I do. It's about state coverage: every Boolean flag doubles the possible state of that bit of code: now you need to run everything twice to retain the coverage.

FWIW, I know people who work on SQL processing (big data Hive/Spark, not RDMBS), and a recurrent issue is that an optimisation which benefits most people turns out to be pathologically bad for some queries for some users. Usually those with multiple tables with 8192 columns and some join which takes 4h at the best of times, now takes 6h and so the overnight reports aren't ready in time. And locks held in the process are now blocking some other app which really matters to the businesses existence. These are trouble because they still "work" in the pure 'same outputs as before', it's just the side effects can be be so disruptive.

What's interesting is that they thought to look at Strava to see who had ridden there during the time period of interest. You'd need to think "let's see who cycled", and come up with a way of querying strava, such as demanding the list of people who cycled there. If Strava gets checked, then except for the special case of a witness saying "I saw someone suspicious on a bike", they'd have already checked Waze, apple find friends, etc

find and join a running/cycling club in your area

Activities marked as "Private" Don't leak. But in "enhanced privacy" mode your activities can be seen via the segment leaderboards. In any declared privacy zone, you stay off those boards, irrespective of options, and (allegedly) heatmaps. So really, it's "slightly more advanced privacy"

You can also opt-out of segment leaderboards. With some work you can lock out your account so only your friends can see your routes, photos and stuff. Everything is well explained on Strava support webpage in section called "Privacy Settings".

> don't use a service that gobbles your data up, no matter how free it is

we've conceded that option by living in a world where phones add GPS location data to cameras, you use pay-by-phone over cash, oystercards for public transport. I felt I was in control until I discovered a paragraph in the manual of the used BMW we'd bought about how to turn flash off.

Think about that: we are building cars with flash embedded in a browser wired op to a 3G+ modem and a car network bus whose vehicle motor data would be sufficient to identify where you are driving round Bristol (speed, time sitting at junctions, hill climbs inferred by RPM:speed), where you live, which school you drive you children to...

> maybe not "When you are away from your house" but you could not turn on the live beacon if that's a concern

people have schedules, their commute timetables reveal them. If I start appearing on the logs as riding in in a different part of the world then I'm away for longer. That info is visible to anyone you are in the same "club" as, even if you have enhanced privacy enabled.

Don't join clubs with people you cant't trust. Post your rides with week delay or make them public when you are back home from your trip. It is called "enhanced" privacy mode for a reason and combined with other privacy settings it can give you very good results.

I like your reasoning

I was pretty unhappy about, I can tell you. And yes, I mentioned that fact to make clear that physical security comes first, and because I cherish the irony myself.

In Bristol, most mountain bikers do cross the Bristol Suspension bridge on their way home, same for a lot of the roadies. There's been a fair few cases of people being followed back by some teenagers and then having their bike stolen that night, so rather than go straight home (main roads), I just hit the back streets to see that it's clear. And now I make sure that we haven't left a set of keys out in the garden, even when the door is locked. Which was a fact on its own: it's an implicit metric of how often people try breaking in to an urban house here.

OK. I take back my smirking.

I couldn't think of any other good title. It's going from a heatmap to identifying individuals, who, if they didn't use an alias, are now identified. And of the 16 people faster than me on that circuit, 14 used full names.

They posted their data as public so they could be found and identified anyway. Heatmap just speeds up the process by letting us know where to search.

Gave the map of the route to fake. Without that you'd need time to trace round buildings and training areas you see in satellite pics. Which is the kind of thing governments have the time to do (imagine mapmyride seeing an uptake in users in N Korea); I didn't.

It's too complex, and to keep a govt/ site secure, you'd need every person who runs round it to keep their info locked down. I think Strava will end up having specific "national-state privacy zones" where no runs ever appear in heatmaps and segments cannot be created

I'd say it's advanced in terms of "escalating heatmap information into identifying people running round a submarine base". Yes, you can (should!) use aliases there, at which point the people stay anonymous. Except: in the screenshot I have of that segment before I deleted it, only 2 of the 16 people don't use full names.