Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mvanveen 1754 days ago
Hi Alex and Daniel! This looks really cool and I believe I am in your set of target customers/potential early adopters.

Personally, I'd much moreso prefer a self-hosted option such as a desktop application with strong guarantees about limits on cloud upload over anything cloud-based for this use case, specifically around concerns about how the webcam data could be used/abused. I don't see any immediate FAQ page or somewhere I could determine this information. Not seeing this information gives me some immediate pause in trying out your application or signing up.

Similarly in addition to some discussion in your FAQs etc. around the limits of how the webcam imagery is used, I would personally love and feel more trust in the product if the FAQs could provide any data or transparency on how the training corpus takes into account issues of proper representation across ppl with different posture considerations (scoliosis comes to mind) as well as the overall representation of different demographics (race, age, gender) within that training set, and/or how the model training procedure defines or determines "correct" posture.

1 comments

Zen is a desktop app so I'm happy to see that we satisfy your preference.

Those are great ideas. We'll be adjusting our website to make it more clear!

Yeah, thanks for being receptive to my feedback! FWIW I would not personally install your desktop app without further understanding of these other areas.

However, if the adjustments you describe could sufficiently allay my concerns and make the proper guarantees then I would be interested in such a product potentially.

As it stands I feel without said information there's just too much risk and uncertainty both as a private individual and employee to use this app.

Yeah, no.

* If I click on the web site, there is no privacy policy given. It just links back to the front page (Chrome)

* Anything with a subscription has got to send some data somewhere.

* All the language about "privacy-centric" with on actual background looks really sketchy.

Would you trust a small, unknown company to have access to your web cam? My experience is that few enough companies follow their own privacy policies.