Comment by chrononaut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrononaut | Hacker News Reader

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> I use a trained neural network I keep between my ears... Recall is sometimes fuzzy with age, but it works well enough, and I don't have to worry about external queries violating my various rights nearly as much as with tech companies.

I don't understand the point you're making (unless you're being snarky.) You recognize that most other users of Google Location History can do the same?

> My first question, though, would be "Why?" What value do you get out of tracking your location with any great detail that self hosting it would be of much value?

Another way of framing is what utility Location History can provide to users. Some use cases are casual ("Where did I go exactly on this trip two years ago?", "Where did I eat when I was in X city 9 months ago?", etc) while other people have personal uses for it: https://towardsdatascience.com/analyzing-my-google-location-...

> However, various cheap GPS loggers and Google Earth import probably would do a lot of what you're looking for.

That would probably work, as well perhaps another OSM-based mapping application. I don't know the value of all that extra metadata which is computed though (as highlighted in the above article).

> I don't understand the point you're making (unless you're being snarky.)

I am. I'm referring to my brain in a "tech industry buzzword" way. It is, technically speaking, a trained neural network. Just a biological one, not a silicon/code based one. I happen to like it, and it can also do things like tell the difference between a low moon in the sky through a smoke haze and a traffic light.

> Another way of framing is what utility Location History can provide to users.

"If there are any positives, then the technology is worth using!" style thinking misses, entirely, the concept of opportunity cost, and the various downsides.

I won't argue that it's not pretty cool to see everywhere you've been - but it's also an exceedingly detailed record of who you are, and anyone who claims it can be suitably anonymized is full of crap (see the Grindr Bishop for a solid case study here).

Where I really start to get upset, though, is that there's no opt-in for this, other than some vague, generic, "nobody reads this and it doesn't say anything anyone would understand anyway" clickthroughs.

Android doesn't have a, "Would you like us to keep a record of your location and everywhere you've been? You can review it later and see what cool places you've been!" sort of opt-in. It just does it.

Google clearly is getting some value from that data, and it's not at all clear what it is.

Right, and I think OP (or at least myself) agrees with the points you've made, which is why they seem to be trying strike a balance between gaining the advantages of Location History, but keeping that data to themselves and outside the Google umbrella, and thus want to understand how to do it.

I view it similarly as others looking at methods to self-host their photo backup with timeline indexing and searching, etc.

Ten years ago, in 2011, Pete Warden discovered that the iPhone was tracking peoples' locations. It was considered to be a bug at the time, because it was only intended to be stored for up to a week, for knowing which phone transmitter to use.

https://petewarden.github.io/iPhoneTracker/

"the advantages of Location History"

I thought that this data would be useful to help geotag the photos in my iPhoto library. So I wrote a little script to parse the iPhone data, and cross-match the timestamps with photos. Never became really popular though, probably because people now use phones to take photos and they already include the location in the EXIF data.

iPhone Geotag

https://peterburk.github.io/programs/#iPhoneGeotag

"keeping that data to themselves"

Once the bug was fixed, and Apple stopped storing location data indefinitely, I thought it would be kind of handy as a feature. So I wrote a little PHP script that ran on my jailbroken iPhone and saved a log of my location every 30 minutes.

It recorded data from Monday, May 12, 2014 3:44:52 PM to Wednesday, April 8, 2015 9:00:06 AM

My battery life got worse, because the GPS kept turning on. During that whole year, I never wanted to check the data, not even once. So I turned off the script. Not tracking myself made me less self-conscious about where I was walking and what I was doing, and it was a relief.

I do use an iPhone, but it's an old 4S with iOS 6.1.3, and I only switch on 3G rarely in case of emergencies. I don't use iCloud for backup, only USB sync. The phone companies will know my location, but Apple probably don't. With the security features all compromised through jailbreaking, I can see everything on my phone so I know what data they could possibly get. And that's good enough for me.

Just wondering what type of thing were you doing that would make you self conscious about your location? Please don't read anything much into this, just interested in what type of things people feel uncomfortable about having recoded.

For me the most uncomfortable thing I ever did was itemise how much money I had spent at different outlets. I discovered that I'd spent an incredible amount of money scuba diving over a 12 month period. Not something that I wanted to share with my partner.

While going for a walk or biking back from work, if I have time and it's not raining, then I like to clean as I go [1]. Picking up and throwing away litter that I see on the street. Sometimes that might involve trespassing, but it's for the greater good.

Like you, I started logging my expenses too! And I still do that. I'm using some scripts on my phone, with one icon on the homescreen for each kind of expense, logging to a TSV.

It has made me more self-conscious about spending money, but that's probably a good thing! Pressuring me to give more money to beggars and spend less on bubble tea.

[1] UncleBob applied "clean as you go" to code, too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s

It's more the psychological aspect of knowing that something is always watching and knowing where you are. There's a creepy-feeling mental overhead to it all.

Exactly, remember at school when the teacher stood behind your desk and looked over your shoulder whist you were writing something, doing sums etc. The teacher standing there watching evey move you made was a surefire way of you making a mistake.

Even my partner's cat will stop eating its meal if I stare at it whilst it's eating (yes, it's a bit neurotic). (But unlike Google, Facebook, the Government etc. I'm immediately in trouble for teasing the cat.)

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