Hacker News Reader

Comment by jagger27 | Hacker News Reader

I don't even understand why they need local access to figure this out. Poll the web API for last_login and be done with it. Surely they're already tracking and storing this kind of data on their end.

View on HN

Why make a network call if the device can give you that information locally?

First, you're making a network call anyway, because that's what apps do, so the data is implicit. You simply group by user id and subtract the timestamps of the requests.

But let's say for some reason, you can't collect app-open timestamps. What could you possibly want to do with it locally? Say, "Hey it's been x days since you last used me. Thanks for coming back!"? These are stats you want in aggregate, which means sending the data back to the servers for actual data analysis. You're not going to do that analysis -- or any analysis -- on the device, since there's nothing to compare to.

Yes, but if the data of when the app was last opened is needed to make more network calls, or to just show the user something in general, you're looking at a network call with round trip latency and a success rate <100%, vs. a device call that takes <1ms and succeeds every time.

Put the last opened time on the initial authorization response.

We could go round and round like this. Give me a concrete use case, because for the life of me I can't come up with one that isn't simply superfluous chrome.

Because Uber's primary functionality depends on network calls.

To me, it's pretty obvious they want to find out if you opened the Lyft app recently.

That's what I'm thinking. Who has competitors installed, and do they use them. Also, it does have the right amount of creep to be a plausible Uber tactic.

Doesn't uber have tight integration with other apps that could be running? e.g. Google maps?

I assume the handoff from Google Maps doesn't require any kind of check to running apps from Uber, but I am curious if it is something along these lines.

It does. The main reason I ended up uninstalling uber was because I didn't like it polluting my directions searches with adverts which didn't tell me anything I couldn't already have gotten from the driving directions

Does the app log in every time it starts up, or does it just have a stored access token that is simply supplied with future requests regardless of whether it's been 5 hours or 5 months?

Given what the uber app does when it starts up (show you a map of your locations, with data from a few uber cars moving across it), I'd bet the app essentially contacts the servers immediately when it starts.

The only this would get them is "how many times did a user try to get an uber without data connectivity" ...

And even then, you could keep that record in local storage.

Contacting servers is one thing, logging in is another. No authentication conversation needs to occur if the auth model is based on access tokens like generic OAuth flow.

It's so they can quickly switch between the most recently used maps application like Waze or Google Maps for drivers.

Please don’t state speculation as fact.

What makes you think they don't/didn't work for Uber? Seems a bit speculative to me.

OP should provide a source for their statement. But if you want to go this way, their LinkedIn profile shows they never worked for Uber.

But StavrosK just claimed it doesn't work that way. He said that it will only tell you about instances of your own app, not others (such as Waze or Google Maps).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com