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Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

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Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#61

Post by thedjpetersen »

chrisma0 wrote: post #23
nicbou wrote: post #13

I have been toying with a similar idea for a very long time. I want to have an all-encompassing personal history for the same reasons I want good access and error logs. I want to see when something wrong happens, and I want the means to diagnose the problem and fix the damage. A few good examples: - Did I forget to write down any tax-deductible expenses? - What is my net worth? Is my current lifestyle sustainable? -…

> Which parts of my city have I yet to explore? > Can I search all my conversation with John across 3 messaging apps, email, SMS and phone? These are totally pain points for me / questions I'd love to have some answers for... Anyone tried to get the historic iOS location data to answer the first question?

I'm currently working on deduping and threading conversations across different mediums.

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#62

Post by karlicoss »

edraferi wrote: post #51

Very cool! Intake [0] is another package that might help here. It organizes a set of data sources into (1) plugins that actually connect to the data source and map the data to standard Python data structures like Data Frames (2) catalogs that reference the plugins you want to use alongside project specific metadata like usernames/passwords/source URIs (3) convenience functions that persistence, concatenation, etc (4)…

Wow, looks interesting, thanks for the link. Please share if you integrate it!

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#63

Post by GistNoesis »

karlicoss wrote: post #47
GistNoesis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like your project. Data aggregation is powerful but very dangerous and I feel that you are handling it carelessly. I also get a strong Borg vibe here. In the current state, people don't know how to handle their data correctly. You are just making it easier for some people siphon other's people data even more. And having their data played against themselves. Most people are not quants. And becoming one is not…

> making it easier for some people siphon other's people data even more I guess you mean someone could easily steal your data, etc? I agree, it's a tradeoff, would be interesting to explore how to make it more secure. > Having people play unguided with their own data is like giving uranium to little kids Well, handling Uranium is a bit different. Can you elaborate on some specific examples? I've seen people misusing…

Not even stealing some data is needed. Just sharing publicly some data, may leak information that can be used against you. Bots do build profiles and will happily ingest any information you give.

If your top ten "most interesting Slate Star Codex" contains certain keywords, they will flag you in their database.

>Can you elaborate on some specific examples?

-People having sport injury from those sport performance training app. Their knowing of their data made them push-themselves past their limits.

-Little kids getting bad marks, and assuming they are just bad and not persevering. Their knowing made thing worse.

-Hypochondriacs becoming ill from the stress of all the illnesses they think they have.

-People doing weight loss badly focusing too much on the scale.

-Musk tweets :)

-People censoring themselves from knowing that having an unpopular position will cost them karma points.

As soon as you make a system self reflective, you impact it in profound ways. You generate some reinforcing feedback loops. That tend to either break the stability resulting in chaos, or tend to lock it into a specific behavior from which it's hard to escape.

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#64

Post by notJim »

keiferski wrote: post #40
ozim wrote: post #38

One day you wake up and realize that you spent your life maintaining your system to improve your life instead of actually improving your life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation

Indeed.

  Today abstraction is no longer that of the map,
  the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation 
  is no longer that of a territory, a referential being 
  or substance. It is the generation by models of a real
  without origin or reality: A hyperreal[1]. The territory
  no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. 
  *It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—
  precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory.*
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#65

Post by jborichevskiy »

GistNoesis wrote: post #44
karlicoss wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I've got a crude timeline of events (simply rendered as giant HTMLs), but it's private at the moment. I'll probably share some of it in the future, especially considering that some of the data is public anyway (e.g. online comments or tweets), it makes sense. Next step: yep, I throught about it a bit [0], agree that it would be great as a service-agnostic way of accessing the data, the same way we can see it wit…

I don't like your project. Data aggregation is powerful but very dangerous and I feel that you are handling it carelessly. I also get a strong Borg vibe here. In the current state, people don't know how to handle their data correctly. You are just making it easier for some people siphon other's people data even more. And having their data played against themselves. Most people are not quants. And becoming one is not…

> you are handling it carelessly

From the post:

> Everything is local first, the input data is on your filesystem. If you're truly paranoid, you can even wrap it in a Docker container.

> There is still a question of whether you trust yourself at even keeping all the data on your disk, but it is out of the scope of this post.

> If you'd rather keep some code private too, it's also trivial to achieve with a private subpackage.

