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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?

#311

Post by egypturnash »

Colored lights (LIFX) change color automatically during the day. mostly thanks to their scheduling, though the one in the foyer changes color based on both the time of day and on the temperature and rain forecast - during the day I can glance at the light and know how to dress. That happens with a Python script on my computer, which I should really move to the Raspberry Pi in the living room that I could leave on 24-7.

When I make a blog post, my WordPress installation automatically posts about it to assorted social media sites. And when I post a new page of comics I can make it automatically calculate the next day it would come out on, based on the schedule I’ve chosen (new pages Tuesday/Thursday, unless Shit Happens) and on how many pages are already in the queue, if any.

When I put together a book of my comics, I use a small AppleScript that runs over a directory and outputs a sequentially-sorted CSV of file names, which I can dump into an InDesign template.

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

#312

Post by ransom1538 »

When I graduated college, the job situation wasn't as hot.

I would take a resume, custom tailor a cover letter, change out a few paragraphs in my resume to fit the specific job title --- and then.. no reply -. So. I scripted it. I would scan craigslist, monster, indeed, etc for emails or company names. The script eventually evolved to guess company homepages and scan for emails on 'career' sections.

Based on the job titles it would automatically change out cover letters. It became smart enough to understand that a word doc or txt format resume was required. It could catch "PUT THIS IN THE SUBJECT" and created a queue for hand verification -- otherwise, it would send out the emails. Once they were sent out it would scan incoming emails to determine if there were any leads - and matched the thread together with a unique email footer.

Hilariously, it flipped job searching. I would get long ranting emails why I wasn't a qualified or the position required someone more 'senior' to build CRUD webpages. OH well, HR blew their time, not mine, ---> delete. When a interested company did call, I had a nice mysql database of all the posts that company made and was ready to return a call prepared.

I got a job quickly after this php script starting running.

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

#313

Post by hajrice »

claydavisss wrote: post #295
hajrice wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: I still have to execute the orders to buy and sell, but the thinking for when to buy and what to buy is automated. I just sell after the earnings or when I gain the desired amount (5-10% return)

Aren't you at all interested in managing your capital gains exposure? Short term trades tend to play to the advantage of the broker (fees) and tax collector (short term cap gains tax)

1) What capital gains tax? You can run it through a company, which is what I do.

2) Broker fees are $0 as I use Robinhood.

Like I said, I made a ~44% return. If a $7 trader fee is your argument for it not being viable then you are most likely not investing enough money, or not getting a decent return.

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

#314

Post by burkemw3 »

sgroppino wrote: post #39
t0mek wrote: post #23

I used DSP to recognize the commercials in the radio broadcast on my stereo receiver and turn down the volume automatically ("adblock for the radio broadcast"). I described it here: http://blog.rekawek.eu/2016/02/24/radio-adblock/

This for TV would be great!

MythTV has commercial skip: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Commercial_detection

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

#315

Post by hajrice »

marketgod wrote: post #231
hajrice wrote: post #211

I automated my Investment Portfolio. My investment thesis is to buy high-growth tech company stocks with an upcoming earnings call in the next 90 days. I have a script that scrapes Yahoo finance and tells me which stocks to buy. Surprisingly it's worked well, and I've gotten a return of 44% last year

Have you back tested this. It seems really risky.

What do you see as risky? I don't invest in companies I don't believe will be around in 10-15 years -- I don't invest in penny stocks. I invest in REAL companies (Amazon, Shopify, Atlassian, etc.)

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

#316

Post by A_Person »

delbel wrote: post #297
A_Person wrote: post #170

Ok, I'll bite! About 20 years ago I inherited enough money to retire on for the rest of my life. But the only evidence of those assets was, a dot matrix printout that anyone could have done in five minutes. So over the next few weeks, I created accounts in the various share registries and online banking websites, and manually cross-checked the printed list against those accounts. All was good, but I wanted to do that…

If you wanted to re-write that for Chrome or whatever (including headless) I would suggest Selenium or WebDriver suite, including PhantomJS. However, my knowledge (expert level at the time) is a bit outdated and there are probably new toolkits based on the Selenium/WebDriver protocol, it is a good direction to point you to. I have had my bank remove records from my online account, or not have the ledger balance add u…

Thanks for the reference to sekenium etc. I know nothing about other browsers' automation capabilities, so i'll takee a look at some stage.

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

#317

Post by twblalock »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #259

I have a robot lawn mower that is wire guided. Instead of the traditional lawn mowers that basically cut the grass in all directions (making a sloppy cut pattern) my mower knows how to cut in straight lines so you get a traditional cut pattern. It also has the ability to dump the grass cuttings into a composting bin. Basically, I put down wire guide cable into the lawn and into the cement as well. It is all powered b…

Has it ever chopped up a squirrel, or the neighbor's cat?

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

#318

Post by koboll »

ransom1538 wrote: post #312

When I graduated college, the job situation wasn't as hot. I would take a resume, custom tailor a cover letter, change out a few paragraphs in my resume to fit the specific job title --- and then.. no reply -. So. I scripted it. I would scan craigslist, monster, indeed, etc for emails or company names. The script eventually evolved to guess company homepages and scan for emails on 'career' sections. Based on the job…

You could definitely make money selling access to this.

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

#319

Post by A_Person »

egypturnash wrote: post #302
A_Person wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've no idea what they are! They're all random strings within the integrated password manager that I wrote as part of the package!

This is kind of perfect.

The rubber hose would fail!

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

#320

Post by hajrice »

ransom1538 wrote: post #312

When I graduated college, the job situation wasn't as hot. I would take a resume, custom tailor a cover letter, change out a few paragraphs in my resume to fit the specific job title --- and then.. no reply -. So. I scripted it. I would scan craigslist, monster, indeed, etc for emails or company names. The script eventually evolved to guess company homepages and scan for emails on 'career' sections. Based on the job…

It would probably never reach scale for obvious reasons, but someone should productize this.

"I'll get you a 20% more high paying job for $1,000"

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