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Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

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Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#101

Post by bjorn2k »

trentgreene wrote: post #14

I’ve rearchitected my data flow for cycling multiple times now, and it’s frustrating to do it again

What is the most important data (or strava features) you want to keep?

I was actually looking into this myself, and a few parts of strava are not that hard. For me the overview of my rides (including avg speed and distance is important), I quickly implemented a webpage with javascript and leaflet (map viewer), and I could present that data pretty quickly using geojson. I had an offline program which converted gpx traces to geojson, but I'm pretty sure I'm able to read gpx in javascript directly. The harder part is generating the gpx trace (which I used komoot app for), as this involves matching your trace (gps positions) on a map instead of using the data as is.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#102

Post by thi2 »

Gigachad wrote: post #4

I wonder what is going on at Strava. It feels like peak Strava was some time around 2018. Since then, it seems like features have only been getting disabled, hidden behind opt in flags, or moved to the paid plans. I completely understand the decision to move things to paid since their service does cost a lot to run and the subscription isn't expensive, but where are all the new and cool features that should have come…

Started using it in 2019 and it only got worse, it's a shame because I really enjoy the social aspect of it since it bundles a lot of sport and gear into one place but with this trend I feel like the users will be leaving.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#103

Post by mulmen »

frogblast wrote: post #95
mulmen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the corporations not have the data at all. The problem is Apple is simultaneously the best and also pretty bad at stewarding such an ecosystem. In theory all my actual health data would live on a device I own, encrypted, and accessible only by the apps I approve. In reality Apple can't or won't provide those mechanisms. Every other corporation wants to collect and sell my data. Apple had a chance to make on-…

What you wish for is exactly what HealthKit is. All app access is gated by ACLs that require per-app and per-record-type user approval, and always encrypted when transmitted off of your device. This is a quote from the Apple Health Privacy Policy: > When your device is locked with a passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID, all of your health and fitness data in the Health app — other than your Medical ID — is encrypted and in…

Sure except Apple owns my device. So it’s all moot.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#104

Post by prmoustache »

voigt wrote: post #43

Is there any OSS/self hosted alternative to Strava? Where would be the challenges?

Well not exactly turn key solution but you can do a lot with a self hosted elasticstack instance.

I guess you might be able to do interesting dashboards with grafana.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#105

Post by NoboruWataya »

exabrial wrote: post #98
Riseed wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Garmin is the only one I actually trust currently, as they've shown 0 willingness to monetize your health information. > What about the concern that the company is bought out in the future? Or that it may be sharing data already, with government agencies, etc? Or companies that it works with? > It boggles my mind, that people ... come to the judgement that its ok for corporations to have this personal data! I'm no…

Garmin was designed to work off grid and not need the internet lifeline to San Francisco or us-east. Can't say that about any of their competition.

And yet when they got hit by ransomware a while back their mobile and web apps were rendered useless. You could neither add new activities, nor view old activities, nor sync with other apps.

You could of course access the .FIT files directly on your device via USB, so maybe that's what you meant. Their hardware is pretty good for working off grid but you need other software to do anything with the data it creates unless you're connected to their servers.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#106

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

rich_sasha wrote: post #100
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://cycle.travel/map Disclaimer - my site. It’s very focused on quiet routes, so will generally prefer a hilly road if the alternative is a traffic-infested one. Europe/North America/AU+NZ only at present.

Great! How do you determine quiet-ness? Is it just by the grade of the road, or do you have some kind of data feed for quietitude? E.g. in the UK, some A-roads can be very quiet despite being technically major, whereas some B-roads or even ungraded can be very busy, e.g. if they are used as shortcuts.

It's by historic traffic data where available, defaulting to road class if not. (Before I added the traffic data, it used to route over rough mountain tracks in the Highlands to avoid A roads...)

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#107

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

sastraxi wrote: post #54
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://cycle.travel/map Disclaimer - my site. It’s very focused on quiet routes, so will generally prefer a hilly road if the alternative is a traffic-infested one. Europe/North America/AU+NZ only at present.

Really impressive site, thanks for sharing it! Bonus: I'm just used to sites not having data / support for Canada; this was a pleasant surprise. UX observation: clicking to create a start and end was relatively intuitive, but it took a while to find "Close route" to reset it (and be able to click for start / end points once more).

Interesting point - thanks! There's an (X) button to close the route but maybe I should change the icon to a trash can or similar...

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#108

Post by notacoward »

mulmen wrote: post #52
notacoward wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the size (though as mdoms explains it's more than you might think); it's the complexity of matching activities to segments at the necessary level of precision. I know what a consequential amount of data looks like, having worked on a storage system that routinely fed multiple petabytes of data to each of many analytics pipelines simultaneously. Geographic partitioning is only what gets you to millions of act…

I doubt the actual leaderboard calculation requires full granular data down to the meter. Segments can be aggregated from the meter level data in advance. I’m sure there are clever choices in creating those aggregates but that seems like the obvious (and admittedly naive) approach.

> Segments can be aggregated from the meter level data in advance.

Not for a segment that doesn't exist. When I create a segment, it goes back over all nearby activities since the dawn of Strava time. That's the part where geographic sharding helps. Then, it has to check each one to see whether it traversed the segment without interruption or deviation - not within one meter but AFAICT within only a few. Does further sharding/tiling help there? Yes, and I'm sure that's part of how it works, but I'm interested in exactly how they apply those techniques and then solve all of the remaining problems - undoubtedly including those that neither you nor I have thought of. As you yourself say, there are probably some clever choices involved, and that's the part I'm curious about. It definitely seems like a "meaty" enough topic to fill out a blog post or two, and the world needs more such IMO.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#109

Post by zumzumzum »

Gigachad wrote: post #85
mrtksn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but I would like to see something more integrated. Browsers are a good example actually, allowing extensions to add all kind of "missing" functionality on websites. We don't have that on mobile or desktop apps and would have been nice. It's one of the strengths of browser based apps.

No one would actually do this though. You could do this with a browser just fine with an extension but no one is going to spend their time adding advanced features to someone elses paid product. It would also risk breaking on every change.

I know I wouldn't build something like this, but many people do, there are many Strava browser extensions out there. I used VeloViewer for many years before I dumped Strava altogether.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#110

Post by ecf »

voigt wrote: post #43

Is there any OSS/self hosted alternative to Strava? Where would be the challenges?

I’ve been working on one over at [redacted].

Progress is slow as a solo dev who contributes to it in their spare time, but I’m happy enough with it that I could archive my Strava account and switch to it fully.

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