The author of this Ars article is the same person as the author of that androidpolice article discovering app ops. so yes, i'm pretty sure he's heard of them.

The author of this Ars article is the same person as the author of that androidpolice article discovering app ops. so yes, i'm pretty sure he's heard of them. App Ops aren't in android 4.3 though. it's not a released feature, it's just a development experiment that never got fully disabled prior to release.