like cavemen throwing spears at an enemy with machine guns. Its a fight
we've long lost. I think its better for us to focus on privacy issues that are
legitimately victimizing instead of railing against anything and everything
that kinda sorta rubs us the wrong way.

If anything, the cult of privacy is hurting us because its created a "boy who
cried wolf" situation which is now a political liability. How am I supposed to
tell Joe Midwest Voter that X is harmful when he keeps hearing about how
tracking cookies or Tivo stats or iPhone policies are harmful and didn't give
two shits about those either.

~~~
Retric
There is no such thing as completely anonymized data. And in this case there
releasing information without the consent of their users. Sure, you might
think that it's reasonable in this case but the important thing is _users are
not making that decision_.

So, as long as companies feel they can do _anything_ they feel like with the
data your only option is to completely opt out. Which means companies have no
reason not to release your data as everyone assumes they will anyway.

~~~
mgob
This isn't a question I have an answer to, but isn't it likely that users
relinquish their right to data privacy when they sign a privacy policy and/or
terms of use?

~~~
tel
But they're probably not tremendously informed about this.

In clinical research it's considered unethical to take uninformed consent and
a great deal of effort goes into educating participants on the risks and
benefits of their contribution.

Such stuff is fantasy for modern EULAs though, which makes it sketchy when
these entities do (public) research.

------
camillomiller
Am I the only one that's finding a bit upsetting the fact that a single
overlooking identity could dispose of people's data like that? I know, I know:
all the Up wearers have "enrolled" voluntarily, but I wonder if they really
like to be part of a giant anonymous data science experiment. If you can do
this with the users' data, you can certainly do the same for more profit-
related purposes. Or maybe it's just me, sometimes I just can't ignore the
scary within the scientifically cool.

~~~
wamatt
Did they really dispose any of the users data though? It appears they
displayed a chart.

That graphic, it could be argued, is based on an entirely new data set.

So while individual data sets may been used at some point behind the scenes,
it's not like those data sets are the ones being disposed.

~~~
wwwwwwwwww
the issue is that they're collecting this data in the first place.

I cant help but wonder how much it would cost to get the sleep records of a
competitor of mine - or if it's not for sale, how much the data would be worth
on the black market if their servers got hacked.

I have doubts this information is being kept as securely as it should be,
that's where my concern lies.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, if one is willing to one-up a fellow human like that, one is a bad
person. But you don't need Jawbone data to do that, there are plenty other
ways. Honestly, the problem in your example isn't the data.

~~~
forgottenpass
_one is a bad person_

So what? Time and time again things that would make you a bad _person_ are
silently accepted as normal or even expected of a _business._

~~~
TeMPOraL
You're correctly describing the state of the world, but my indirect point was
that we should stop accepting such behaviour in business and shun people who
do. It's stupid and wrong.

------
zaius
Interesting data. Some things that jumped out at me:

1\. Apparently everyone in Santa Cruz goes to bed early and gets up early.

2\. I would have expected bigger jumps on the hour. Maybe I'm the only one
that sets my alarm on the hour though.

3\. Why would there be dips in the AM? People hitting snooze perhaps?

4\. How long do you have to moving for UP to think you're awake? How long do
you have to be still for the UP to think you're asleep?

~~~
venus
> 1\. Apparently everyone in Santa Cruz goes to bed early and gets up early.

Probably some selection bias at work here. It's possible the type of person
who's buying and wearing personal fitness monitors is also the type of person
who gets up early.

> Maybe I'm the only one that sets my alarm on the hour

Probably my OCD coming out but I only set my alarm with minutes beginning 0-4
and ending with 8. I'm sure everyone has their own habits. On the hour seems
so numerically boring!

~~~
gmu3
If it was selection bias like that, the same would apply to people in other
cities, so it wouldn't explain the difference in the graph. My guess is people
in Santa Cruz on average have a longer commute.

