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Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

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Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#201

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

petsfed wrote: post #195
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It’s a bit like a man not realizing he might be a great dancer, simply because most dancers are women, and so he never explores the question. No offense but that stereotype is incomprehensible. Outside of gay and lesbian clubs, [roughly} half of all dancers are men and the other half women. I suspect you are specifically talking about ballet dancers, but those are a tiny minority, and don't even exist in most of t…

In the States "dancer" is used colloqiually to describe a profession , not simply a person engaged in the act of dancing. It's that "...most dancers are women..." bit that indicates that that's the context in which the parent is speaking. Certainly, that subtext is a little unclear, but if I talked about "dancers" at a wedding, I believe most people would expect that I was describing people dancing professionally . I…

Thanks for the analysis. I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead.

Btw:

>> If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman.

You mean in the US. Reference, please?

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#202

Post by petsfed »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #201
petsfed wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the States "dancer" is used colloqiually to describe a profession , not simply a person engaged in the act of dancing. It's that "...most dancers are women..." bit that indicates that that's the context in which the parent is speaking. Certainly, that subtext is a little unclear, but if I talked about "dancers" at a wedding, I believe most people would expect that I was describing people dancing professionally . I…

Thanks for the analysis. I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead. Btw: >> If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman. You mean in the US. Reference, please?

You mean aside from the anecdotal evidence from 35 years of being the son of a professional dance costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical), and brother of another professional ballet costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical)? And both have worked with a variety of very large and notable dance companies across the western US? Or about 17 years now observing the gender imbalance in dance schools that my sisters (and now daughters) attend. Or the entire fucking genre of media that clearly shows that gender imbalance (seriously, Billy Elliot's central conflict only makes sense in light of this very real and very sustained phenomenon)?

Ok. https://datausa.io/profile/soc/dancers-choreographers#gender...

There's a subsection about educational levels of professional dancers, and the gender imbalance is persistent between high-school educated (so only private dance instruction) as well as college-educated professional dancers.

I found similar statistics in Australia.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#203

Post by petsfed »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #201
petsfed wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the States "dancer" is used colloqiually to describe a profession , not simply a person engaged in the act of dancing. It's that "...most dancers are women..." bit that indicates that that's the context in which the parent is speaking. Certainly, that subtext is a little unclear, but if I talked about "dancers" at a wedding, I believe most people would expect that I was describing people dancing professionally . I…

Thanks for the analysis. I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead. Btw: >> If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman. You mean in the US. Reference, please?

Also, I disagree categorically with

>I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead.

Maybe its a British English vs American English distinction (if that's the case, that would be helpful to point out, and is very much in the yard-vs-garden realm of language distinctions, and why I keep saying "in the states"), but it was pretty apparent to my American ear/eye. Its also important to point out that its not necessarily a professional dancer, but rather someone who has gone out of their way to train to dance for an audience. Doing the dougie in the club does not, by itself, make you a dancer, and it feels weird to describe people drunkenly dancing in the club as dancers.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#204

Post by UncleEntity »

earthling8118 wrote: post #139
stormqueen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! The backup feature is already on my roadmap to offer it as an optional feature - but since you can manually import and export your data, it's not a high priority yet. F-Droid may be an option - but for now the project is not open source. so I think that's not possible

I'd argue that it's a falsehood to call a closed source application privacy friendly.

This is why we can't have nice things...

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#205

Post by lindesvard »

openplatypus wrote: post #84
Terretta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fathom Analytics offers a straightforward, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics. Unlike Google, which collects extensive data to build detailed user profiles (read the link for details), Fathom uses a variety of techniques such as hashing to anonymize data, ensuring it cannot be traced back to individuals. Their approach complies with major privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA, removing the need for intrusive c…

Or check the plethora of great GA alternatives like: Plausible Piwik Pro Simple Analytics Wide Angle Analytics Pirsch Umami etc. https://european-alternatives.eu/category/web-analytics-serv...

All these are great but I was lacking more advanced features from them.

So I created openpanel.dev which is a combo of Plausible and Mixpanel.

Privacy focused as well!

Check it out https://openpanel.dev

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#206

Post by sillysaurusx »

petsfed wrote: post #203
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the analysis. I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead. Btw: >> If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman. You mean in the US. Reference, please?

Also, I disagree categorically with >I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead. Maybe its a British English vs American English distinction (if that's the case, that would be helpful to point out, and is very much in the yard-vs-garden realm of language distinctions, and why I keep saying "in the states"), but it was p…

Just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and thorough way you’ve handled all of this. I would’ve done a worse job. Cheers.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#207

Post by xandrius »

stormqueen wrote: post #118
xandrius wrote: post #95

I actually built a simple one (also for Android) as there wasn't anything easy out there. One thing that my gf wanted as additional features was the possibility to also track mood (I let her choose among 5 ranges of emojis) and add tags to each day: for example she can create a tag "pains" and set if she had cramps a day or not. All that can be expected to csv/xslx for her own analysis. If you add these features, I'l…

My app needs a minimum sdk 19. So at least that would fit. But to be honest: I don't think I'll add those features in the near future. The mood tracking is already on the feature list. But the one with the tags.... I write it down to evaluate it. Also you can export the data - but that will result in a json file - not a csv

Cool! I'll keep an eye, if you don't it's ok, it keeps my own app viable :P

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#208

Post by RIMR »

blitzar wrote: post #94
RIMR wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The in-app purchases are a dealbreaker. Not only is there no reason for it, but it necessitates the integration of Google Play Services. If the goal was to be privacy-centric, it already fails at that for this alone. And if the goal was to profit off of women's need for privacy-centric period tracking, then there is absolutely no reason not to find a proper FOSS alternative that cares about its users more than making…

It turns out "I want privacy first and open source" is still a dog whistle for "I don't want to pay for anything".

If paying for something deanonymizes me, as a Google Play purchase would, then it isn't fulfilling the privacy part of the deal at all.

More importantly, if privacy centric apps raise the barrier for entry to include licensing fees, then most people are going to choose the "free" alternatives that get paid for by selling their metadata. If you actually care about protecting users' privacy, you should avoid gatekeeping the technology behind a paywall.

There are plenty of Free (as in beer + as in freedom) period trackers out there that I would be happy to donate time and money to help develop. The closed-source for-profit version that demands that I disclose my identity to Google before I get started is dead-in-the water, having failed to be suitable for any purpose than making the developer a bit of cash while pretending to care about women's privacy in a world that wants to imprison them for a miscarriage.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#209

Post by pitched »

bee_rider wrote: post #183
pitched wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only proof we have of privacy is a claim made by an internet account. With source code, auditing that claim is a lot easier. “Trust but verify.”

I agree that it isn’t as easily verifiable that it is privacy-respecting without the source code but that’s a couple steps from saying that it is “a falsehood” to say it is. What made me wonder about it is that this is very specific wording that indicates that they proactively know the author is lying, when it would be very easy to instead say something along the lines of what you said, that it is too hard to verify…

I agree that the language used wasn’t perfect, but… If a claim is not verifiable, it can only be taken on faith. Same as all the existing apps in the category that this one aims to replace. Is there a better word we can use to describe this sort of situation?

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

#210

Post by ddgflorida »

fsckboy wrote: post #199
pjc50 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many popular cycle tracking apps have a bad rep of sharing data eagerly with Facebook and other entities Many no longer have a choice as to whether to turn their data over to law enforcement who may use it to deny lifesaving medical care. (Florida briefly tried to make reporting periods mandatory for student athletes, too, but that fortunately failed)

> law enforcement who may use it to deny lifesaving medical care what? details please

There are no details because it didn't happen and never would.
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