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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: 0s | 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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rhizome31 ◴[28 Apr 23 06:55 UTC] No.35738310[source]▶
Hey, sounds like a very cool project.

I'm wondering: have you considered setting up a Peertube instance and what were the reasons for not doing it?

Other question about not giving away your private data to big tech: Why is S3 better than a private YouTube channel?

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cobbzilla ◴[28 Apr 23 06:59 UTC] No.35738331[source]▶
I like S3/B2 because the vendor only ever sees encrypted bytes. All decryption/plaintext is on the device. YouTube does not get you there. In fact their entire model is predicated on watching your every move.

As far as Peertube, I don't know enough about it. If I put a massive-bitrate video in some weird format on it, and then try playback on a crappy phone, will it work? If I go through a short tunnel, will it buffer or degrade quality gracefully? I don't want to worry about it.

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rhizome31 ◴[28 Apr 23 07:32 UTC] No.35738535[source]▶
> S3/B2 because the vendor only ever sees encrypted bytes

Got it, thanks!

> questions about Peertube

I don't know either. So far my experience with existing instances has been rather good but I didn't consciously test the use cases you mentioned. I've wanted to publish educational videos for a while but the idea of feeding the big nasty beast just breaks my heart.

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rvense ◴[28 Apr 23 10:42 UTC] No.35739615[source]▶
Have you considered just hosting mp4s in <video> tags on a simple web host? I think it'll work a lot better than you'd think.
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1. cobbzilla ◴[28 Apr 23 14:44 UTC] No.35741876{3}[source]▶
This uses video.js which wraps <video> and adds a lot more goodies.