3 ms·

I am not sure it has to be too large. It only takes 33 bits of information to identify 1 person out of 7 billion. How many bits did you lose just by talking ab

I am not sure it has to be too large. It only takes 33 bits of information to identify 1 person out of 7 billion. How many bits did you lose just by talking about neural networks in that one sentence? How many bits did you lose from the timing/time zone of your comment? By the language of your comment?

sokoloff 7y ago
I imagine that there's a lot of information in the specific cadence of typing, in addition to the final text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_dynamics
- gruez 7y ago
  As a low tech solution, you can always compose the contents in a separate window and paste it in when you're done. Hardened browsers (eg. Firefox with resistfingerprinting) can frustrate attempts by throttling key events (key events get coalesced into 1s/5s/10s intervals).
  - eitland 7y ago
    First time I hear about this (edit: Firefox with resistfingerprinting) and I'm the kind of person who finds this interesting. Which means anyone who does this will probably have made themselves unique, or - I guess- at least narrow down the scope of possible users more than the typing speed would do.
  - phkahler 7y ago
    This is another browser stupidity. Dont send anything until the submit button is pressed. It's the browsers job to implement the text edit box and spell check, not every website.
    - jrockway 7y ago
      Being able to see keystrokes in Javascript is pretty useful for things like autocomplete. Say you want to send an invoice to "Foo Bar, Inc.". Do you really want to type that every time? Do you want to type "Foo" and then click submit, and then be taken to search results? Why make a 700ms task into a 5s task, especially when you're doing it hundreds of times a day. There are hardened browsers that will make the script wait for a while to get the key events. That seems like the right solution; most people using controlled enterprise apps don't have to deal with huge amounts of input lag, while people that are paranoid won't be profiled by their typing cadence.
      - phkahler 7y ago
        How limiting would it be to have auto complete implemented in the browser? Probably not quite as nice as Google but still useful.
gruez 7y ago
>How many bits did you lose just by talking about neural networks in that one sentence? How many bits did you lose from the timing/time zone of your comment? By the language of your comment? uhh, probably 2 or 3 at most? Given the demographics of Hacker News (technical background, mostly American), probably half the site have the attributes you have listed.

sokoloff 7y ago

I imagine that there's a lot of information in the specific cadence of typing, in addition to the final text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_dynamics

gruez 7y ago
As a low tech solution, you can always compose the contents in a separate window and paste it in when you're done. Hardened browsers (eg. Firefox with resistfingerprinting) can frustrate attempts by throttling key events (key events get coalesced into 1s/5s/10s intervals).
- eitland 7y ago
  First time I hear about this (edit: Firefox with resistfingerprinting) and I'm the kind of person who finds this interesting. Which means anyone who does this will probably have made themselves unique, or - I guess- at least narrow down the scope of possible users more than the typing speed would do.
- phkahler 7y ago
  This is another browser stupidity. Dont send anything until the submit button is pressed. It's the browsers job to implement the text edit box and spell check, not every website.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    Being able to see keystrokes in Javascript is pretty useful for things like autocomplete. Say you want to send an invoice to "Foo Bar, Inc.". Do you really want to type that every time? Do you want to type "Foo" and then click submit, and then be taken to search results? Why make a 700ms task into a 5s task, especially when you're doing it hundreds of times a day. There are hardened browsers that will make the script wait for a while to get the key events. That seems like the right solution; most people using controlled enterprise apps don't have to deal with huge amounts of input lag, while people that are paranoid won't be profiled by their typing cadence.
    - phkahler 7y ago
      How limiting would it be to have auto complete implemented in the browser? Probably not quite as nice as Google but still useful.

gruez 7y ago

>How many bits did you lose just by talking about neural networks in that one sentence? How many bits did you lose from the timing/time zone of your comment? By the language of your comment? uhh, probably 2 or 3 at most? Given the demographics of Hacker News (technical background, mostly American), probably half the site have the attributes you have listed.