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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: 0.204s | 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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jwr ◴[29 Apr 23 07:58 UTC] No.35751003[source]▶
I wrote something like this, but for photos. I was tired of not being able to share photo albums with my family and friends.

And then I realized that there is a certain group of people who really need a private photo-sharing service without any oversight, and that not only do I want nothing to do with that despicable group, I don't ever want to realize that I helped them in any way.

So I decided to never release the code and never make it available.

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1. cvwright ◴[29 Apr 23 22:49 UTC] No.35758033[source]▶
Counterpoint: the bad people are already doing bad things. There is already plenty of secure communication technology, it’s just not super convenient. The highly motivated weirdos don’t mind that though.

There is a much larger group of people (parents) who need a secure and convenient way to share photos. They are not as driven as the perverts, so they need all the support and user-friendliness that we can provide.

We should build the tools that help the parents protect their kids, and let law enforcement deal with the other group.