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I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

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Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#51

Post by novok »

Cyph0n wrote: post #47
drdaeman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black Mirror is fiction, a lot of it works well thanks to our suspension of disbelief. Remove cloud from the equation, replacing it with a properly safeguarded fully owned hardware located on your own premises - basically make it privacy-respecting, minimizing abuse potential, do a proper audit, and it becomes a super desirable system for people with neurological differences (or just stressed folks - attention and me…

Have you watched the Black Mirror episode in question (S1E3)? Because the point of it was the tech itself and had nothing to do with sharing or the cloud.

IMO that is a more fundamental argument about removing information from the anxious and jealous who cannot handle the truth. Similar to medical paternalism where the doctor has to decide which test results to tell patients about. Which I understand, but can also be used to go full ham into china style totalitarian censorship regime for the 'peoples own good'.

Also you might not realize how much the hard of hearing, deaf, and other neurodiverse ADHD types would find a memory prosthetic like that very useful unless you are in their very own shoes, for possibly years.

Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#52

Post by modeless »

Has anyone built something like this using accessibility APIs instead of (or in addition to) OCR? It seems like a waste to OCR everything when you could just get the text directly from the accessibility APIs. Also seems like potentially a good way to connect LLMs to UIs, and something like this would be the way to collect the training data.

Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#53

Post by JoBrad »

modeless wrote: post #52

Has anyone built something like this using accessibility APIs instead of (or in addition to) OCR? It seems like a waste to OCR everything when you could just get the text directly from the accessibility APIs. Also seems like potentially a good way to connect LLMs to UIs, and something like this would be the way to collect the training data.

It would also be great to have the foreground apps as metadata.

Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#54

Post by ehsankia »

JoBrad wrote: post #53
modeless wrote: post #52

Has anyone built something like this using accessibility APIs instead of (or in addition to) OCR? It seems like a waste to OCR everything when you could just get the text directly from the accessibility APIs. Also seems like potentially a good way to connect LLMs to UIs, and something like this would be the way to collect the training data.

It would also be great to have the foreground apps as metadata.

Also more general structured data. Like being able to search only the window titles, or text within a certain windows (Discord, Chrome).

Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#56

Post by jejeyyy77 »

novok wrote: post #50
poisonborz wrote: post #8

Congrats on the great execution of this novel idea! Inspiring for everyone with a "why isn't there an app that does x" idea.

rewind.ai is another example of this, but their recent pivot into cloud only storage for this and renaming to limitless.ai makes me glad that open source stuff like this popping up so you are not forced into a cloud storage situation. And I say this as a paying customer who will probably stop being one.

oh man, didnt know they completely pivoted. RIP

Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#57

Post by karaterobot »

drdaeman wrote: post #37
bee_rider wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally Black Mirror episodes are not intended to be aspirational.

Black Mirror is fiction, a lot of it works well thanks to our suspension of disbelief. Remove cloud from the equation, replacing it with a properly safeguarded fully owned hardware located on your own premises - basically make it privacy-respecting, minimizing abuse potential, do a proper audit, and it becomes a super desirable system for people with neurological differences (or just stressed folks - attention and me…

I have a coworker who was tracking Black Mirror premises that were being taken as inspiration by people on the internet. This may be one of those. A lot of SF authors have expressed this idea: "I meant it as a warning, not a road map". I think I read either Neal Stephenson or William Gibson expressing this about their respective dystopias and the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were trying to implement them.

Anyway, posting this comment so I remember to send it to her tomorrow.

Re: I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

#58

Post by somenameforme »

Cyph0n wrote: post #47
drdaeman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black Mirror is fiction, a lot of it works well thanks to our suspension of disbelief. Remove cloud from the equation, replacing it with a properly safeguarded fully owned hardware located on your own premises - basically make it privacy-respecting, minimizing abuse potential, do a proper audit, and it becomes a super desirable system for people with neurological differences (or just stressed folks - attention and me…

Have you watched the Black Mirror episode in question (S1E3)? Because the point of it was the tech itself and had nothing to do with sharing or the cloud.

An extremely similar take on this, that predates Black Mirror, was in some sci-fi media whose name, appropriately enough, currently escapes me. Their premise is that there was a species who evolved to develop a flawless memory. It's a subset of the Black Mirror episode (and this dubious idea) because there, at least, memory is a purely private thing.

Yet the end too was quite predictable and logical -- frequently destroying those of this species simply because your own life and mind ends up becoming more tempting and destructive than even the most enticing of drugs. One could simply lose themselves in your own memories. What need is there for the rest of your life when you can simply endlessly relive, in perfect clarity, the best moments of your life - ones that you, in many cases, will likely never surpass?

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