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Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#111

Post by delinka »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #89
jmpman wrote: post #83

I trained a mobile neural network to feed the dog every morning, and his brother to feed it every night.

My mobile neural nets are still in the training stage. Sometimes, they have trouble recognizing when the dogs fifo is full. Also, though I derive great happiness from this automation effort, I’ve noticed that the processing units are quite expensive and the maintenance cost is also large. After 5 years, I’m certain I’ve spent more time training them than if I fed the dog myself and more money that if I hired a 3rd pa…

I think part of the problem is the ordering of the canine calorie queue: should it not be approximately lifo rather than fifo? If you are indeed correct, I’m curious to know how the canine has direct access to the caloric morsels at the bottom of the container.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#112

Post by roryisok »

_s wrote: post #109
roryisok wrote: post #102

We use a slow cooker which pretty much automates a lot of the process of making dinner. Just chop ingredients and throw them in. Now I just need to build a robot to chop veg

Food processor? ;)

Touché

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#114

Post by kaybe »

nopcode wrote: post #63

I automated all my piracy. My NAS automatically downloads files as they are released by scene/p2p/pirate groups. Files are extracted (if compressed), renamed, metadata is added, and published on some apps like plex and trakt. Movies, TV Shows, Music.

Hm, how about a show about a robot pirate ship (in space or today's world) and either some hackers in a basement or a 3-letter agency on the other end? (Maybe leave it ambiguous for a while. Or maybe they fight each other for control.)

There probably are a number of political and economical reasons to disrupt shipping routes and terrorize billionaires on yachts, and plenty to stay unrecognized and uncaught meanwhile (use 'hacking' to disrupt the military that might come to check).

Maybe at some point the robots gain their own sentience and decide to mutiny, maybe to become space pirates too..

The plot is pretty far-out, but I think I would watch it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#115

Post by smilesnd »

I bought a kit and made my truck a push to start. Instead of using a wireless key device their is a hidden switch that makes it seem kooler. I also replace the radio with a zero pi that does some neat things. It is controlled over bluetooth from my phone. I also war drive with it and map wifi for fun and some other things.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#116

Post by burkestar »

riantogo wrote: post #27

Monthly credit card payments. So money flows from my employer to my checking account to my credit cards. Also of course to my 401K, IRA, Mortgage account, Saving account etc. Which means I don't encounter money much and I like it this way (I generally make sure I live within my means and my money does flow into my investments). Downsides: -I'm not actively thinking about money and hence improved investments -I'm not…

I started this right after college after reading "Automatic Millionaire" that advocates for "paying yourself first" and automating your finances. Money goes into checking then automated to online savings accounts, one account per purpose (xmas, vacation, kids college, kids sports, big ticket purchase), money goes to 401k/IRA, money goes to stock account. Only bill I need to remember to pay is credit card (although minimum payment is at least made so no late fees), everything else is automated. Only decisions I make are how to rebalance things if I overspend the money left over, which stocks to invest, and periodic rebalancing to make sure things are on track to reach long-term goals. The real savings is "saving me from myself" :)

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#117

Post by atmosx »

nopcode wrote: post #63

I automated all my piracy. My NAS automatically downloads files as they are released by scene/p2p/pirate groups. Files are extracted (if compressed), renamed, metadata is added, and published on some apps like plex and trakt. Movies, TV Shows, Music.

Sickbeard and couchPotato did that through GUI with a few clicks a few years ago (at least).

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#118

Post by sygma »

spuz wrote: post #18

I built an accelerometer-based washing machine sensor which sends a notification to my phone when the washing is done. This is useful because the machine itself has no indication when it's done: http://www.instructables.com/id/Washing-Machine-Notification...

Pretty cool project! If you want to go further, check out the CloudWash [0] project by Berg London.

[0]: https://vimeo.com/87522764

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#120

Post by burkestar »

mehrdadn wrote: post #60
geerlingguy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poor person’s solution would be mint.com... though the security model there is dubious.

I've tried Mint... aside from the security I neither trust its privacy model nor did I see it working very well either.

It actually gets a lot better at categorization the more you use it. It has at least some primitive machine learning (possibly rules engine?). Categorize a transaction once and it usually gets it right subsequently.
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