~~~
Lewisham
It's going to be a selection bias of:

1\. People who are fit (or want to be)

2\. People who are technical (or are interested in quantified life in general)

Technical people who commute from SC to Silicon Valley have far less bus
options and routes than SF (SC has three each way for Google which ends at
9:25). That forces a lot of the number 2 people awake earlier than they
otherwise would be.

I think SC is probably the same, if not average getting up later than other
Bay Area places, due to the large student population and short walk/bike
commute for those who work in the town.

------
jobigoud
It's unfortunate but almost all Quantified Self devices work like this. You
have to go through the device provider website to see your data.

I wish there existed more engineer-friendly initiatives where you can install
the data collection server, data store and analysis server on machines you
control.

~~~
pc86
If these consumer-level devices are $100-200 a pop don't you think that would
be prohibitively expensive for a decidedly smaller audience?

------
dohertyjf
In response to antr and others talking about how this is "private" data, a few
things:

1) Jawbone is a data company. You get what you want from them by giving them
your data. Giving them your data is your choice, so if you are uncomfortable
with it then you should not have a Jawbone. 2) What's interesting about this
article is that it's in aggregate, across a statistically significant (so they
say) number of people in these areas. They're not looking at individual stats,
and I would bet would have a hard time tracing it back to a single
person/name/etc, if they're even allowed to store it that way (not sure, but
it would surprise me if they did).

If you don't like your data being stored somewhere, why are you even on
HackerNews? You know your data is being stored here and being learned from.

~~~
wwwwwwwwww
> If you don't like your data being stored somewhere, why are you even on
> HackerNews?

having my sleeping records and a table of what times during the day that I
shit is a lot more sensitive information than the trash I post on hacker news

~~~
dohertyjf
Once again, if they have your sleeping records it's because you have chosen to
give them that data. It's your problem then, not theirs.

Also, if you think others care about what time of day you take a shit, you
have way too high of a view of yourself.

------
chrismorgan
Here I am, a resident of Melbourne, Australia, where we never get interesting
earthquakes, visiting SF for the first time (staying in Belmont) and they
don’t even wake me for the earthquake they evidently put on for my benefit.

~~~
The_Sponge
Hey fellow belmont buddy! Just curious, about how old is the building that you
were in when the earthquake hit?

~~~
SiVal
It's just that Belmont's on bedrock. Take Ralston east toward the bay, out on
the landfill a few blocks past Oracle, and you won't be sleeping through it.
It shakes like Jello out here.

------
morsch
How useful do you find the sleep tracking to be? I've been using it for a
couple of days now and I'm on the fence whether a simple movement tracker can
really tell whether I'm in a deep or light sleep phase...

~~~
hack_edu
Think of it comparable the difference between "pop science" and "academic
science" in book publishing. Its cool, and usually pretty informative, but
largely just for fun or minor utility.

------
thawkins
Who else finds this as creepy as hell.

~~~
source99
Who else finds this cool as hell?

~~~
azunds
Imagine when NSA starts to publish such charts. They have really COOL data.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Sure they do. And they could do _a lot_ of good with this data.

~~~
hack_edu
Post-Snowden PSA: Remember, they already have it if they want it.

------
dredmorbius
Since Jawbone apparently don't know how to post a simple image for old-school
browsers: [http://blogs-
images.forbes.com/dandiamond/files/2014/08/Jawb...](http://blogs-
images.forbes.com/dandiamond/files/2014/08/Jawbone.png)

And for those who've noted that the NSA are going to have all the cool data,
after seeing this chart, I'm pretty sure they'll start tapping into Jawbone as
well.

~~~
lfx
But this is not simple image. This is interactive chart. You can hover lines
and get some info via tool tip. Apparently you are using quite old browser, if
you don't mind asking you? Since D3js, the lib used to generate SVG, supports
majority of browsers[1].

[1] [https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki#browser--platform-
suppor...](https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki#browser--platform-support)

~~~
dredmorbius
You are correct. I am using an old browser.

It does date from the present decade, however. It's not _that_ old. I'm
somewhat amused by the number of sites which fail to work properly (some at
all) with it.

Imgur is entirely dead. Reddit I can read, but moderation and reply buttons
don't work. I hit the beta rollout of a news site last night (apparently part
of their A/B test) and found that among the features which failed to work was
the "opt out of beta" button.

