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Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#141

Post by joshuamorton »

matwood wrote: post #123
buffaloo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analysis is flawed in two respects: 1. It neglects dividends. 2. The S&P 500 as presently constituted omits all the companies that were excluded during that time period (eg., went broke). If you just buy good solid companies that pay dividends, you do ok.

> If you just buy good solid companies that pay dividends, you do ok. What are the good, solid companies 10 years from now? 20 years? When should I dump my current good, solid companies?

Echoing this, the median amount of time a given S&P500 sits in the S&P500 is less than 20 years. This becomes a tricky problem.

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#142

Post by michaelbrave »

gorgoiler wrote: post #55

I have a folder on my mail server called “Dead”. If I move an email to that folder then all subsequent emails to the same address as the first one go into “Dead/Match”. It’s driven by procmail and a script. When used with one-off email addresses you get a behavior that’s like unsubscribing, but without having to trust any “unsubscribe” links or processes, and also without having to edit any config files (it’s all dri…

I've been half tempted to build an email client just to have similar functionality to that.

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#143

Post by joshuamorton »

buffaloo wrote: post #51
joshuamorton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past 5 years, Nike has gone up by 100%, coke by 20%, Verizon by 15%, and apple by ~125%. The s&p500 has gone up by ~50%. So if you invested 100 in an index fund, you'd have 150, if you invested 100 split evenly in those 4 stocks, you'd have 165. Of course, if you invested in GE, you'd have lost money. And if you invested in Amazon alone, you'd have $500.

This analysis is flawed in two respects: 1. It neglects dividends. 2. The S&P 500 as presently constituted omits all the companies that were excluded during that time period (eg., went broke). If you just buy good solid companies that pay dividends, you do ok.

> 1. It neglects dividends.

True, but if I replaced S&P500 with VTSMX (a Vanguard index fund, which got marginally higher than 50% returns over the same time period) would not.

> 2. The S&P 500 as presently constituted omits all the companies that were excluded during that time period (eg., went broke).

The current S&P 500 does, but watching the S&P500 index over time does not. And index funds generally rebalance to take these things into account.

As another user mentioned: knowing which companies are "good solid companies" is a trillion dollar industry. No simple strategy beats the market over the long term, other wise passive investors would all do it, and start beating the market.

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#144

Post by acidburnNSA »

j7ake wrote: post #97
acidburnNSA wrote: post #44

Lots of home automation fun with Home Assistant ( https://www.home-assistant.io ) * Self-hosted security system that e-mails me when triggered. It arms when everyone disconnects from the wifi and disarms when anyone in the home reconnects to wifi. Totally passive. Also arms at night when the kitchen lights have been out for 5 minutes after a certain time and disarms when motion patterns that can only be someone wakin…

Sounds great. So do you need one raspberry pi per automation ? Or are you somehow linking all these diverse processes with one raspberry pi ?

One raspberry pi for all! The devices are connected via zwave wireless with a USB stick zwave controller. Actually I moved the main server from a pi to my home server a while ago but it was all working fine on a pi 3.

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#145

Post by acidburnNSA »

swah wrote: post #120
acidburnNSA wrote: post #44

Lots of home automation fun with Home Assistant ( https://www.home-assistant.io ) * Self-hosted security system that e-mails me when triggered. It arms when everyone disconnects from the wifi and disarms when anyone in the home reconnects to wifi. Totally passive. Also arms at night when the kitchen lights have been out for 5 minutes after a certain time and disarms when motion patterns that can only be someone wakin…

Do you have a power adapter for the doorbell monitoring ESP?

It is powered from the same circuit that powers the doorbell chime coils.

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#146

Post by ajot »

mxgoddard wrote: post #132

Whenever I turn on my work laptop it launches sites and applications I use on a day to day basis, like Jira (for our ticket), Hacker News (daily dose of information), Slack, Outlook etc. Very simple to create with python and just something I wanted to make.

For websites, I used to set Firefox start page as different websites separated by pipes, i.e. www.google.com|www.outlook.com|news.ycombinator.com

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#147

Post by acidburnNSA »

deskamess wrote: post #125
acidburnNSA wrote: post #44

Lots of home automation fun with Home Assistant ( https://www.home-assistant.io ) * Self-hosted security system that e-mails me when triggered. It arms when everyone disconnects from the wifi and disarms when anyone in the home reconnects to wifi. Totally passive. Also arms at night when the kitchen lights have been out for 5 minutes after a certain time and disarms when motion patterns that can only be someone wakin…

Care to elaborate on the loon call!

Northern Loons make this eerie call that happens a lot in my childhood hometown. I set up am automation that plays a recording of one over the stereo at sunset. It's fun, and helpse keep track of the changing time of sunset.

The "Wail" recording here, in particular: https://www.syracuse.com/indepth/2008/07/audio_hear_the_call...

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#148

Post by acidburnNSA »

mister_hn wrote: post #94
acidburnNSA wrote: post #44

Lots of home automation fun with Home Assistant ( https://www.home-assistant.io ) * Self-hosted security system that e-mails me when triggered. It arms when everyone disconnects from the wifi and disarms when anyone in the home reconnects to wifi. Totally passive. Also arms at night when the kitchen lights have been out for 5 minutes after a certain time and disarms when motion patterns that can only be someone wakin…

Interesting, although I don't have the amount of time required to do these things.

It's definieltely a hobby thing. I have time for it because I choose to set aside other stuff for it.

Once it was all set up it just runs itself with little tweaks and additions one a month.

Re: Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

#150

Post by CoolGuySteve »

disillusioned wrote: post #77
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Google/Android tracks everywhere I go, sends me an email at the end of the month about it, and still can't silent/remind when I get into proximity of a location bugs the shit out of me. That tracking that's so profitable for them is an afterthought when it comes to my own convenience.

I mean, Google Assistant absolutely supports location reminders. Just ask "remind me when I get to work" and it'll... mostly work. Sometimes it's a bit late, but it mostly works. For silent, I think that'd be more of a Tasker/Automate thing, like OP.

Makes sense I missed it then, I hate using the assistant. It feels like asking someone else to scratch my nose.
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