Ask HN: What tasks do you automate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#51

Post by kensoh » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #35

tokenizerrr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use an API? Or just scraping? I've done the same, but stopped using it. Afraid my bank, if they detect it, might not like it.

I want to do this too. Details would be handy. Even if its extracting data from PDF statements or saved HTML pages.

Basically use a web automation tool to simulate the login process and then grab the data you want, save it to .csv file or something. For saved HTML pages, web automation tools generally can work with them. For saved PDF I'm not sure what is good.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#52

Post by natch » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

zbjornson wrote: post #14

All of my thesis project in immunology was automated, which involved several hours of blood processing repeated several thousand times (with some parallelization) by a team of a dozen robots. There are pics, schematics and vids here: http://www.zachbjornson.com/projects/robotics/ . I also like to say that the final analysis was automated. It was done entirely in Mathemtica notebooks that talk to a data-processing API…

Awesome. You should write a paper on your paper writing / research / automation / publication process, to help advance the way scientific publishing is done.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#53

Post by tombrossman » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

koala_man wrote: post #26

Backups.

Yes! Everything else in this thread is interesting but without automated backups it's all just temporary.

I would add that it's a good idea to automate backups using more than one method as well. For example, use a popular software package but also copy important stuff to an extra drive. A cheap setup with a Raspberry Pi + USB drive plugged in to your router will do just fine.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#54

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

tokenizerrr wrote: post #19

jessedhillon wrote: post #16

I have a script that downloads bank and credit card transaction data, then applies rules to create a journal in GNU Ledger format.

Do you use an API? Or just scraping? I've done the same, but stopped using it. Afraid my bank, if they detect it, might not like it.

Your bank would object to you accessing your own transaction data?

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#55

Post by mediocrejoker » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

shade23 wrote: post #34

- Downloading a song of youtube, adding meta data via beets and moving to my music lib - Adding tasks to my todolist client from every app I use(including my bookmarking service when I bookmark with specific tags) - Changing terminal colours based on time of the day(lower brightness in the evenings and hence dark colours, too much sunlight in the mornings and hence solarized themes) - Automatically message people who…

> - Automatically message people who message me based on priority(parents immediately/girlfriend a longer buffer).

I'm curious what these automatic messages say. Are you talking about something like an answering machine message? "I'm at home but my phone hasn't moved in 20 minutes so I'm probably in the shower"?

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#56

Post by abatilo » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

A little different than what other people are doing, but I have tried to automate my savings. I use Mint to figure out what my budgets for things should be, then I use Qapital to automatically save the money I didn't spend but was budgeted.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#57

Post by natch » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

ajarmst wrote: post #12

I consult the relevant XKCD to decide: https://xkcd.com/1205/

I love XKCD but that chart is missing a few important dimensions.

- How likely is it that you will make a mistake when performing the task manually, and how easy is it to fix the various mistakes that can be made?

- How likely is it that you'll overlook the task when the time comes? (e.g. SSL cert expiration)

- What are the costs of mistakes or failure to complete the task?

- What skills can you learn while developing the automated solution?

- How can techniques developed for the automated solution be reused for other tasks?

Of course it's fair to ask questions on the other side of the equation, too, like: if the automated solution goes bad, or is run in the wrong environment, what are the risks?

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#58

Post by kensoh » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

I automate as much as possible the tasks involved in coding web automation scripts - https://github.com/tebelorg/TagUI

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#59

Post by ateevchopra » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

shade23 wrote: post #34

- Downloading a song of youtube, adding meta data via beets and moving to my music lib - Adding tasks to my todolist client from every app I use(including my bookmarking service when I bookmark with specific tags) - Changing terminal colours based on time of the day(lower brightness in the evenings and hence dark colours, too much sunlight in the mornings and hence solarized themes) - Automatically message people who…

Can you please share code of your scripts ? Seems interesting !

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#60

Post by bald » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

fest wrote: post #36

Tracking packages so I could batch my trips to post office. Simple web interface where I have a list of packages I've ordered with the last status update from post service web tracking for.

cool, what API are you using for getting the tracking information?