~~~
bjacobel
So... Update, maybe? I'm sure the web developers of those sites aren't
"somewhat amused" by having to try to support your ancient browser.

D3 should work in any browser that supports SVG, which is every desktop
browser but IE8 [1]. If you're still using IE8, some sites not working is
going to be the least of your problems soon - Microsoft isn't patching it
anymore.

[1]: [http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg](http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg)

~~~
dredmorbius
The OS I'm using isn't eligible for an upgrade. So that would require
hardware. That's not in the budget at present.

The browser isn't a Microsoft product.

------
bonchibuji
Google Cache -
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8rhxYGx...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8rhxYGx-
uJcJ:https://jawbone.com/blog/napa-earthquake-effect-on-
sleep/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fi)

------
mjs
A map version of this (with contour lines for percentage awoken) would be
nice. This would also eliminate the small differences in the time people in
different areas seem to go to sleep and rise.

------
lingc
Very cool!

The text says that 93% of the Napa area woke up, but the graphs shows 74%. I'm
assuming the graph is off?

~~~
vamin
The graph is showing how many people are awake. The 93% number reflects the
fact that some people were already awake before the quake.

~~~
lingc
Then according to the graph, 59/85 were awoken from sleep, which is about 71%.

59 awoken = 74 (awake at quake) - 15 (awake before the quake)

85 = 100 - 15 (awake before quake)

Maybe they are adjusting for other things that are not shown on the graph.

~~~
vamin
Good point. I wonder if they are smoothing the data, which would make the
peaks less peaky (which brings up another question, what is the time
resolution for UP's ability to measure wakefulness?).

------
batbomb
Maybe more interesting is that Santa Cruz/Modesto people are early to
bed/early to rise.

~~~
sparkman55
A number of people live in (beautiful!) Santa Cruz but commute over the hill
to work in San Jose or elsewhere in Silicon Valley. It's a long commute on a
treacherous but crowded mountain highway, so it's no surprise that they need
to wake up early to beat traffic.

------
prawn
Link currently leads to a 404.

------
sschueller
Serious question:

I wonder if they can track how many people die per year and differentiate
between type (car, earthquake etc.).

~~~
minimaxir
That's not the point. Jawbone (and similar devices such as FitBits and Nike
FuelBands) can detect whether the user is sleeping or not; this post asserts
that the earthquake is the primary cause of the spike in sleep disruption at
3AM, which is a valid and supported hypothesis.

As far as I know, these devices cannot detect the _cause of death_.

~~~
sschueller
But the device detects movement doesn't it? Is it not able to detect seismic
activity or any other force? So if a person was in a car accident or in an
earthquake that would be something that can be measured.

There are now devices that can tell what exercise you are doing just by being
on your wrist.

~~~
dwild
I don't know much about this device but I guess it doesn't do continuous
synchronization. I believe the user need to initiate it which won't happen if
he die.

------
jobigoud
"All results are statistically significant."

Isn't this an overly optimistic claim? Surely people using a sleep tracking
device do not form an unbiased sample of the general population when it comes
to sleep patterns?

~~~
icebraining
Nobody said it was a study on the general population, only on the UP wearers
population.

~~~
smackfu
OTOH, if their sample size is the same as the population size, their data is
by definition statistically significant.

~~~
minimaxir
Not even that. If the sample size in general is extremely large (irrespective
of its proportion to the population size), than the results are statistically
significant.

A sample size in the thousands counts as "extremely large."

~~~
jobigoud
Surely the sample, however large, must follow the same distribution than the
population distribution? If you sample 1000 insomniacs, how do you get
anything significant?

My remark was just that, the sample bias has an impact on the significance of
the results. I do not know if in actuality people using sleep monitors form a
different distribution than the general population regarding sleep patterns,
but it seems likely.

The title of the article mentions "Bay Area sleepers", so it would seem to me
that they do form conclusions about the general population, not just Jawbone
wearers.

