I would also love to hear what kinds of plugins the HN Community would like to see. At the moment I'm thinking about the following:

- Github: this would allow you to set goals based on reviewing PRs, closing tickets, reading GH notifications etc.

- Homelab/Zapier/IFTTT: this would allow some kind of funny things like turning off lights or locking locks if you don't complete your goals. I don't have any smarthome stuff, so this would be hard for me to personally build.

- Notion/Obsidian/Jira/Trello

- Google/Apple Calendar: this could help people focus on meetings instead of (for example) scrolling HN

I wonder if you could set it as a sensor for Home Assistant, then we could build our own smart home automations outside of the app instead of you needing to do anything.

How do home assistant sensors work? I've thought about adding a webhook capability. Would it be something like that?

There's a push and a poll model for home assistant sensors: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/integration_fetchi...

Pretty easy to set-up a webhook trigger for automations in home assistant as well: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/automation/trigger/#webho...

I was thinking about ways for the app to receive webhooks, but being able to send webhooks is an even better idea! I'm going to start writing down some thoughts for creating generic webhook triggers. That should also work for zapier (and possibly IFTTT) as well.

Hahah love the idea of turning off lights etc lol

I'm working on something like this for Android. My goal is to build a system where plugins can selectively block parts of apps based on a set of rules. I can't promise that this will end up making it into the final version because the Android documentation states that the accessibility APIs may only be used for accessibility tools, but it's what all of the other app blockers on android do so fingers crossed they let me do it as well.

This would also be possible for desktop, since I'm using browser plugins to block websites on Desktop at the moment. I don't think that this is possible on iOS, but there may be APIs that could enable something like it that I'm not aware of. As much as I like Apple's commitment to privacy, the way that they've locked down a lot of their APIs has been a real thorn in my side for enabling some of these more advanced use cases.

At the moment pretty much everything automatically resets at midnight, including any timers. It's not an issue for me since I rarely stay up past midnight, but I did notice one problem where my step goal reset on New Years eve and I wasn't able to watch my sleep videos on youtube because of it, so I'd like to find a way to make this more configurable.

I would LOVE to be able to open source this project at some point, but I also want to be able to make a living off of maintaining it. I've been reading up on some source available licenses such as Polyform, which can contain clauses that trigger the code to go open source at some point. If I get some traction, I'd really like to make a similar commitment where we will open source this in X months/years. Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? Is this a good idea?

I'm a former Red Hatter, so I'm all too familiar with the revenue hits a product can take when they go open source, but I have no ambition to turn this into a big business, so I think that should be acceptable (unless revenue dips to zero).

Western auto makers are getting slaughtered by Chinese competition outside of the US (and maybe the EU? I don't know what the EU tariff situation is). I have a Chinese EV. It was half the price of an equivalent Tesla and better in every single way. Build quality and reliability have been excellent. I've driven 60,000 km with zero battery degradation.

It's just sort of amazing how badly the west dropped the ball on green tech. We're also working on importing an off grid solar system from china that will easily be a third of the price that we'd get from a US supplier.

One interesting thing that people don't realize with regards to the US tariffs is that a lot of goods flow through the US on their way to international markets. For a long time it has been easiest for us to buy stuff made in china from vendors such as Amazon in the US and have it shipped internationally from the US. Now with all of the tariffs we end up getting double tariffed for doing this (once when the goods enter the US and a second time when they ship to my country). As a result I'm seeing more and more people looking for ways to buy from China directly.

It’s always humbling when you go on the front page of HN and see an article titled “the thing you’re doing right now is a bad idea and here’s why”

This has happened to me a few times now. The last one was a fantastic article about how PG Notify locks the whole database.

In this particular case it just doesn’t make a ton of sense to change course. Im a solo dev building a thing that may never take off, so using git for plug-in distribution is just a no brainer right now. That said, I’ll hold on to this article in case I’m lucky enough to be in a position where scale becomes an issue for me.

The good news is you can easier avoid some of the pitfalls now even as you stick with it. Some good points in comments.

I don't know if you rely on github.com but IMO vendor lock-in there might be a bigger issue which you can avoid.

Yeah, I'm implementing a couple of things to make my life easier in the future. I don't use any github APIs and I'm setting up my clients to load the plugin repo URLs from my server so I can change them later if I need to. I want all of the resources my clients need to come from my domain name so I can move it around if I need to.

As someone who has been stuck with an email address I created when I was 13, this would certainly be a welcome change!

Yeah, I imagine this will help a lot of people who created retrospectively-cringey email addresses in their youth, but kept them over the years because of inertia

> After changing, Google details that your original email address will still receive emails at the same inbox as your new one and work for sign-in, and that none of your account access will change.

> people who created retrospectively-cringey email addresses in their youth, but kept them over the years because of inertia

I feel seen in threads like this one.

I’m in the same boat, this just feels like someone born 1996-2000 finally has some decision-making power at Google.

I’m curious about this too. I’d worry about a local burglar having this information, but what can a Chinese tech company do with this data that I should be concerned about?

First, just the evergrowing tracking of everything, it's just unwholesome in general.

Second, why assume a random Chinese tech company will manage to keep this information to themselves? I wouldn't exactly bet against some terabytes of videos appear on some torrent indexer. Now, combine with modern AI tools for sifting for what you are interested in, and it might hit closer to home for someone.

>>Second, why assume a random Chinese tech company will manage to keep this information to themselves?

I never assumed American companies kept this data to themselves so nothing has changed in that regard.

What I don't get is why people buy robots that carry microphones, lidars and cameras AND connect to the Internet.

I don't really care if the camera is American or Chinese, I just don't want a camera/mic in my home that I don't control. And yeah, the smartphone counts but it's a lot harder not to have one.

Assuming an efficient market it'll eventually be sold to a local burglar. Also, I imagine ICE might be interested in a list of homes where something besides English was spoken. Also there are those email scams that claim to have video of you doing something embarrassing, but usually don't. Given the trajectory of AI, their claims might start being true.

I’ve always argued that the US is the most powerful passport despite not granting access to the most countries for one simple reason: it’s one of only half a dozen passports that lets you visit the US visa free.

> it’s [US passport] one of only half a dozen passports that lets you visit the US visa free.

That is just false. EU passports can travel to USA Visa free and that’s 27 countries right there.

edit: Oh unless you count ESTA as a type of visa. You have to fill out a 5min always-approved form online.

I was counting the ESTA. I don’t have any experience with it, so you’ll have to pardon my ignorance.

Yeah I guess it depends on whether we mean practically or technically. EU countries travel to USA on a “visa waiver” so practically there are no restrictions. But technically you are issued a 90 day tourist visa upon arrival. The ESTA part was introduced to speed up processing by electronically submitting your info in advance so they can do a background check or whatever.

To build on that, I would say the most powerful passports/citizenships are the ones that let you live/work in your desired country. It may be different for different people. The ability to travel visa free to many places, while nice, doesn't always trump the right to abode in a particular place.

I would argue it's dangerous to be having US passport simply because US historically, has been in wars with of lot of countries and some people of such nations would be ready to kidnap one.

What are the others? Canada, I'm sure, who else?

Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. A very weird assortment of countries, aside from Canada.

https://www.passportindex.org/comparebyDestination.php?p1=us...

> A very weird assortment of countries, aside from Canada.

It's less weird if you know that the three Pacific island countries were formerly part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands which was administered by the US for decades following the Second World War and today have Compacts of Free Association with the US.

Bermuda, Palau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and subject to some rules, the Bahamas and a few British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean.

I'm so impressed by how quickly this team can ship new features. It seems like every few weeks there's a new major update!