This seems as safe, if not safer, than the average service where a rogue employee can read/write to your data with little to no visibility.

> You are just making it easier for some people siphon other's people data even more.

The data is already being siphoned off of them -- usually through vague legal agreements and opaque security infrastructure they can't audit.

At least with this model, a user can see the whole scope of data a service is collecting and act accordingly: whether by limiting the data collection as needed or by switching to another service.

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#66

Post by mholt »

simonw wrote: post #48

My version of this is called Dogsheep, and involves building tools that suck my data from various sources into SQLite databases so I can query it all using Datasette. https://dogsheep.github.io/ I enjoyed reading this author's essay on why he doesn't think loading everything into relational databases is the best approach: https://beepb00p.xyz/unnecessary-db.html I think I have a workarounds for most of the issues he…

Cool, that's similar to my project Timeliner: https://github.com/mholt/timeliner

It downloads your data from social media (or other online sites) into a single sqlite database. It can even draw relations between various accounts/people. I use it to back up my Google Photos.

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#67

Post by karlicoss »

GistNoesis wrote: post #63
karlicoss wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making it easier for some people siphon other's people data even more I guess you mean someone could easily steal your data, etc? I agree, it's a tradeoff, would be interesting to explore how to make it more secure. > Having people play unguided with their own data is like giving uranium to little kids Well, handling Uranium is a bit different. Can you elaborate on some specific examples? I've seen people misusing…

Not even stealing some data is needed. Just sharing publicly some data, may leak information that can be used against you. Bots do build profiles and will happily ingest any information you give. If your top ten "most interesting Slate Star Codex" contains certain keywords, they will flag you in their database. >Can you elaborate on some specific examples? -People having sport injury from those sport performance trai…

Ah I see what you mean. Yeah, absolutely, an aggergate system would enable such behaviours.

I guess it comes down to a personal level of paranoia. And to the old question "Is ignorance bliss?", for which people had very different answers long before the software.

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#68

Post by twicetwice »

ozim wrote: post #38

One day you wake up and realize that you spent your life maintaining your system to improve your life instead of actually improving your life.

Only if you think of "maintaining your system to improve your life" as work. I would think of it more as play. It's not time wasted if you enjoy it.

Hm. I actually don't agree with that sentiment as written. It's not time wasted if you enjoy it and have something to show for it? That's not it either.

Maybe this. I view the work we're discussing like a programmer's equivalent of woodworking in your garage. Sure, it's not necessary. But it's creative, fulfilling, and enjoyable. There's something immensely satisfying about using something you made with your own two hands, even if it's not perfect. As long as all these things remain true, I wouldn't call it time wasted.

To me your critism reads something like, "if you wanted to canoe, why did you spend a year making your own? you could have bought one and spent that year doing what you really wanted to do!" Well, I wanted do that, but I also enjoyed making something to do that too. I feel my life is better for having made it.

Re: Show HN: Interface for all digital aspects of my life

#69

Post by rsync »

AJRF wrote: post #26

Polar opposite - Does anyone enjoy digital amnesia? I feel like I might be a little weird here, but every so often I'll just go in and delete all my notes, reminders, apps, photos, etc and start again. Wondering if anyone else does this? I like doing it because it helps clear my head, even though the files or data are digital they take up some space in my head. I do it every few months, just have a fresh slate. I won…

"Polar opposite - Does anyone enjoy digital amnesia? I feel like I might be a little weird here, but every so often I'll just go in and delete all my notes, reminders, apps, photos, etc and start again."

I think there is a happy medium and you can achieve it by keeping your inbox inside your trashcan.

This is not my idea and I have heard of it, in various forms, from different corners.

The idea is that all of your "important" papers get placed, as you receive them, into your larger (deeper) than normal trash can. I use a deep tray for this. It is basically a trash can that takes 6 or 8 months to fill.

When you fill the trashcan, you remove the bottom 1/4 of it and actually throw it away - since it turns out it wasn't important or necessary or actionable.

You can (and I have) created digital metaphors for this:

For instance, I dump my profiles directory, with all of my browsing history and bookmarks and so on, every month or so and then reset my browser. Then I delete those tarballs later when it's clear they were not important.

The key is this:

You can retain maximal optionality while still minimizing processing and sorting time. Just chuck it all into the "trash" bin and if it's really important you always now where to look.

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