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Facebook Filed a Patent To Calculate Your Future Location (buzzfeednews.com)
Facebook has filed several patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for technology that uses your location data to predict where you're going and when you're going to be offline. BuzzFeed News reports: A May 30, 2017, Facebook application titled "Offline Trajectories" describes a method to predict where you'll go next based on your location data. The technology described in the patent would calculate a "transition probability based at least in part on previously logged location data associated with a plurality of users who were at the current location." In other words, the technology could also use the data of other people you know, as well as that of strangers, to make predictions. If the company could predict when you are about to be in an offline area, Facebook content "may be prefetched so that the user may have access to content during the period where there is a lack of connectivity."
Another Facebook patent application titled "Location Prediction Using Wireless Signals on Online Social Networks" describes how tracking the strength of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and near-field communication (NFC) signals could be used to estimate your current location, in order to anticipate where you will go next. This "background signal" information is used as an alternative to GPS because, as the patent describes, it may provide "the advantage of more accurately or precisely determining a geographic location of a user." The technology could learn the category of your current location (e.g., bar or gym), the time of your visit to the location, the hours that entity is open, and the popular hours of the entity.
Yet another Facebook patent application, "Predicting Locations and Movements of Users Based on Historical Locations for Users of an Online System," further details how location data from multiple people would be used to glean location and movement trends and to model location chains. According to the patent application, these could be used for a "variety of applications," including "advertising to users based on locations and for providing insights into the movements of users." The technology could even differentiate movement trends among people who live in a city and who are just visiting a city. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement: "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patent applications -- such as this one -- should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
Another Facebook patent application titled "Location Prediction Using Wireless Signals on Online Social Networks" describes how tracking the strength of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and near-field communication (NFC) signals could be used to estimate your current location, in order to anticipate where you will go next. This "background signal" information is used as an alternative to GPS because, as the patent describes, it may provide "the advantage of more accurately or precisely determining a geographic location of a user." The technology could learn the category of your current location (e.g., bar or gym), the time of your visit to the location, the hours that entity is open, and the popular hours of the entity.
Yet another Facebook patent application, "Predicting Locations and Movements of Users Based on Historical Locations for Users of an Online System," further details how location data from multiple people would be used to glean location and movement trends and to model location chains. According to the patent application, these could be used for a "variety of applications," including "advertising to users based on locations and for providing insights into the movements of users." The technology could even differentiate movement trends among people who live in a city and who are just visiting a city. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement: "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patent applications -- such as this one -- should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
KILL THE ZUCKERBERG!
None of that sounds remotely patentable. Its sounds like the bad software patents of the 90's coming back to haunt us yet again. So.. its math (algorithms, not patentable material) run on a computer (again, adding 'on a computer' to something does not make it patentable) to guess the destination of someone based on where they have been (something an idiot with time and patience can do in person by following someone for a while) and where others with the same profile have gone next (hire a lot of idiots to watch people and you get the same data).
I can almost guarantee these will be granted by our Patent Offices.
Hell, isn't this literally an entire field of social science? This really is just adding 'on a computer' to something!
If we can convince them to use 256-bit values for the accelerometers, they can calculate our velocity to such exquisite precision that they'll no longer know where we are.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Can I just look it up on Facebook now?
The smart kids have dropped FB and "smart" phones as well. Their internet is on one device in one room at home. They carry a "dumb" 3G "burner" phone with the battery removed and taped to the back, if they feel they need to carry a cell phone at all.
They've realized that paying to have one's privacy, security, and freedom violated by both corporations and government in exchange for convenience and "cool" is a very, very bad deal.
That's one of the reasons why they're the smart kids.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I assume that my Android phone does pretty much all of this already anyway. It doesn't feel like something that other popular apps haven't already done before, and it instead feels more like advertising basics that take a huge amount of data collection and processing to be effective. I'm often impressed by how appropriate/accurate suggestions/predictions can get with enough data points to analyze, and suggestions should improve drastically over time. I'm glad that such information seems to be used mostly for good or neutral purposes so far, but it's easy to imagine not tolerating data collection like this in the future. And it's also easy to imagine very accurate suggestions leading to bubble-like effects where people see or go to more of what they already like instead of being exposed to more of the world. People will like it, but it might not be good for society unless it's countered by something else.
How can someone patent a way to calculate a probability, and transition matrix, etc? I mean even if you add the word machine learning. Gosh US patent system is completely broken...
I'm either going to at home or work, maybe the shop. There's really nowhere worth going to anywhere near me.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
HITLER WAS RIGHT. ZUCK THE JEW N1GGER IS GOING TO END FREEDOM AND LIBERTY.
I wasn't aware Hitler spoke much about Zuckerberg? Also, why bother swapping the i for a 1? Censoring yourself at this point seems a bit pointless.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
i think google is already doing similar things.
i get notifications about things (like traffic mostly) where i might be going.
yes, most of the time it because they are in my calendar, but not always, it appears to be 'learning' my daily/weekly routines.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
What does that mean for me and my college roommate? He has a crush on the only cute girl in my econ class. I told him she leaves the Econ Building M-W-F at exactly 11:50, tweets about the class (leaking her position data) while walking across the quad one of two ways to the Student Union and orders a burrito for lunch. So the best way to "accidentally" meet her is to track which path she's using by the tweet location, walk out of the Electrical Engineering building at exactly 11:51 and head either northwest or southwest (depending on the tweet info) then let nature take it's course.
Now I discover I'm probably going to be violating a Facebook patent by telling him the algorithm via a text. It could be worse I guess; I could owe a Chinese company a royalty or get sued by a Boston patent troll.
Actually not anymore, because Google's walled garden and shitty webexperience made me switch back to calcurse and pen&paper. But before that, pretty much everything went into my google calendar.
well I patent useing the letter E in on line math!
tracking the strength of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and near-field communication (NFC) signals could be used to estimate your current location, in order to anticipate where you will go next. This "background signal" information is used as an alternative to GPS because, as the patent describes, it may provide "the advantage of more accurately or precisely determining a geographic location of a user."
This is an end-run around the laughable protection that turning off location services offers the user. Time to put my phone in a Faraday cage, dump it in a hole in the ground, and cover it with concrete.
Freedom of speech is there to protect speech you don't agree with...that's the ENTIRE point of it.
... why their domains are blocked by my browsers ...
You know that the wheels go 'round and 'round, but you have no goddam clue as to how.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Good luck directing ads to me there
For "Offline Trajectories" 20180352383-A1,
It should cite "System and method for providing quality of service mapping" US8620339B2 while talks about doing that very thing (but with a different spin to it).
https://patents.google.com/pat...
I'm not saying it invalidates the patent (I'm not a patent examiner) but it should at least be cited as a related patent.
Interesting to read your perspective. Thanks for sharing it. And thanks for changing your ways!
If you happen to see this, I'd be curious to know your perspective: Do you think that the posts are mostly people doing it for kicks or that many are made to polarize people by exaggerating opposing views to a disagreeable/assholish level? There's so much "alt right" hate speech and completely offtopic "far left" Trump bashing that it feels much more like manipulation than peoples' actual views. It's in-line with Russia's tactics, but I wouldn't have expected them to target this site.