Show HN: I made an emergency page for my family

41 points by delduca 4 hours ago on hackernews | 52 comments

cbracketdash | 2 hours ago

Why is it more likely you'll have internet access when you don't have a phone? If you happen to find a computer, what's insufficient about writing an email?

[OP] delduca | 2 hours ago

My wife doesn't check email frequently, so SMS (or even better, WhatsApp) would be more reliable.

Maybe an alternative is to store the WhatsApp contact information of people who could help behind a password.

Then, if I need help, I can ask to borrow someone's phone on the street. If they don't have WhatsApp, I can just make a regular phone call instead.

fn-mote | 2 hours ago

> If they don't have WhatsApp

Is this really likely? I would guess only 70 year olds don't have WhatsApp.

Seems more likely you forget the impoprtant phone numbers because you never enter them manually.

x187463 | 2 hours ago

With iMessage, Discord, and Signal, I can't imagine a use case for me or anyone I know to use WhatsApp.

nerdsniper | 2 hours ago

The vast majority of the world defaults to whatsapp. But yes, other than convention, any of these could be equivalent.

I don’t see why you would care for Discord over whatsapp except that it’s what you happen to use already.

sheept | 2 hours ago

WhatsApp is not universally used. Line, WeChat, and KakaoTalk are more common in East Asia

malfist | 2 hours ago

Nobody in my friend group has a WhatsApp and I'm a millennial.
It doesn’t have to be just for one type of user.

NDlurker | an hour ago

In the US, the only people I know who use WhatsApp are immigrants who use it to talk to friends and family back home.

appreciatorBus | an hour ago

lol not 70, no Whatsapp.

SoftTalker | 2 hours ago

How will you log into your email from a strange computer without your phone. Gmail has required 2-factor auth for a long time.

306bobby | an hour ago

I get your point, but believe it or not there's more email services than just Gmail

prepend | 46 minutes ago

Really, because I’ve been working to move off gmail for 5 years and it’s slim pickings.

I’ve tried fastmail, protonmail, outlook and they all suck. Gmail is probably the only google account I still use.

zamadatix | 2 hours ago

Before MFA was mandated on every service this was an easy problem to solve. Now when you lose your phone while out and about you lose your ability to log in to even Dave's Speed Cow Milker's Enthusiast Forum unless you're at home with another computer already logged in to various things.

petesergeant | an hour ago

Learning my 1Password recovery key took quite a while, but should allow me to do a cold reboot of my digital life.

et-al | an hour ago

Yubikeys could be cheaper. In addition to the two I have, I bought two more to store offsite with friends and family for redundancy (with access to my password manager + important email accounts).

hod6654 | 37 minutes ago

It's something that you never use on a daily basis. Very easily forgotten...
"LLM-summarized" lmao

[OP] delduca | 2 hours ago

Do you know another way to fit a 3000 long message into a 160ish SMS?

ForHackernews | 2 hours ago

write a shorter emergency message?

"I was in a car accident, come to general hospital downtown"

TZubiri | an hour ago

Ok I understand the usecase now.

I would have used two textboxes, Title and description, but this works as well.

MSFT_Edging | an hour ago

19 SMS messages.

Does anyone still pay per text?

flexagoon | an hour ago

> Does anyone still pay per text?

It makes much more sense outside the US than to pay for a text bundle. My phone plan includes 0 SMS messages, and I don't know what was the last time when I've had to send one was. It's only useful when someone doesn't have internet, which only happens once every few months at most.

philipwhiuk | an hour ago

Why 3000 ? Set a character limit. If the detail is important they can just send 2.. or 10.

cdot2 | an hour ago

I'm not especially anti-LLM but emergency messages seems like a terrible use case. If you're typing out a detailed emergency message then I would think you would need all of your details to be sent or you could simply type a shorter message.

sixhobbits | 2 hours ago

I did something similar, just a photo of handwritten phone mumbers and an easy to remember URL that's not indexed.

Anyone will hopefully lend you a phone if you're in a pinch but I realized that I don't know very numbers to actually call and it's kinda weird to start using email/Whatsapp whatever on a strangers phone compared to asking to visit one site and make one call

FractalParadigm | 25 minutes ago

> Anyone will hopefully lend you a phone if you're in a pinch

I honestly wouldn't count on it, at least not where I'm from, not anymore anyways. IME, having been in that situation (and knowing the numbers I need to call) it's rare for someone to let a stranger use their personal device for something as mundane as a phone call due to risk of theft, scams, or other criminal behaviour, not just on the part of the person borrowing the phone, but the person on the other end being contacted from an unknown number. While the chances of something like that realistically happening are incredibly low, it's a surprisingly easy social engineering method that's got people wary of trusting others to handle effectively their entire life in one device. A lot of businesses don't even let customers make personal phone calls from their landline for the same reason.

comrade1234 | 2 hours ago

Did you get my request for help?

