Hyper Space Delivery Boy!!!
My son and I had a great time with it when he was 6...
Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
161–170 of 179 posts
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#162We all (family of 4) have iPhones and use FindMy to see where everyone is and when they’re going to be home to time dinner. We also have a family chat on iMessage that really comes in handy.
So you are using FM not as an emergency tool, but generally? Does that mean in your family everyone (potentially) always knows where everyone else is? Is there a rule for when/if it's appropriate to turn FM off? Please don't read this as me judging; if that works for you, great, I'd (as far as i understand it) not want that, but it's not my life.
Finally coming back to this, my kids are 13 and 11 they don't really care or at least don't care enough to turn it off. My wife doesn't like the idea of me "tracking her" but she's not annoyed enough to turn it off and she likes to know when the kids are getting home (they ride the schoolbus home).
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#163Todoist. My wife and I can share lists, assign tasks, track completion, all sorts of stuff. It’s not perfect, but I’m really mostly happy with it. Also, setting up an iCloud family. Most of the sharing stuff we can do can be done without being in a family unit, but it makes it that much easier since it makes assumptions about who I wish to share with. From there, native Notes, Calendar, all that stuff has made our li…
Can you explain the direct links feature of 1password please, I haven’t heard of that
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#164We use AnyList ( https://www.anylist.com ) for grocery shopping. Much as we like to imagine we are wide-ranging eaters, we eat similar ingredients every week. AnyList lets us make shopping lists easily, add items as they run low (with previous items available to us, and check them off as we shop. There are some more sophisticated features we don't use like recipe imports and meal planning. We also have lists for eg t…
Just downloaded that app and it’s quite cool. It’s nearly what I’m looking for. I love the import a recipe function. I’m defo gonna try into it for a while and see how I get on.
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#165Google photos, I have all devices syncing photos to one place and now I don’t need to worry about did in-law A remember to backup their phone when they inevitably lose it at the grocery store. Arguably the only remotely important thing we have on our phones is photos and maybe chat history but it’s not earth shattering to lose that. Despite having more photos of ourselves than any other generation ever, It’s still so…
I have a server, a small project of mine, and i installed nextcloud. Now my whole family and close friends use it to backup our photos. The official app for it is exceptional for syncing (you can set it to ONLY do the sync when charging or other parameters). There are other benefits of nextcloud (contact backup/Calendar/Messaging etc) and you can set it up on a raspberrypi with an external hard drive, throw it near y…
My preferred solution would be phone -> local backup (for safety) -> Google Photos (for convenience). If the sync to local is about as good as google this would be the best for me.
Distant Plan b: phone -> google photos -> local backup. The problem here is that the only way to get your originals out of google photos is to use google takeout which is basically a dealbreaker here.
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#166I went all in on apple ecosystem this year after literally 13 years of using android. Wife and I got iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch 8 and AirPods Pro. Got HomePod mini and Apple TV for home. We got bunch of home kit compatible tech at home (baby monitor, smart plugs, bulbs etc). We also subscribe to apple one family. The results are fantastic. Everything works with everything else, which is impossible to explain without…
> I download shows/tv to my Mac, drag and drop to Apple TV app, they show up on the main TV over wifi. No casting etc. They just look and play as if they are streaming from Apple TV. I presume these are shows that you’ve downloaded/bought from Apple? If yes, then I’m guessing it’s just synced from your purchases and is downloading and playing from there. Or does Apple somehow allow shows/movies from other sources to…
Apple allows movies from other sources (ahem) to be shared across devices seamlessly. It's called something similar to "home sharing" "home library" etc. There is a separate app in Apple TV which lists shows and movies from all devices on the home network.
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#167- Bitwarden: Been great for sharing passwords and other secrets. We moved to it from LastPass, never tried 1Password, which seems to have a lot of proponents here - Syncthing, Restic, Backblaze B2: Syncs photos and other files from devices to a NAS, then Restic to create backups locally and on Backblaze B2. For the in-laws and others, I make sure they're backed up using Google Photos or Apple iCloud - Jellyfin: Strea…
I was surprised how easy it is to get going with Tailscale. UX is on point, plus very generous free tier. Can recommend.
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#168We all (family of 4) have iPhones and use FindMy to see where everyone is and when they’re going to be home to time dinner. We also have a family chat on iMessage that really comes in handy.
So you are using FM not as an emergency tool, but generally? Does that mean in your family everyone (potentially) always knows where everyone else is? Is there a rule for when/if it's appropriate to turn FM off? Please don't read this as me judging; if that works for you, great, I'd (as far as i understand it) not want that, but it's not my life.
I have it set up with my wife. We trust each other enough to only use it in emergency situations.
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ugh that reminds me I've been promising for ages to migrate all my partner's passwords over from the ridiculously overpriced LastPass. Out of interest, how do you use Bitwarden day-to-day - browser extension?
I used LastPass since it started, I had the opportunity to meet the creators at an event some 20 years ago or more. It was a nice product at that time. And then it went downhill, with several issues (including a huge javascript block added to each page which was really too slow). It was not aging well as well. I moved to Bitwarden a few years ago, I self-host the solution but like it so much that I also bought the cl…
Agreed on all of those points - Loved Lastpass when it first appeared, felt stung by the doubling (quadrupling?) of the fee and exported all my data to Bitwarden a few years ago. Haven't looked back since.
Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life
#170Youtube Premium Family plan. I think this has genuinely saved us hours of screen time from watching ads, on personal devices and on the living room TV