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Comment by dathery | Hacker News Reader

This is a neat visualization. It makes me want to build something like this with actual screenshots (scraping from places like old forums, image hosting sites, etc.) rather than web page renderings.

One of my most prized possessions is my collection of personal screenshots -- I've managed to save basically every screenshot I've taken over the past ~20 years. It's very nostalgic to put them on shuffle and see how my desktop has changed over time, remember what random thing I was working on, etc.

Could be cool to extend the concept beyond one user.

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I screenshot all new sites I visit. A UI interaction catches my attention, I screenshot. My files system is 60% images. It's an habit.

As a self-taught software dev; it helped me hone good design skills and also off topic - I poke around a lot when I visit certain websites to see which technologies they are built with. Maybe it was me testing js scripts or verifying the API/Object properties of certain functions - the habit stuck haha.

Dey well

Same here. It sounds like you even started when I did, ca. 2006. Starting from the blackberry era to my current pixel I've tried to do something similar with my cell phones, but I never usually program in that environment so I never got it off the ground. When LLMs got good a couple years ago getting a screenshot task up and running on my android was one of the first things I tried, but it's been a pain. Apparently Android has been putting in guards against that type of application for security/privacy reasons.

I have an Android, and use the free Tasker app to automatically take a screenshot of my active phone screen every 19 minutes. It takes only a few minutes to set up the Tasker script.

I have vague plans to do something with these one day. But until then, I hoard!

Did tasker do it for you? I tried about 10 yrs ago but with no success. I'll give it another go, thanks. I don't have any future plans for these but similar to OP I see them on a "pictures screensaver", sometimes on chromecast to a TV. I certainly regret not having done this in the 90s, particularly the BBS era, so that is justification enough for me to continue doing it.

The Tasker developers have spent a lot of effort making it easier to use. I used GPT-4o to advise me on mine. I'm sure any modern AI could handle it.

I kind of wish I had that. The closest thing I have to this is my Steam screenshot library, which is just memories of games - or social interactions. on games. I just checked and the oldest one is back from 2011. Prior to Steam they would have been on Xfire, but as that service died, all of those are lost.

Rarely any get added these days, and they're all on private. But it's fun to look back at which games I've played over the past ~14 years.

Please publish those screenshots somewhere, guys. They're a part of history, and we don't have enough of them.

just started my collection 3 years ago. it feels more nostalgic and personal than my phone's photo collection ;)

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