[OP] delduca | an hour ago

I got ~300 requests :)

So far...

ventana | 2 hours ago

I would probably suggest switching the link to the GitHub source code and listing the actual page URL in the description; otherwise, I click the link in the article and get a location sharing request and a Send button; after a few seconds I matched that with the title, but I still had my WTF moment.

autoexec | an hour ago

This isn't a terrible idea, but I'd password protect it and share the password with the people you want to be able to contact you. That'll help avoid spam/scams. "I'm your family member in trouble please send money now to X immediately no time to explain further" is a very common scam and a page like this would make it very easy.

ahmedfromtunis | an hour ago

I built life-link almost a year ago for the same purpose: https://github.com/ahmedsaoudi/life_link

I even created a generator so people can configure it with their Telegram/Pushover settings and have it generate a static app easy to host on Netlify or Clouflare Pages/Workers.

hod6654 | 31 minutes ago

This is so simple and yet so useful!

NewEntryHN | an hour ago

Hmm I'm not sure why in an emergency situation accessing a webpage would be easier than making a phone call.

[OP] delduca | an hour ago

The problem is to remember numbers.

tracker1 | an hour ago

You remember the URL but not a phone number.

philipwhiuk | an hour ago

I... I would not trust my emergency page to an LLM.

[OP] delduca | an hour ago

The LLM is just to make the message short for the SMS. The entire message is sent by mail without any AI.
When I was really bad at speeding all the time I had this fear I'd go to jail and my cat would die alone in my apt. So I started working on my own dead man switch, I actually have not finished it but I at least bought him like a self-feeding thing that would last a month or more and he unfortunately drinks out of the toilet too so I leave the top cover off.

I've recently stopped or working on stopping the triple digits driving.

The topic at hand this would be a Twilio thing sending a message like "so and so might be in jail take care of the cat" which is messed up/funny but I do tell them in advance can you be on this list. But at least this phase of my life is over/I have something to look forward to/behave for.

blitzar | an hour ago

The right thing to do is to use your one call to phone your cat and make sure they are ok - or take them with you when you drive.
Yeah I hope I don't find out but the one time I was arrested (too drunk at a bar) I was released ROR or something no bond. That was a scary experience like you just disappear.

rsyring | an hour ago

The right thing to do is stop speeding like that. Needlessly endangering others. It's good you are trying to stop. To help you continue in that effort...

Check out HPDE events to get your speed fix and keep it off public roads.

I've ran with Chin Track Days and 10/10ths and can recommend both orgs (USA based because that's what I know).

I am past it but unless it's Nurburging track doesn't interest me although I am trying to buy a track car eg. Lotus Exige but I have time

I don't do the squeeze benz shit, if it's day time I see a gap in traffic that's when I floor it but yeah, even with a radar detector a lot of cops/troopers don't use their radar so not even helpful... and the tickets which I was dumb and paid... like I said I'm done with it as I want to stay out of jail

It's almost a curse discovering fast cars the thrill of the acceleration... I used to drive like mundane just part of life... and with the RD now I'm just on edge looking for the cops so yeah... I'm glad not speeding now

rsyring | 45 minutes ago

I agree with your almost a curse sentiment. My interest in fast cars, BMWs in my case, is a blessing and a curse. But HPDE gave me a "safe" (for others) out and I took it.

It's expensive. So, FWIW, buy a car that's really reliable and parts relatively inexpensive so you can spend your money on track time and not the car. I have an F80 M3 dual purpose car and would have got an older dedicated track car (E46 maybe) if I ever got to do it all over again.

I doubt I'll ever get to Nurburging, too far and too expensive, but I've had a lot of fun on some relatively small and simpler tracks. Turns out I like the skill needed and experience of nailing a turn more than I like raw speed on a straight.

People's car interests are interesting like for me I'm looking at visuals, I like the 2-door rounded back (Coupe?) design like Porsche 911 or Nissan 370z Nismo, Lotus Exige is not like that but damn what a sexy car 240 S in Chrome Orange. This is not the same car but love this video https://youtu.be/0c9prOTdp_M?si=7q7ffymWuGKZvmaf&t=155 I drive a manual I like downshifting closest thing I can get for now lol.

For Bimmers though my friend wants to get an M4. Oh and one of my friends gutted his old Bimmer, bucket seats inside that was crazy.

Just get a EV. Your average tesla runs circles around ICE when it comes to acceleration.

chaidhat | an hour ago

please don’t drive that fast (I’m assuming you mean triple digits MPH). It endangers both yourself and others.

hk1337 | an hour ago

I was trying to figure out if the bad gateway page was the page or an error

[OP] delduca | an hour ago

I was deploying a new version. For some reason sometimes I do not get zero down deployments with Dokku, probably missing the healthcheck.

josegonzalez | 16 minutes ago

Dokku maintainer here. Happy to help you debug why this is happening on our discord/slack. Links here: https://dokku.com/docs/getting-started/where-to-get-help/
I thought the unlabeled `<textarea>` was part of the prominent Cloudflare captcha that’s on the page. I sent intense swearing as a result. I’m sorry. But your UI could be made slightly better (by adding a label)!

sailfast | 10 minutes ago

[delayed]