
I “Leaked” the story about the Biometric EarPods. But I’m not proud of it - kunle
http://earpodsecret.tumblr.com/post/84812960647/sorry
======
msvan
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.

~~~
nathancahill
> "lack of integrity in the press"

> "macRUMORS.com"

~~~
jareds
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.

~~~
debt
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.

------
jhh
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.

~~~
mortenjorck
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.

~~~
mikeash
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.

~~~
Nexxxeh
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?

~~~
mikeash
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?

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

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/technology/settlement-
sili...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/technology/settlement-silicon-
valley-antitrust-case.html)

[http://pando.com/2014/03/27/how-steve-jobs-forced-google-
to-...](http://pando.com/2014/03/27/how-steve-jobs-forced-google-to-cancel-
its-plan-to-open-a-paris-office/)

~~~
mikeash
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.

------
glenra
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.

~~~
encoderer
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.

~~~
glenra
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"?

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

------
roderickm
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...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellobragi/the-dash-wireless-
smart-in-ear-headphones)

~~~
gmisra
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...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellobragi/the-dash-wireless-
smart-in-ear-headphones/posts)

------
stevenp
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.

~~~
chucknelson
> 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.

------
dclowd9901
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.

~~~
aaronem
> 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.

------
_Adam
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](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?

~~~
DanBC
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.

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

~~~
maccard
I keep a notebook in the bathroom...

~~~
gonzo
in case you run out of TP?

------
jamesaguilar
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.

------
pistle
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.

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

------
cmer
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.

------
gaze
Don't apologize. This is hilarious.

------
danielrm26
Noble words, and quite possible. But it also sounds like a great way of
protecting his leak source.

Either way, good form.

------
bdcravens
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.

------
mesozoic
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.

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

Bonjour indeed.

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

------
mantrax5
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.

~~~
normloman
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?

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

Wow.

