Show HN: I made an emergency page for my family
help.delduca.orgI have a bad memory and can't memorize some important numbers, so I created this project.
I've always been concerned about being without my phone (getting robbed - which is common in Brazil - running out of battery, having it break, etc.), so I decided to create a page that sends SMS messages (LLM-summarized) and emails with more detailed information such as geolocation, IP address, and the full message.
It’s a simple page that allows sending one or more messages, with recipients being myself and other people - for example, in case I or they need help or need to communicate something important.
The source code is available at https://github.com/skhaz/dokku/tree/main/apps/help
I don't get it. Is this for your family to message you in emergency (e.g. they lose their phones) without needing credentials to their 2FA-infested apps of sorts that they're locked out of?
Are you not getting a ton of spam from this form being open to public?
I've had similar ideas but I'd probably make it something easy to remember like myname.com/message and it quizzes the user or various things that only my family would know. Things like the color of the bedsheets, which specific IKEA kallax square the cat loves to hang out in, the location in the kitchen where the rice is stored
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.
Youre not alone with the problem: if device lost -> difficult to reach family
No matter what solution you choose you will need to remember something. I have two family members who always answer, so their phone numbers are the only two I know. By dialing them manually now and then I make sure my memory is working.
In the age of AI/voice generators I’ve also told them how I will identify myself. So if being mugged in Kiwiland, and they get a call where I ask them to transfer money they can do so knowing it would only be me making that request as I told them the secret phrase: ”yes, it was me who tipped over the Christmas tree”. Ofcourse not that, but something none of the inner family will ever forget.
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.
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.
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
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.
I recently purchased my mid-life crisis car; it's rear-engined, manual transmission, air-cooled, same engine block as a Porsche 914 ... but it's a VW Vanagon.
Anyway, my super sweet high performance sports car can really only get up to highway speeds, and it takes a long time to get there. Getting on the highway means at least 20 seconds of full throttle driving, and staying at highway speeds is pretty darn close to full throttle too. It's kind of fun having your foot down the whole time you're driving without endangering others. :)
One of these days, I'm going to take it to the drag strip for fun. I'll get a better value, since I'll be on the strip for at 2-3 times as long as someone in a fast car :)
Really, I got it because I thought it'd be fun to get it running and hopefully keep it running, and it would probably be an easy manual to refresh my skills and teach the kiddo and maybe the spouse on. That and bugs and cuter VW vans were spendy, so I got the Vanagon instead.
please don’t drive that fast (I’m assuming you mean triple digits MPH). It endangers both yourself and others.
Triple digits kph on residential steeets (limit 30-50kph) would also be dangerous as hell and I’ve seen people do it.
Not sure jail is the outcome you need to be worrying about.
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.
Learning my 1Password recovery key took quite a while, but should allow me to do a cold reboot of my digital life.
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).
It's something that you never use on a daily basis. Very easily forgotten...
I'm also from Brazil and share the same fears. I built a family note taking app which has an internal contact form for the same purpose. One can use it to contact family members in situations of having the phone lost/robbed. Now I'm looking forward to implementing an ephemeral web conference room via API so we could have emergency voice chat. I tried with Jitsi, but it didn't work for me.
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?
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.
> 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.
With iMessage, Discord, and Signal, I can't imagine a use case for me or anyone I know to use WhatsApp.
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.
WhatsApp is not universally used. Line, WeChat, and KakaoTalk are more common in East Asia
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.
Depends where you are, in most European countries, everyone including their grandmas will use Whatsapp.
In the US, the only people I know who use WhatsApp are immigrants who use it to talk to friends and family back home.
lol not 70, no Whatsapp.
How will you log into your email from a strange computer without your phone. Gmail has required 2-factor auth for a long time.
I get your point, but believe it or not there's more email services than just Gmail
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.
I like fastmail but any provider worth using is going to have 2FA mandatory so that will be an issue regardless. Gmail was just a (popular) example.
You have to set up those backup codes and keep them in your wallet or somewhere independent of your phone and in your person at all times.
Why did you let me send you a message? That’s what came up when I hit this page.
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.
This is so simple and yet so useful!
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)!
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
> 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.
Hmm I'm not sure why in an emergency situation accessing a webpage would be easier than making a phone call.
The problem is to remember numbers.
You remember the URL but not a phone number.
I was trying to figure out if the bad gateway page was the page or an error
I was deploying a new version. For some reason sometimes I do not get zero down deployments with Dokku, probably missing the healthcheck.
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 will confirm if it is not a bug on my code first, thank you very much!
I... I would not trust my emergency page to an LLM.
The LLM is just to make the message short for the SMS. The entire message is sent by mail without any AI.
"LLM-summarized" lmao
Do you know another way to fit a 3000 long message into a 160ish SMS?
write a shorter emergency message?
"I was in a car accident, come to general hospital downtown"
Ok I understand the usecase now.
I would have used two textboxes, Title and description, but this works as well.
19 SMS messages.
Does anyone still pay per text?
> 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.
Why 3000 ? Set a character limit. If the detail is important they can just send 2.. or 10.
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.
Did you get my request for help?
I got ~300 requests :)
So far...
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.