
Jane Manchun Wong: App researcher who unlocks new features before they launch - open-source-ux
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47630849
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wongmjane
Hi, Jane here! I hope you like this profile of me :)

It has been delightful to watch different approaches companies take to enrich,
optimize and harden their web and mobile apps.

For example, Facebook has been dogfooding a new approach to improve the
overhead in their mobile apps since last year. I speculate (or hope) they will
announce it during F8 2019 in coming days.

~~~
qforjane
Question: why don’t you profit from this either with the stock market or
selling info to companies? What is your motivation for doing this anyway since
it takes significant time and skill?

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Matt3o12_
> But some of Ms Wong's scoops are so big that they threaten to impact the
> stock market, leading some to accuse her of insider trading.

Can anyone with a good understanding tell me if that really qualifies as
insider trading or market manipulation? As I understand it, she reverse
engineers a publicly available app, something that anyone with the technical
know-how could do. So even if she bought stocks before releasing this
information, anyone could have done the same and learned the information the
same way.

I would be really surprised if big investment firms aren’t already doing that
(but just don’t release this information publicly). I don’t see how this is
any different from collecting other public information and placing bets based
on that information. (e.g. reading import lists from container ships and
estimate the production volume from a company before they announce it).

Otherwise, Jane’s efforts seem to be pretty cool and I am honestly surprised
that more people aren’t doing it. I can’t wait to get read her blog later!

~~~
evrydayhustling
This is a really interesting question. IANAL and I am not sure a decisive
answer even exists, but here is another thread to pull: Lots of traders work
with satelite data to estimate non-disclosed info about energy and agriculture
companies:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-v...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-
value-satellite-images-investing/586009/)

That article suggests that there is a consensus that high tech surveillance
doesn't count as inside information, and I can't see why Jane's reverse
engineering would be different. There's also an argument that she is
publicizing the material, so depending on the order of operations maybe it is
public?

A separate question is what kind of trouble you might be able to get into with
specific companies due to license agreements. Would love legal take on any of
above as well.

~~~
Matt3o12_
Thanks for the answer! Really helpful.

> A separate question is what kind of trouble you might be able to get into
> with specific companies due to license agreements. Would love legal take on
> any of above as well.

I believe you are allowed to reverse engineer software you own in most
countries despite what the TOS says. But they might ban you from their
platform which doesn’t stop reverse engineering because Apple/Google is
distributing the software.

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evrydayhustling
Big fan of Jane's overall approach. Since the profile focuses on the leaks
themselves, here's something the HN crowd might find especially cool -
disclosures for the reverse engineering methods behind many of the leaks:
[https://wongmjane.com/](https://wongmjane.com/)

Jane, since you're on: I'm curious how you feel about the red-team/blue-team
dynamics of what you're doing. If companies get better at hiding tests and
under-development features, is that a Good Thing? Or, does reverse engineering
demonstrate that they should be more transparent about dev in the first place?
Or, is the frontier of reverse-engineering / hiding stuff itself something
productive?

~~~
wongmjane
As a user, I am curious and excited to know the future of the apps I use.
Reverse engineering allows catching a glimpse of the future without having to
wait for launch events or press releases.

Often times, this kind of scoops could be beneficial to companies. Product
teams at companies could look at public opinions and take that into the
consideration of product decision. It functions similarly to "focus groups" or
"soft launch", except it's free. According to my profile on CNN, a Twitter
spokesperson mentioned [0]:

> the platform wants its users to be part of the process, and these types of
> discoveries help it learn

That's not to say companies encourage users to reverse engineer their apps.
However, if they make it completely impossible to find any unreleased features
whatsoever, it will kill off this free channel of unofficially gathering
public opinions (or hype) before launch.

It is understandable there are competitors out there in reality. Getting
better at hiding tests and under-development features could help preventing
the competitors from knowing the company's upcoming strategies.

To hide or to not hide, they both have pros and cons. It really comes down to
how companies balance their priorities. If their priority is to hide
everything until launch, even if it means getting rid of the free QA and focus
groups, go for it.

I personally hope companies will choose the transparent route rather than
being a sealed black box. I believe users deserve to know what is changed in
the apps installed on their own phones. Being more specific than the vague
"bug fixes and improvements" will provide a sense of assurance to users.

[0]: [https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/tech/jane-wong-app-
features/i...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/tech/jane-wong-app-
features/index.html)

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AznHisoka
“she faced a Twitter storm of comments saying that she was purposefully
manipulating the market for her own profit.”

If they were fabricated screenshots or leaked press releases then they might
have a case. But if these companies really didnt want these features to be
leaked, then they should have done a better job of securing them. Is it really
that hard? It wasnt like this was a rogue employee!

~~~
wongmjane
Also, I was a broke college student. How can I even afford to invest! Still
having hard time grasping the concept of stock market and related topics :P

I think there are better ways to bring food to the table than this, such as
getting a job as SWE, or donations.

I never earned any money from this hobby and have no plans to change it

~~~
jscholes
> I never earned any money from this hobby and have no plans to change it

Except for the bug bounties you've received, presumably. Unless you consider
those a separate part of what you do. All great work in any case!

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wiradikusuma
Can't the app maker simply _not_ include the unreleased features in the
published package? E.g use a preprocessor to remove them.

I understand the purpose is to enable it programmatically, but what's the
problem with simply showing user "Please update, there's a new feature"?

~~~
fourthark
They want to prerelease the features for some trial set of users, while only
having one binary in the store.

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reilly3000
Does this posit a strong argument against trunk-based development patterns?

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DennisAleynikov
Love finding out early about new app features and in development without
having to work at the companies themselves! lots of really good leaks

