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Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

1901 points l2silver | 1 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source

Maybe you've created your own AR program for wearables that shows the definition of a word when you highlight it IRL, or you've built a personal calendar app for your family to display on a monitor in the kitchen. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it.
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cobbzilla ◴[28 Apr 23 06:01 UTC] No.35737965[source]▶
My mom digitized many many old family videos, and wanted them online for sharing with family (including elderly & not-super-tech-savvy relatives). She asked me “should I just upload them all to a YouTube channel?”

Thankfully it was a phone call so my mom didn’t see my aghast expression. I prefer that big tech not index this stuff! Better to keep “in the family”

Seriously why does big tech deserve this free & super-private window into me & my ancestors lives?

So I wrote something[1] where:

* it’s fully free & open source

* cloud native

* plays on any device, any bandwidth, even if shitty

* yes my 90+yo Aunt Loretta (w00t to you Aunt Lo!) can use it on her phone & computer

* all data can be always encrypted, both source videos and derived/optimized assets

* and there’s more. please have fun

Basically point it at a source bucket on S3 or B2, and get your own private YouTube.

What I’ve built is very limited in functionality atm, but I believe the foundation is solid and plan to extend media support to photos and audio.

This can be a nice alternative to Plex/Google Photos/YT/etc.

It’s for when you don’t care about “building an audience” and in fact prefer that big tech can only see encrypted bytes from you.

Try it out and lmk!

[1] https://github.com/cobbzilla/yuebing

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actionfromafar ◴[28 Apr 23 10:14 UTC] No.35739449[source]▶
Not saying you shouldn't do this, but by publishing under AGPL plus

If you are an individual person or a not-for-profit organization, and your usage of this software is entirely non-commercial, you may use this software under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3, summarized below and reprinted in full thereafter.

you have effectively created a new license and it's not completely clear to me what that new license even means exactly, except that obviously a company should stay far away from it.

With regular AGPL, there is not a problem for a company to use the AGPL licensed software, it "just" can't offer Tivo-ised experiences or a website running modified AGPL code.

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Strom ◴[28 Apr 23 11:30 UTC] No.35739985[source]▶
AGPL has language to cover such things, e.g.

> All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.

So it seems at best there is a need for a middle man who gets the AGPL licensed version that can then propagate it further under pure AGPL.

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1. actionfromafar ◴[28 Apr 23 12:48 UTC] No.35740644[source]▶
I think that language is meant for the case where someone takes an AGPL programs, slaps another restriction on it, and sends it along.

The last person in the chain can disregard the extra "conditions".

But this only works if someone distributed it under (only) the AGPL in the first. In the specific case with the software we are talking about now, that is not the case. It was originally distributed under this almost-AGPL.

But yes, the wording inside the AGPL makes it extra confusing exactly. It reads like those test where the instruction is "before you do anything, read all the questions".