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Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#131

Post by nicbou »

egeozcan wrote: post #28
moooo99 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany we have government entities that are unable/refusing to accept anything but Mail in forms or fax as an official communication channel :/ I’m jealous over countries that have such well designed systems in place to make things easy for their citizens

In Germany, the government entities also rarely, if ever, communicate with each other. I'm offered a citizenship and while I'm extremely grateful and even considering the fact that Germany is the country I love the most by a huge margin, I couldn't bring myself to start gathering the documents they need from various government offices. It's been many years, I wonder if I'll get on with it sometime in the future.

In Berlin it’s literally impossible to apply. They stopped accepting applications while waiting for the central processing location to open. You must force your application through with a lawyer. There is a backlog of 30,000 applications. They plan to process less 20,000 in a year if all goes well. It will not go well according to the latest report. Oh and they are about to reduce the citizenship requirements, but have no plan for dealing with the extra workload. Everything is still paper based.

I decided not to become a German citizen. I want no liabilities to this country.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#132

Post by nicbou »

moooo99 wrote: post #39
egeozcan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, the government entities also rarely, if ever, communicate with each other. I'm offered a citizenship and while I'm extremely grateful and even considering the fact that Germany is the country I love the most by a huge margin, I couldn't bring myself to start gathering the documents they need from various government offices. It's been many years, I wonder if I'll get on with it sometime in the future.

I can’t even start to imagine the annoyance that people have to go trough when they need something really important, like a citizenship or a visa. I haven’t had to deal with that bureaucratic processes, but if I extrapolate the awful experiences I had with something as simple as a new ID, I can fully understand why people hate this kind of organization.

It’s a massive pain and people regularly leave the country due to unbearable bureaucratic delays.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#133

Post by bahama_mama »

coderatlarge wrote: post #117
salil999 wrote: post #49

Apple solves this problem well! Note that I use iCloud family which allows me to share the storage with my family. But for going down the list: A) Mint for most financials. iCloud for storage of documents. B) Apple Health for keeping track of my records. For ad-hoc stuff I use iCloud to store the documents. C) Product and service info I use iCloud for. Logins and credentials to them are stored in my family's 1Passwor…

thanks for sharing - for Mint, are you willing to type in your password to provide access to your other services/accounts? that has been a security bridge too far for me to date :) also, are there runners-up to Mint?

You give them read only access, the financial API ecosystem is extremely well defined and provides advanced access control. I'm pretty sure you just log in to your bank account and they establish read only access. I would be shocked if Mint stored these logins, I don't think they can do that.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#134

Post by jimnotgym »

coderatlarge wrote: post #101
jimnotgym wrote: post #26

OneDrive and a fire resistant box. I suppose I actually store far more in my emails than I should!

If you're willing to share: "more than you should" in the sense that it could fall in the hands of identity thieves? or some other reason?

I have the only copy of important correspondence in my web email. If that email is lost, or I simply cannot find it, I have lost the correspondence. I should at least have an offline copy.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#135

Post by moooo99 »

nicbou wrote: post #131
egeozcan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, the government entities also rarely, if ever, communicate with each other. I'm offered a citizenship and while I'm extremely grateful and even considering the fact that Germany is the country I love the most by a huge margin, I couldn't bring myself to start gathering the documents they need from various government offices. It's been many years, I wonder if I'll get on with it sometime in the future.

In Berlin it’s literally impossible to apply. They stopped accepting applications while waiting for the central processing location to open. You must force your application through with a lawyer. There is a backlog of 30,000 applications. They plan to process less 20,000 in a year if all goes well. It will not go well according to the latest report. Oh and they are about to reduce the citizenship requirements, but ha…

> I decided not to become a German citizen. I want no liabilities to this country.

Sad considering the desperate need for people working in a variety of specialized professions, but a completely understandable reaction. Unfortunately, I don't see a realistic future where this is any better.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#136

Post by allarm »

coderatlarge wrote: post #97
moooo99 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t even start to imagine the annoyance that people have to go trough when they need something really important, like a citizenship or a visa. I haven’t had to deal with that bureaucratic processes, but if I extrapolate the awful experiences I had with something as simple as a new ID, I can fully understand why people hate this kind of organization.

I'm dealing with a bureaucracy which is literally asking me to essentially document every place I've lived and every place I've worked for the last 30+ years. Not only that, but they require paper documents with paper Apostilles affixed and everything notarized. Even if it were possible, it would cost many thousands of dollars in documents and travel fees. In practice, it's essentially impossible because some employe…

Is that for a citizenship application? I’ve moved to Germany around 1.5 years ago and quite excited about the perspective of relatively easy and fast citizenship, but the process you’re describing is insane, I won’t be able to get paper docs from many of my employers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#137

Post by inductive_magic »

coderatlarge wrote: post #102
inductive_magic wrote: post #16

Apple solves this problem for me entirely. No need to tag documents etc, just iCloud everything -> everything is searchable.

if you're willing to share: does this mean you trust apple or that other options are just worse?

I don't trust them in an emotional way, but I think that our interests are aligned.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#138

Post by greenie_beans »

salil999 wrote: post #91
greenie_beans wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you use syncing? because if so, then i thought this wasn't a good backup strategy? for example, my photos could get deleted on my iphone accidentally and that change would sync with all my other devices and that data would be lost forever.

I guess that is a risk I'm accepting. For what it's worth, for photos specifically, Apple keeps them in a deleted folder for up to 30 days. But I'm pretty careful with my digital content and I would much rather them be synced.

that's brave! i don't want any margin of error for my backups.

what happens if all your files get deleted from your computer and then they're deleted from your trash can in the same instance?

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#139

Post by [deleted] »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #12

In Belgium, every citizen has access to a "digital vault" provided by the government, which is accessible using their ID card. Individuals can upload up to 1GB of documents into this vault. It's a well-designed system that ensures privacy during one's lifetime, but you can choose what happens with it after your passing. https://www.izimi.be/en/

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your “family data warehouse”?

#140

Post by morisy »

coderatlarge wrote: post #110
morisy wrote: post #45

A few folks have talked about digitizing paper documents, so one of my favorite tricks for iPhone havers: iPhones have very nice scanning tools built in, but it’s buried in the Notes app. Create a new note, click the camera icon, then “scan documents” and it will create a very nice, usually well cropped and OCRd scan that’s saved as a PDF you can then export elsewhere. Wish it was a standalone app because it works so…

thanks for sharing - it's a great feature. one problem I've found with notes is that they don't appear to have any kind of export mechanism - i.e., you're tied to apple and that app. Is that right?

Tap the down arrow by the PDF, then click “share” and you can email it, move to Dropbox, whatever. They don’t make it obvious it’s just a regular PDF!
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