RUMPEL, a ground-breaking hyperdata web browser that makes it simpler for people to access and use online data about themselves, is being rolled out to the public this month.
RUMPEL gives users the ability to browse their very own private and secure 'personal data wardrobe' -- called a HAT (Hub-of-all-Things) -- which collates data about them held on the internet (eg on social media, calendars and their own smartphones, with the possibility of also including shopping, financial and other personal data) and allows them to control, combine and share it in whatever way they wish.
Launched in June 2013, HAT [PDF] will create the first ever Multi-sided Market Technology Platform for the home, allowing individuals to trade their personal data for personalised products and services in the future.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160727111929.htm
Is this yet another crack in the wall of privacy ?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 28 2016, @01:40PM
"prioritising news-feed items based on your interests"
"what concert or movie to see taking into account . . . you have enjoyed previously."
Many of us prefer our own cozy echo chambers already. I can't see that this is going to improve things.
The real question is, who else has access to this data? Oh, not the browser distributor, surely?
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:59PM
"I like what I like because I like it, and would like to like more of what I already like, because I like things like that."
Morons.
I liked Star Wars when I was 12. If we'd had this HAT crap in 1977, I'd STILL like Star Wars, no doubt.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Thursday July 28 2016, @01:41PM
Hyperdata, metadata, quasidata, whatever. Another buzzword laden, geewhiz do-nothing convergence "solution" for a problem I don't actually have. Listen to them: "Multi-sided Market Technology Platform" - they're aiming this squarely at the same PHBs who had no idea what "cloud" and "on rails" were, but because they saw it in a glossy magazine, they just had to have it implemented next month. These fools will be gone in a year.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 28 2016, @01:58PM
monitor.
Launched in June 2013, HAT [PDF] will create the first ever blah blah blah
If it came out in 2013, did it or didn't it? Considering this is the first I've heard of it, I'm going with the latter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday July 29 2016, @09:20AM
HAT is a research project that started in 2013 (by someone in the same lab as me, so I've been following it for a while). They've just done a spin-out that's actually producing a prototype based on the research now. The goal of the project is to allow individuals to gain the advantages from the various bits of profiling that big companies do about them, without requiring them to give away this data. The project is also looking at differential privacy, so you would be able to sell some of this data to aggregators, but in such a way that they can't then target you as an individual (for example, it's useful for a shop to know that people who buy X from them also buy Y from someone else, but you don't want the shop to know your individual purchasing habits).
The HAT (Hub of All Things) is also supposed to act as the controller for various IoT things in your home, so that you can control them and the data that they collect, not send it to some cloud provider who might not be there in a few years and who is data mining you for all that you're worth in the interim.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:15PM
I just want to know if there are paradigm-shifting synergies involved. Because, I could really use some paradigm-shifting synergies...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @03:54PM
I just want to know if there are paradigm-shifting synergies involved.
Yes, but they are opt-out in order to improve your user experience.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:39PM
I read "multi-sided" as giving acces to your information.
If you create a google account, Google will let you see the information they have on you [google.com], so it is not really a first.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gravis on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:12PM
instead of tracking data about you from social media and data storage sites, they should be making a router that provides a localized social media site (ie gnusocial) and data storage (a NAS). that way _you_ control your data and you know who is accessing what. so basically, nextcloud meets gnusocial that is a router with a hard drive.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:52PM
It is a product for marketers, they're just trying to spin it as a product for users... The idea is to get even more detailed info about users by having them willingly gather their data in one place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:26PM
maybe. depends on the funding. without knowing more, it, like pokeGo, could be acting as a conceptual worm to teach you more about what's missing from your button pushing demographic. MyHatOS. now with password-manager!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:57PM
Or better still, a deliberate data poison well, that detects sites you've already shared too much with and slowly start's undoing the damage be counter sharing obfuscated information. And it should remember which sites are to be fed which story, and build an inventory for you.
Surely we don't need any help spreading true info around.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:16PM
Yup, good ol' Bayesian poisoning. Google thinks this is my real name.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday July 28 2016, @08:43PM
Well, my real name is John Doe.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday July 30 2016, @03:11PM
I'm confused as to how a NAS would work. How do you do TLS over a home LAN when the CA can't even reach your server?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:15PM
Right... then, lynx [wikipedia.org] it is...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:48PM
It's time for people to claim their data from the internet. The aim of RUMPEL is to empower users and enable them to be served by the ocean of data about them that's stored in all kinds of places online, so that it benefits them and not just the businesses and organisations that harvest it
How TF is the user going to be able to "claim" their data if there is an "ocean" of it out on the internet already? The genie is already out of the bottle and out of their control. All HAT can do is add to it, which is what I suspect it does, with or without the users' consent. .
Funny thing is, TFA is written as if it is nothing but a good thing.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Friday July 29 2016, @01:20AM
This is a half-assed implementation of a not terrible idea.
Theoretically, it would be nice to be able to have a system where I could store data and be able to manage sharing it.
But they need to partner with and launch with some services for end users. This is just a press release of an idea. Why would you ever use it?
It would be much better if they were announcing that you could get “free” access to a few hundred magazine websites and/or major online news sites or periodicals in exchange for downloading and using their system. As it is - why bother and and why trust them at all? What is the upside to figuring out a half-baked, raw new browser environment, likely poorly documented, buggy and with zero actual benefit to anybody who uses it?
I suspect they will get a handful of takers, but these days most people have had poor experiences with spending a bunch of time on poorly implemented system that get abandoned. I still try out some new things, but personally before I touch this I would want to see some reasonable expectation of an upside as it sounds like vaporware / abandonware to me.
(Score: 1) by pallas on Friday July 29 2016, @07:47AM
Just send a disc to granny and granpy "HAT" (which sounds like some bond villain, or a South Park character).
Don't worry, hatco will protect your privacy by offering you a 'personal data wardrobe'! As an added benefit your lifetime membership of personal data collection comes with a free serving of broken browser, and a quarter teaspoon of give-a-shit.
"collates data about them held on the internet (eg on social media, calendars and their own smartphones, with the possibility of also including shopping, financial and other personal data)"
They plan on gathering this data how? Brokering, buying, scraping, service APIs, and you installing their software? That's a lot to bite off, and doesn't even guarantee you're 'wardrobe' will contain all your future information. That's excluding the entire history you had before using their 'Multi-sided Market Technology Platform' - AKA, over-hyped app.
Not only does this project fail on a technical level, it fails at even being marketable, and in a day and age where apps get turned into movies, that's truly astonishing.
As if that weren't bad enough: (from source article) "RUMPEL's development has been part of the overall Hub-of-All-Things (HAT) initiative, a £1.2 million Research Councils UK digital economy project, involving six UK universities -- Warwick, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Surrey and the University of the West of England -- plus a host of industry partners and advisors including Dyson, Arup and GlaxoSmithKline."
Sounds like friendly people I'd trust my data with, what about you? £1.2 million, on a "HAT", that's mind boggling. I suppose this is what you get when you through money at the wind?
Of course, the 'June 2013' launch date confirms it's just as hopeless as the aforementioned suggests. Maybe, they should take that 'hyperdata', and put it where this idea should go: The circular trash receptacle.
(from source article) "Professor Ng comments: "We want to get thousands of people all over the world to try out RUMPEL and experience for themselves how it can help them make better decisions"
Oh, I bet you do. I mean, you certainly wouldn't sell or distribute my 'wardrobe' right?
Verdict: The money will dry up, and this project will flop (more).
Might as well be a widget company consortium that sells snake oil.
Oh. Wait.