My takeaway is this: If you want to meet your significant other, attend a university. After university your chances will dwindle down as you won't frequent that big come together place any more.
How fateful?
31–40 of 343 posts
Re: How fateful?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google timeline may not be useful to you but it’s an incredible tool to record your own past. Believe me, I care far more than google in my ability to know where I was on April 24 2016.
I don't think I have ever in my life thought "I wish I had location history turned on so I could check where I was at that date". Could you share some examples of how can it be useful? I do find it cool to have such data to do the kind of analysis as presented in this post, but not cool enough to let others (especially Google) possess this data as well.
Not the parent, but I can share one.
A guy I worked for long ago was part of a partnership of architects and they split up. One of the other partners was known for never parting amicably and sued him. He claimed they had agreed on something and my client had failed to deliver and thus owed him some large sum. He presented notes he had allegedly taken during the talk they had a few years earlier including date and time and the word of another partner as support, who claimed to have been present.
My client checked his old calendars and just found the word "Copenhagen" for that + the previous day. With a bit of searching and checking, he figured out that he was incredibly lucky: he had been in Copenhagen that day to sail in a regatta, had lots of witnesses and photographs and easily won the case, the other two got into hot water for falsifying documents and giving false statements, though I don't know the outcome.
He was lucky to have had a multi-day thing and putting it into his calendar. Not sure if "Google showed me being far away" would've stood up, but it can certainly be useful to know your location a few years ago.
Re: How fateful?
#33Fun fact: whatever you can do with this data, Google can do as well!
While she likely got permission, having your girlfriend request all your location data is a bit like Zuckerberg requeating all your location data.
On some level alarm bells are going off.
Re: How fateful?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google timeline may not be useful to you but it’s an incredible tool to record your own past. Believe me, I care far more than google in my ability to know where I was on April 24 2016.
I don't think I have ever in my life thought "I wish I had location history turned on so I could check where I was at that date". Could you share some examples of how can it be useful? I do find it cool to have such data to do the kind of analysis as presented in this post, but not cool enough to let others (especially Google) possess this data as well.
I had my catalytic converter stolen. Thanks to location history I could check when I left the car there and when I came back and noticed the problem. Since at first I didn't know problem was result of a theft I didn't take note of the time when I noticed the problem and I also could recall for how long the car stayed there.
Location history enabled me to accurately and confidently report the time window when crime occurred to the police.
Re: How fateful?
#35This is a great use of one's location data.
I've personally found Google's location history to be a net positive for me. From places I've been whose precise addresses I can't remember (e.g. distant family events), to tracking hospital, doctor visits.
I've even used it as a proxy for timesheets when I used to work from an office on weeks where I wouldn't have recorded my activities well (like which client I visited, how long I took lunch, etc).
Re: How fateful?
#36Storytime!
Years ago I boarded an almost empty plane from my country to a country where I had just started to live. The crew let a printed list of the passengers on one of the seats, I took the list and stored it somewhere. Flash forward few years later: I had met a lot of people in that country, inclusive from my own country. And one day, I rediscovered that boarding list I had totally forgotten about, just to find out that I had ended up knowing one of the persons on it.
Re: How fateful?
#37These are amazing ETL skills, but a big red flag, I thought I was watching the revival of the infamous Overly Attached Girlfriend. As someone said there, this is great and scary at the same time. Also, how come 2 people be so ok with Google having all their location history? There are only two reasons why someone leaves that function enabled: A) they are Google employees B) totally ignorant to the fact that Google tr…
I leave the feature on and I'm not a Google employee or ignorant of the fact Google tracks my location data. I find value in having the data myself and don't care that Google also has it. I also just asked my girlfriend if she has disabled it and she hasn't. She isn't a Google employee and is aware it is being recorded. So there are 2 more people. Is it possible you are in fact in the minority in disabling it?
Re: How fateful?
#38> It makes me feel very philosophical. Likely we had walked past each other every other week for three years with our heads down, or in the clouds, paying very little notice to the people around us. Past Channon had not the foggiest clue what impact an unnoticed stranger would come to have on her. Since learning this I can’t help but look at the passers-by in my day-to-day life in a different light. And no shame in g…
I was getting philosophical the other day for the opposite reason, looking at all the things that went slightly different than they would have been expected to go, or that I had previously wished had not gone "wrong," but if they had happened the "right" way, we never would have met.
I don't think Google's spying can help me identify those, but in the end I'm grateful for the winding path that led here, even if I didn't love it along the way!
Re: How fateful?
#39If you are interested in tinkering with personal data exports using SQL, my friend and I made Bionic: https://github.com/bionic/bionic . The README includes an example of calculating songs you often listen to while walking/driving/using public transit (by combining Google Maps and Spotify data).
That is insanely cool! I just requested my spotify data and really curious to see the results.
Re: How fateful?
#40My takeaway is this: If you want to meet your significant other, attend a university. After university your chances will dwindle down as you won't frequent that big come together place any more.
Any social gathering is a place where you can meet your significant others, university is not the exclusive place for that.
Most most introverted people tend to do though (myself included), is attending less social events as they become older. But you can still force yourself out there and meet people based on your hobbies.
And who knows, maybe you meet your significant other at one of those events for your favorite hobby?